times square
Screens
The Secrets Of Time Square’s Ridiculous Billboards
10:20AM Matt Buchanan
You’re being punked whenever you walk into Times Square: The massive billboards assaulting your eyeballs are much higher res closer to ground than they are up top. Engadget discovers this, and other secrets, going “hands on” with Times Square. [Engadget]
Gadgets
The Times Square New Year’s Ball Timeline
3:15AM Mark Wilson | Last year, we published the 100 year timeline of the Times Square New Year’s Ball. Now we’ve updated it with Philips’ and New York’s newest, most dazzling time ball ever. (Click image for big version.) The 2009 New Year’s Ball is 12 feet in diameter and weighs in at 5,386kg. It will blind you with 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs—that’s roughly triple the 9,576 LEDs that the ball had just last year—shining 16 million possible colours through 2,668 Waterford Crystals. And despite these barely fathomable numbers, the new ball is 20% more energy efficient than last year’s. To celebrate the century-old tradition (and appease the tourists), the new ball will stay on display all year long in Times Square. So does that mean we can get drunk and celebrate in the streets all year, too? (Yes, yes it does.) Happy New Year! [Times Square Alliance]
Screens
Panasonic Pwnd On Their Own Times Square TV
8:20AM Mark Wilson | In a clever bit of green marketing, the non-profit Electronics TakeBack Coalition ran the above ad warning of “toxic waste” on Panasonic’s own proud Times Square display. The coalition promotes manufacturers accepting their own products back for recycling. Unfortunately, clever ads and even manufacturer support are only half the battle. [via Treehugger] More »
Gadgets
The Insane Hardware Driving the World’s Biggest LED Billboard
12:30PM Benny Goldman | In a dusty supply closet at 1 Times Square, a computer terminal hooked up to hordes of ethernet servers, RAID arrays and monitors humbly runs the largest LED sign in the world. The sign, a 3-sided, 17,000-square-foot Goliath, debuted last night at the opening of a Walgreens in New York City. Today, I got to see what makes it tick. galleryPost('walgreenssign', 3, ''); More »
Screens
Toshiba’s LED TV Screen Lights up Centre Stage in Times Square
5:50PM Kit Eaton | Only back in May were we talking about another Times Square display—Walgreen’s one—and today Toshiba’s news is about its new display there. Sitting 86 metres in the air, the 15.6m by 16m display is a 1280 x 1248 pixel LED high-definition monster that uses some proprietary Technovirtual technology to create virtual pixels to achieve an even higher apparent resolution. It can show over a billion colours, and since it sits atop One Times Square, it’s got a pretty commanding view over the streets. And environmentalists may be pleased to learn it replaces a previous screen that consumed much more power. High-def advertising and green credentials? Impressive. [Toshiba] More »
Gadgets
Walgreens Building Time Square’s Largest Billboard
7:20AM Mark Wilson | We don’t normally think of glitz when we think of Walgreens, but maybe that’s entirely the point. The company is building the world’s “most complex, powerful and digitally advanced” sign to hover over their new flagship store. And 5 kms of it is covered with 12 million LEDs capable of producing a trillion colours. But that’s only part of the sign. More »
