Tour de France Chalkbot: Art Meets Marketing

Radios may have been banned during Stage 10 of the Tour de France, but tweeting robots are allowed, and even encouraged. Indeed, a chalkbot is taking input from Twitter and writing messages directly on the course.

The chalkbot, part of a Nike ad campaign, is an interesting exercise in bringing microblogging into the physical world: those whose tweets are chalked receive a photo of their tweet in siteu.
 

While the chalkbot's creator hails it as a step forward in online art, its most immediate use will likely be for ad campaigns: billboards for the street.