What do you get when you cross the Tour de France, a team of robot engineers and hundreds of gallons of liquid yellow chalk? You get Chalkbot, of course!!

It is a long-standing tradition at the Tour de France for fans to spend hours creating elaborate messages and illustrations along the course for riders to see as they whizz by. Chalkbot automates this process by allowing user-submitted messages of hope to be sprayed on the road about eight hours ahead of the riders. Once the message is approved, it is sent to the Chalkbot which will then spray the 40-character message, take a photo and then email the photo along with GPS coordinates to the person who submitted it. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Built by DeepLocal and StandardRobot in partnership with Nike and Wieden+Kennedy, Chalkbot is like a giant self-contained pneumatic dot matrix printer that is mounted to a trailer pulled by a truck and can print messages and graphics of varying types on the road. Users can submit their own inspirational messages by Tweeting them @chalkbot, texting “LIVESTRONG,” followed by your message, to 36453 or directly at the official Chalkbot website.

Check the video for some action-shots and a little behind the scenes magic.

if you are even remotely interested in information, data, facts and numbers – let me introduce you to nicholas felton – aka - feltron. not only is he obsessive with his info gathering, he has a way of graphically displaying it all in a beautiful,well organized and aesthetically pleasing way. working with graphics every day, i personally know how hard it is to keep data organized and also easy on the eyes at the same time. spend some time digesting the 2008 annual report (as well as the older ones) and you will find endless slices of data from his year. sounds boring? think again – it is wonderfully served up into interesting bite-sized pieces that rope you in. you can order his print versions for $5 if the on-screen experience just isn’t doin’ it for you. nicholas’ other project, daytum, will eventually allow you to start keeping track of your own life data, but i say eventually since it is still a closed, private beta at this time. nicholas, if you are reading this – drop me a line, i’d love to …ahem… check out daytum!

the journal of urban typography is a great tumblr site that has found typography from various urban areas. great for type addicts and breaking some creative blocks. from the elegant to the uh, not-so-elegant — it’s all there. new specimens added monthly, so be sure to bookmark it and visit often!