Consumers today are control freaks. So letting them control your digital signage from their cellphones makes sense, doesn’t it?

With a storefront in the middle of one of New England’s most bustling plazas, Cambridge’s Harvard Square, Tod Beaty wants to make the most of his prime real estate. He is, after all, president of Hammond/GMAC Real Estate, Cambridge, so he knows the importance of working his location.

Last summer, he decided to try out a beta version of a new application called StreetSurfer, by Somerville, Mass.-based tech company LocoModa, which allows passersby to interact with his digital window display using their cellphones. ‘I’m always on the lookout for cool things,’ Beaty explains. He uses StreetSurfer to run his office’s listings on a loop. Users can dial into a special phone number, and then use their cellphone like a remote control to scroll through the listings at their own pace. They can click for more information about properties that catch their eye, and if they want to reach a realtor, they can press 0 to leave a message for the office administrator. Beaty is using the application in two of his windows; each window gets its own phone number.

Users can also bookmark properties of interest on their cellphones to access later on their computers by simply going to Hammond’s Web site and entering their own mobile number – the cell essentially acts as a cookie.

Part of StreetSurfer’s appeal is that it’s accessible 24 hours a day, which is ideal for Beaty’s location in Harvard Square with its busy nightlife. ‘It’s our concierge,’ he says. ‘Our clients love it because it’s another thing that pushes their listing.’

‘It’s really focusing on the ability to catch consumers in the moment – away from the couch and office,’ says Bill Nast, LocoModa’s VP sales. He says that while real estate is the application’s first deployment, the list of potential categories it will be tailored to in the future is long and includes retail, automotive and hotel/travel. ‘We imagine digital mannequins…you can take a picture of your face, put it on the mannequin and dial into the application to choose outfits,’ he explains.

Right now, StreetSurfer, which is accessible from all cellphones, is available on a subscription basis for US$399 per month, with typical start-up fees between US$1,000 and US$2,000. For the real estate category, LocoModa is able to tap into MLS (Multiple Listings Service) and automatically update the window display as the office’s MLS listings are updated.