Digital Signage Blog

SaaS stands for Software As A Service and is gaining momentum in the digital signage industry.

Wikipedia defines SaaS as:

“a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service proPreview this Postvided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Conversely, customers relinquish control over software versions or changing requirements; moreover, costs to use the service become a continuous expense, rather than a single expense at time of purchase. Using SaaS also can conceivably reduce the up-front expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing. From the software vendor’s standpoint, SaaS has the attraction of providing stronger protection of its intellectual property and establishing an ongoing revenue stream. The SaaS software vendor may host the application on its own web server, or this function may be handled by a third-party application service provider (ASP). This way, end users may reduce their investment on server hardware too.“

For more information about SaaS visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service

The main benefits of using Digital Signage SaaS are :

• affordable and cost savings - low monthly costs (no maintenance, ongoing operation and support costs) . Some companies are even providing this service for free.
• cut the upfront costs associated with digital signage deployments
• all the digital signage software is centrally hosted and managed by the company which means all software upgraded are performed by the company

Finally, watch out for SaaS as it will be the next model in the digital signage industry.

To discuss this further visit our digital signage portal forum.

AO Narrowcast Inc. began operations on March 7, 2008, headquartered in Sunnyvale California. Sunnyvale, CA has been the center of the semiconductor industry for decades and has now evolved into the technology capitol of the United States. In knowing this AO Narrowcast Inc. set up operations in Sunnyvale to utilize the immense educated work force and leverage the knowledge gained through the rich technology history of the Silicon Valley. AO Narrowcast Inc. has focused their resources on developing a revolutionary web based digital signage management software solution to the growing digital signage industry within the United States. This Software as a Service (SaaS) will incorporate all the functionality of current comparable solutions into one centralized web based digital signage management program. AO Narrowcast Inc. will also add new to market functionality to meet the growing demands of the digital signage industry. In creating this software AO Narrowcast Inc. realizes that there is a lack of scalability and functionality with current digital signage management solutions. With that knowledge AO Narrowcast Inc. will deliver a digital signage solution which can be scaled up from one device to thousands while still adding functionality that out paces all contenders.

About AO Narrowcast Inc.

AO Narrowcast began in early 2008 focusing on next generation digital signage management software. With the spotlight of scalability, reliability, and functionality AO Narrowcast Inc. understands that it will soon become the number one provider in the web based digital signage management software marketplace. AO Narrowcast is well funded and is quickly outpacing its expectations. AO Narrowcast is currently targeting complex application development, including intranets, extranets and web-based software. AO Narrowcast will launch a beta version of its digital signage management software application by the last quarter of 2008.

Today, the digital signage portal has registered its 100th member. Having only launched the site since late last year, the website has grown exponentially in the past several months. As the digital signage market continues to grow, we also anticipate for the digital signage portal to grow in visitors and members.

Our members range from basic digital signage users, manufacturers, distributors, graphic designers to large corporations and our audience is from all parts of the world. Don’t miss out in being part of this online digital signage community and if you haven’t done so already, visit digital signage portal.

Cisco and Filmaka want you to make a film about a “Digital Crib” - a home that uses digital technology - and send it to us. Find someone who has a passion for digital technology and is using it in their home in a unique and creative way. Interview them in their space and get them to talk about what they do, why it excites them and how they are using technology in their personal lives. The person should mention their favorite digital service and who their service provider is. 10 winners will receive $7500 USD and another 10 will win $5000. Winning Digital Crib clips will be placed on over 200 sites across the internet, for the whole planet to see! Submissions should be 3 minutes each, and in your native language and are due October 13

Visit our Digital Signage Portal Forum for more information or ask any questions you may have regarding about this competition.

One of our digital signage portal member recently posted this entry:

 ”Hi, i am from India and i am new to business of Digital Signage. We are basically providers of customeised software solutions in India. The idea of Digital signage for me came from the solution that we had provided for displaying meuns at concession counters in cinema halls.

Hope i would definitly get some positive response from this forum.”

What are your thoughts on this? If you want to respond, share your thoughts or experiences, help or guide this member in the right direction feel free to do so by visiting the Digital Signage Portal Forum entry

I was flicking through the various TV channels today and I ended up stumbling across the new comeback TV show “Beverly Hills 90210″.  I must admit that back in my younger years I was a fan of the show I’m not sure about this new season, but the only reason why I kept watching till the end of the episode was that this new series showed a strong use of digital signage in the High School. It was pretty much everywhere - in front of doorways, in hallways, in the cafeteria and also inside the classrooms. It was primarily used as a communication tool for students but its use could be extended for advertising. 

Even through this was just a TV show, it does give a good indication that there is a strong presence of digital signage in the education sector.

There will be two upcoming digital signage expos:

Digital Signage Expo East - 16 - 18 September 2008

KioskCOm Self Service Expo + The Digital Signage Show 15 - 16 October 2008

Don’t forget to register for these events.

These events have been added to the Digital Signage Events calendar.

If there are other digital signage events coming up let us know by either visiting the digital signage portal and adding the event yourself or send an email to info@digitalsignageblog.com

Digital signage are electronic displays that are installed in public spaces. Digital signs are typically used to promote products, entertain, inform or advertise. Major benefits of digital signs over traditional static signs are that the content can be modified without effort, animations can be shown, signs can adapt to the context and audience. Digital signage advertising is a form of out of home advertising in which content and messages are displayed on digital signs, typically with the goal of delivering targeted messages to specific locations at specific times. Digital signage offers superior return on investment compared to traditional printed signs.
Digital signage has really taken off in the past few years, and is becoming a popular way to reach consumers.
Illusion Screen is the product that has changed projection technology forever. Enabling the delivery of video and data replacing traditional printed signage. Allowing the provider and retailer the opportunity to literally speak to and/or interact with their prospects on the sales floor, directly influencing purchasing decisions. Digital Signage opens the door to presenting the right message at the right time, to the right audience.

For more product information visit the digital signage portal.

The Digital Signage Portal is proud to release a new and exciting feature - the Digital Signage Portal Video section.

The Digital Signage Portal Video section not only contains demos and tutorials but it also allows you to to share videos of digital signage.

What’s so special about this new feature?

It’s a great way for the digital signage community to share its knowledge and experience about digital signage.

Rather than just read about digital signage - you can actually see what’s out there and what has been done.

Is there a cost?

Access to the Digital Signage Portal Video section is free.

To add content to the Digital Signage Portal Video section you need to be a member but registration is free so join today!

Details

To check out this new feature visit www.digitalsignageportal.com/Videos/

Upcoming expo will be held in Philadelphia, Pa. The details are as follows:

DSE East

Sept. 16-18, 2008

Content Day: Sept. 16

Philadelphia , Pa.

To register simply visit:www.digitalsignageexpo.net

This event has been added to the Digital Signage Portal Events Calendar. To view the latest digital signage events simply click here (members only). To add more events to this calendar simply register for an account on the Digital Signage Portal.

Depending on your exact requirements, there are several ways to create a video wall (a series of screens set up in a matrix configuration).

Some people might not be aware of this but most commercial grade screens already have this video wall function built in.

For example, the Mitsubishi screens have an RGB input and output port. See the below image:

In order to set up a 3×3 video wall with the Mitsubishi screens, all you would need to do is “daisy chain” all the screen in the following video arrangement:

1. Connect the video RGB output port of Screen 1 to the RGB input of Screen 2

2. Connect the video RGB output port of Screen 2 to the RGB input of Screen 3

3. Connect the video RGB output port of Screen 3 to the RGB input of Screen 4

and so forth.

Alternatively,  there are several other ways of achieving the same result. There are devices out in the market which perform the same function. Below is a short list:

1. Stretcher - this device stretches your monitor among four DVI or VGA screens without the use of software

For information about this product, visit our online shop at the digital signage portal.

2. Xpander - Expand Your Desktop up to 32 VGA Screens with Video Overlay Support

For information about this product, visit our online shop at the digital signage portal.

To discuss this topic further, visit the digital signage portal forum.

8/8/8 @8 (for those of you who didn’t know the number 8 in the Chinese Tradition is meant to be a very lucky number)

What a great start to the Beijing Olympics.  The opening ceremony was amazing, but what was more amazing and interesting was seeing the use of digital signage technology during this event. There were four noticeable uses of digital signage:

1. The “drum” signage - this was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. When I first saw this, I thought of calling it the human LED board. Basically, drums were being lit up like an LED screen and it’s main function was to use this as the official countdown system. The co-ordination and the synchronisation of all those involved was unbelievable - see it for yourself:

2. Olympic Globe - I don’t know exactly how they pulled this off but it was very clever. Based from what I saw, they used very large projectors to project images on the globe (maybe from all sides of the stadium). I don’t know how they ended up getting the image to wrap around the globe but it was great to watch.

3. The moving floor screen - the floor in the stadium was actually being used as a screen (the size of a football field)… now that’s one massive screen

4.Stadium infrastructure - digital signage was all around the Beijing stadium.

 Overall, this was one magnificent event and congratulations to all those who were involved… especially with implementing and co-ordinating the digital signage solutions.

On a recent trip to Cambodia and Thailand, it was interesting to see if and how digital signage is used in these countries.While there was plenty of signage in Cambodia advertising political parties, products and events, I didn’t see much of digital signage around. This could be for a variety of reasons but I expect this will change with time. Thailand was a different story. There was digital signage on public transport, outside shopping centres, inside shopping centres and along the road. It was difficult to get examples of digital signage in shopping centres because they have a rule that you can’t take pictures inside!

Bangkok in particular, had plenty of digital signage and what is interesting is that they are incorporating digital signage with new projects. For example, when using the public transport system you can see that they have thought about the use of digital signage because they’ve inbuilt the screens in the design of the carriages.

And along the SkyTRAIN, advertisers have updated the billboard idea to incorporate digital signage.

Shopping centres in Bangkok have also used digital signage outside their centres for multiple purposes. Not only can the huge digital signage screens advertise sales or products, the screens are also used to display promotional events or concerts that are held for the public.

It will be interesting to see what else they come up with in the future and whether businesses in Australia will invest in these ideas locally.

Today I accidentally typed the keyword digital signgage and was surprised to see that there are approximately 40 websites with a spelling mistake on their websites. I don’t know whether this was intentional or not but I’ve noticed that there are a couple of popular websites listed.

I’m guessing that after submitting this post, we’ll be joining that list. Doh!

With only a couple of days to the Beijing Olympics ‘08, I was thinking about what digital signage implementations will be used in the Olympic venues and around the Beijing stadium.

We won’t be going to Beijing this year, but we are interested to know what digital  signage solutions they are using there. Does anyone know? If so, we’ll like to hear from you (in fact, I think the online digital signage community would also like to hear from you too)  and if you have any images of the solution feel free to post it up on our digital signage portal forum. We have created a topic there for you to discuss and upload pictures.

Finally, we hope that the Beijing Olympics runs smoothly and without any dramas.

The top 10 search terms people are using which is landing to our digital signage blog from search engines are:

1.  digital signage blog

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4. signage blog

5. cellular digital signage

6. what is rs232

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This month, we completed a digital signage install at newsXpress. Here’s a couple of images of the digital signage solution:

A case study will be posted shortly.

If you have any images of digital signage solutions, feel free to post them in the digital signage portal (registration is required). The digital signage portal allows your business to showcase your digital signage case studies, photos, advertisement templates and examples all in one location.

A typical digital signage solution is generally expensive and from experience, one of the most critical factors as to whether a client purchases the equipment or not is the final cost (basically the number of zeros in the figure). Even calculating and presenting the ROI may not persuade the client to make that final purchasing decision.

A financial strategy which we believe will help in landing any project, is to also include rental and leased financial options with every quote you submit to your client.

In summary, some of the advantages of rental and leased plans over outright purchases are :

• preservation of cash flow. The cost of the equipment can be spread over the term of the agreement. This means a full upfront payment is not required enabling the client to spend money running the business.
• there are many tax advantages. For rental and lease options, both payments are 100% tax deductible. If the equipment was to be purchased outright, only the value of the equipment depreciation is tax deductible. GST can be claimed on monthly payments through BAS claims whereas for outright purchases, GST is only claimed at the time when the equipment purchased.
• For the rental option, there is a flexibility to upgrade, add or delete the equipment during the term of the agreement. For the leased option, the client may be required to payout the remaining payments and residual value before upgrading to new equipment. For outright purchases, any upgrades or add-ons will need to be required to be purchased by the customer.
• With the rental option, the client will not be stuck with outdated technology. The equipment can be returned to the Finance company. For the leased and outright purchase options, , the equipment needs to be disposed of by the customer which may prove to be costly.

Visit the digital signage forum to further discuss some of these advantages in detail.
At Advertise Me, they are able to provide their clients with outright, leased and rental options for all of their digital signage solutions.

Advertise Me is a privately owned Australian company specialising in all aspects of digital signage solutions.

Our team of highly skilled professionals is able to introduce innovative ways for businesses to communicate with their intended audiences for a variety of purposes including informing, educating, entertaining and selling.

You can expect us to:

• offer the most affordable and cost effective solutions tailored to your specific business needs.
• provide you with concise and accurate information and will ensure that you understand and are comfortable with our proposals.
• strive to make our clients happy and successful.

We have partnered with a number of key reputable organisations and will continue to build further partnerships to deliver the most effective solutions for our customers.

Visit our website at www.advertiseme.com.au for more information.

With the increasing focus for businesses to help reduce global warming, what measures are we taking to ensure our digital signage solution is “environmentally friendly”?

As new technology is being developed, most manufacturers are designing digital signage products which will help reduce power consumption.

Generally for a digital signage solution one would need a screen and also a digital signage player (can be a PC, a small form factor embedded PC, or digital signage player).

When implementing a digital signage solution one should consider the following:

- the average power consumption of a plasma screen is 350 watts compared to LCD 213 watts

- the average power consumption of a PC is 78 watts compared to an embedded PC 8 watts (linutop)

If power efficiency is what you’re after, take note of the following:

- use screens, in particular LCD’s that consume less power

- screens uses power even when they’re not turned on!!! The standby power uses several watts. The best thing to do is to turn the device from the power point.

- decrease the LCD’s backlight. Most LCD’s these days have the option to control the intensity of the backlight but by doing so it makes the LCD screen less bright.

- use software tools to automatically shut down your digital signage player and screen rather than leaving it on 24/7

If you have any further ideas on how to futher save power, please let us know or discuss it on our digital signage forum.

The much anticipated iPhone 3G will be on sale on the 11th July 2008. I know quite a number of people who have already placed an order for this unit or are in the process of placing an order. The iPhone and many of the other Apple products are quite innovative devices and we are very interested to see how many digital signage companies will be investing and researching at ways of integrating their digital signage solutions with these iPhones. We won’t be surprised if Apple makes their mark in the digital signage industry in the next couple of months.

Now, if we look at some of the features of the iPhones there are many obvious reasons why companies will be looking at integrating the iPhones with digital signage:

• 3G Speeds & Internet access - faster access to the Internet means faster upload and download speeds. So if you’re a digital signage network operator it would mean that staff will be able to manage the digital signage network from almost anywhere. If you’re a content provider, you will be able to take a video or picture and upload the file in real-time.

• Camera and photos with GPS- the iPhone 3G has a cool feature called geotagging. By using GPS and geotagging, almost any iPhone user will be able to become a mobile content provider for the travel industry. Just image you’re on holidays in Sydney and you take a photo of the Opera house and upload this image to Flickr. A content provider does a search for Opera house and because your photo has been tagged with sydney someone may end up using your photo -maybe even for a commission.
• Itunes and wireless networking - I guess digital signage operators may be able to leverage both of these technologies and enable the public to interact with the digital signage network, how you may ask… well I can’t reveal all my ideas in case we use this for our own digital signage technology.
• App Store - my guess is that many application developers will build a small applet to enable interaction between the digital signage network and the iPhone

I can’t wait until I get a hold of the iPhone and see how useful this device will be in the digital signage industry.

I hope that after you read this post, your mind is ticking with new ideas… just like mine!

For your light reading, here’s a few Digital Signage Books we’ve found on Amazon :

It is surprising to see what how different businesses apply their content in the retail digital signage market. Not surprisingly, a very high percentage of digital signage applications focus on advertising - how to best create the most impact on promoting a sale. Depending on the nature of the business, the location of the screens and the intent of the campaign, this can prove to be a very effective strategy.

The other day I walked into a department store looking to pick up some outdoor gear. In the heap of trying to figure out what is best to buy, a digital signage screen in the middle of the aisle was playing short clips on some of the gear on how to use it, as well as offering useful outdoor tips. It was just like watching one of those “Infomercials” on outdoor travel.

It wasn’t till a few minutes later that it hit me - user experience. A strategy for making customers feel assured in their decision and comfortable of what they are buying, and bringing them back to the store. Now this is a different feeling that you walk away with compared to that of “I just scored a bargain!”

It will be interesting to find out what measures the store has in place for tracking sales made against the duration of the digital signage being played.

What will be even more interesting is to be able to track the number of sales made against the number of people entering that aisle looking for outdoor gear. In the wake of technology today, there are many tracking systems out there that do just that - track people’s presence, eye motion, and even human behaviour. But that is a different topic all together!

By the way, I ended up walking out of the store with over $200 in gear!

Discuss this topic here on digitalsignageportal.com.

The top 3 topics on the digitalsignageportal.com forum are:

Largest Digital Signage Networks in Australia - viewed 486 times

Desktop vs Embedded Solutions - viewed 473 times

LCD vs Plasma - viewed 462 times

To view all the other topics on the digitalsignageportal.com forum click here.

We’ve just received information that the digitalsignage.com (yes it was sold on a private auction website and we didn’t even know about it nor did we get an invite) was sold for a whopping $20,200. The new owners of the domain are from natehead.com. It looks like they have strong plans for this domain.

The previous owners of this domain (FocusInfo.com) apparently let the domain name expire - I’m sure they are now regretting it and someone in that company might have even got sacked for it.

In any case we are starting to wonder how much our domain http://www.digitalsignageblog.com is worth - and NO it’s not for sale.

Moral of the story: Whatever you do, don’t let your domain name expire.

I recently returned back to Australia after a two week business trip in Washington DC, USA and I thought I’d share and comment on some of the digital signage implementations I saw.

Firstly, when I arrived in LA Airport for a stop over, I was welcomed by these screen - digital signage is pretty much everywhere you go in the airports:

If you look closely, there a four smaller screens at the bottom of the two larger screens. The smaller screens are in fact touch screens which can be used to find more information about hotels, restaurants etc within LA - there are also phones that can be used to contact businesses listed in the directory. I like the idea of using the bigger screens to attract the visitor’s attention and then direct them to the touch screens - a very clever “call to action” method.

Next stop was Washington DC Airport. Once again I was not surprised to see digital signage in this airport. I noticed that most of the screens were manufactured by NEC which showed Airline/passenger information. There were also LG screens which were displaying CNN News.

The colour themes on the screens at both airports were very similar. The text was white and the background was a light blue. The screens constantly kept passengers informed about flight information - the digital signage solution was also being used as a “visual announcement board” (this was used in conjunction with an audio message on the PA system) e.g Mr XXX please contact the United airlines customer service desk.

The next place with a strong presence of digital signage was Pentagon City Shopping Mall. Like in many shopping malls around the world, digital signage was used to advertise products and businesses. In this example, a product video from Consumerwatch was playing.

In the same shopping mall I encountered an innovative digital signage implementation. I have read about this type of interactive display on the Internet, but this is the very first time I have actually seen it with my own eyes. I don’t know who are the manufacturers of this solution but the one I’ve seen on the Internet is Catchyoo. From what I could tell, the solution is using a very large (the biggest projector I’ve ever seen), a mirror, a small form factor PC and some sort of motion detection camera. The solution works by displaying an image on the ground, the customers can walk on the image and interact with the display. During the short period I was watching the display, I noticed that only kids were interacting (more like playing) with the projected image. Now don’t get me wrong, the solution is very innovative but is this solution targeted to kids or potential customers? .

The next location that I found a digital signage solution was Borders - the book store. An LCD screen with a computer attached to it displayed a template with a zoning configuration (you can literally see the PC stick out above the screen) . The zones were setup to show the following:

a News scrolling ticketer at the bottom of the screen

• an Advertising Banner on the left hand side column which displayed internal products (CD’s, DVD’s, Books, and products from their cafe)
• the largest area on the screen was used to display videos (interviews, Film/Book previews) and the weather

My last stop was at Washington DC Chinatown. Walking through the busy streets of Chinatown, I noticed that the two large Telecomunications giants (Verizon and AT&T) both had external LED screens placed in front of their building. The Verizon Centre has the largest LED screen in town - very hard to miss.

At the time I took this photo, they were displaying stock information - I’m not too sure how many people are interested in this kind of information but it must be a reason why they were displaying this.

Although AT&T didn’t have the largest screens in town, they did however stand out from the crowd when it came to being noticed. Outside of their AT&T building (nicely located at the corner of the main street in Georgetown), there are 3 LED screens which display independent content from each other.

What took me by surprise was AT&T’s shop window front - they were using the whole of the glass window as a screen. If you look closely in this photo, there is a projected image on the glass window.

Well that’s the end of my trip. Hopefully I’ll get to see other digital signage implementations in the different parts of the world.

On a daily basis, we filter through the many email emails we receive from digital signage vendors who approach our business with their digital signage products and services.

In order to expand our audio and video extention product range, we have decided to partner with SmartAvi. SmartAvi are now also blog contributors of this digital signage blog and we look forward to building a strong partnership with them.

About SmartAvi

SmartAVI manufactures and markets DVI extenders, video extenders, video switches, digital signage, kvm extenders, and ir extenders. SmartAVI DVI extenders extend DVI over CAT5 and fiber optic cables. SmartAVI’s video extender solutions are unique because of their long experience in the computer industry. It is this technology expertise that allows SmartAVI to give their customers flexible and unique video swicthes at very competitive prices.

SmartAVI specializes in audio and visual extension, switching and routing. SmartAVI’s products enable DVI extenders, VM extenders, Video extenders and video switches for audio and visual configurations.

We received an email about an exclusive report titled Retail Digital Signage ROI: Finding the breaking point compiled by the editors of Retail Customer Experience magazine.

The blurb on the website describes the report as the following:

“It’s clear that digital signage has a positive impact on retail sales — but just how much of one is a matter of debate. Numerous studies have been commissioned and published, trying to determine the net effect dynamic signage will have on the average store’s sales.

In this report, we aim to provide a thumbnail estimate of that break-even point, for various types of retail. To do this, we created a fictional shopping center retailer, complete with a screen layout floor plan. We took that floor plan to 10 leading digital signage providers and had them price out a signage program. We averaged those numbers together, and then compared them to an average of the sales uplift figures and the ultimate impact on revenue.

You’ll see the assumptions we used, the prices we received and the results that follow when they’re all put together.

• Learn about the costs – and the benefits – of deploying digital signage in your retail space.
• Get a grip on ROI with actual numbers provided by actual digital signage vendors
• How much does your store stand to profit over time as a result of deploying screens?
  • Pages of exclusive graphs tell the story.
• Make the case for adding digital signage with research-based sales-lift data.
• Gain insight into how digital signage works, and what specific benefits it brings, to specific retailer types.”

The report costs US$49 for non-members of the Digital Signage Association and US$39 for members. The report can be purchased here, so if you’re interested to find out what the results of the case study was, don’t hesitate to buy the report.

Like every other year, Cebit Australia will be held in the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour Australia from the 20th May to the 22 May 2008.

We have received quite a number of invites and we certainly do hope to attend this event, but this all depends whether time permits as we are currently working on several projects that needs to be completed on time. If we do have the time to attend, we’ll definitely write a short blog entry about what we’ve seen as we are very interested to see what new Digital Signage technologies have emerged since we last visited this major IT event.