Digital Signage Blog Archives
Archive for Category: ‘Digital Signage Blog News’
Digital Signage that’s Thai Riffic
digital signage is one of the most cost effective ways to market your restaurant or store. We were recently engaged to provide and install a cost effective solution for Thai Riffic (obviously a Thai restaurant) based in Randwick Australia.
Although the requirements were very simple (to display images with transition effects) we delivered a solution that was simple and easy to use but most importantly one that had value added benefits.
Uploading content to the player is easy. The store owner needs to open up a locked compartment on the side of the screen and plugs a USB dongle into the port. The player automatically synchronises the content from the USB port to a CF card. Once the synchronisation completes, the store owner just removes the USB dongle and closes the compartment. Yes it’s that easy!!!
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Announcement: Mitsubishi projector warranty increased to three years
We’ve just received a notice that mitsubishi has increased their projector warranty from two years to three.
Mitsubishi Electric Australia have increased the warranty period on its range of projectors from two years to three years. The warranty increase is effective for all projectors purchased from the 1st September 2010 onwards. The warranty covers defects in workmanship and materials for a period of three years from the date of purchase (excludes consumables). For more information, please consult the projector warranty card available on our website.
Being resellers of the Mitsubishi products, we want to let our clients and readers know.
I believe this could only be for Australian customers.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
No digital signage at voting centres Australian Election 2010
This weekend every australia citizen had to vote for a new government. When I attended my local voting centre I noticed how digital signage was not there. There was a lot of the traditional papers being distributed as well as posters but there was no signs of screens or audio systems. I was disappointed when I saw this and want the politicians to know how digital signage can be utilised at election events. Here are my thoughts:
1. Communicate and engage the public – many of us don’t know who we are voting for and why we should vote for someone or for their party. I honestly didn’t have a clue who was an the ballot. I did see the ads on TV from both parties but I’m pretty sure most of us don’t have time to watch the ads so we wouldn’t have most likely have seen the ads. Engaging the public at an election event is very critical and obviously both parties want any vote that they can get. So what better way to engage the people through a digital signage system. The set up would be very simple or complex. The same marketing concept ‘making a purchasing decision at the counter’ will still apply here. If the politicians engaged the audience through a video to explain their promises to the community then at the last minute the voters may be swayed to vote for them. I believe its quite important to do this especially before the voters make their final decision.
2. Instructions – I found that there were no clear instructions for voters who were not able to understand English. My guess most of these people had a blank vote. It would have been good if there was a kiosk or screen explaining what to do in English. Even maybe an iphone app.
3. Digital voting screen – I still don’t understand why we can’t vote online or through a digital system like a touchscreen or kiosk. We should use technology at our own advantage so why not do it at these events. I wasted half an hour on the weekend just because I had to physically visit a voting centre.
4. Think of the environment – too much paper and ink was wasted at this election. Although most of this was recycled I believe it could have been replace by a digital system. The initial cost could have been expensive but the equipment could have been rented and possibly donated to the school.
For those of you who don’t know australia has a hung parliment.
Did anyone see any digital signage at their voting Centres?
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Wave goodbye to Google Wave integration with digital signage
Last year we talked about how the new Google product called Google wave could be integrated with digital signage (http://www.digitalsignageblog.com/2009/10/30/thinking-of-ways-on-how-to-integrate-google-wave-with-digital-signage/) and the possibilities were endless. I’m so sad to hear that Google have decided to discontinue the Wave product. It appears not everyone jumped on board with using this product and hence the reason why they have canned it. It was a good idea, the product seemed promising but it now has all come to an end. Oh well, I guess all the hype about the next email system confused everyone.
Loading ...Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Digital Signage World Australia 2010
The first dedicated digital signage expo in Australia spanning just over half a hall at the Sydney Convention Centre. There were the usual players in the game showcasing their latest products and technologies, and as usual it was the manufacturers who stole much of the stage. The free seminars held almost every hour was an added bonus by experts sharing their knowledge and practical experiences.
Category: Digital Signage Blog Events, Digital Signage Blog News, Featured Post
Digital Signage Proof of Concept
Are proof of concepts a thing of the past? When we first started in the digital signage industry it was quite common for us to prove to potential clients that the solution they were getting met their requirements. The only way we could prove this was to setup a “proof of concept” – this is were we setup a trial and install the system for free and the client gets to test this for a period of time.
This gives the client the opportunity to test the waters and determine whether the solution does what the client wants. At the same time it gives the client the opportunity to iron out some of their concerns and issues. At the end of the proof of concept the clients decides whether they rollout or continue with the solution. For the vendor they must do whatever they can to ensure they satisfy the client and win the clients business. Generally, the vendor must subside the cost of the hardware, software and professional services costs – so in reality it’s like a gamble.
As a digital signage solution provider we research the market and select products that exactly meets the clients requirements. A happy customer = a happy business.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
US Mural uses interactive walls and twitter to promote Canada, why doesn’t Sydney have this
I stumbled across a video that I wanted to share with you all and in particular to the tourism industry. A company in the US has done a great job in getting passers by to interact with their wall by using twitter. The Canada tourism industry obviously knew what they wanted and how they could strategically use social media to their advantage. Now why don’t we see that in Australia, in particular in Sydney where most of the overseas tourism companies are based?
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Screens, screens screens, preparation for the next digital signage projects
Screens, whether they are a plasma, LED, LCD or even a projector – these are one of the most critical components in any digital signage project. At advertise me we always recommend our clients to install a commercial screen rather than a residential screen but that’s going to be a different topic all together. So today, I decided to take a photo of some of the packaged screens we store and post it on this blog. Below is the image.
Advertise Me is a reseller of many of the large screen companies such as Panasonic, Samsung, NEC, Sony, Phillips, Acer, Asus, Viewsonic, LG and Mitsubishi. So before purchasing your next screen for your upcoming project, make sure you 
from us and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed (Australian Companies only).
screens screens screens for digital signage projects
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Should digital signage operators pay TAX for digital signage screens?
I just read on the digitalsignagearticles.com that a few people have posted a twitter post about an Italian Tax on digital signage. Basically the article is about a tax (100 euro per year per screen/location) that needs to be paid by network operators in Italy to the government. I haven’t really seen that many implementations in Italy but it sounds like their Government is trying to cash in the digital signage industry. Why – because the Government can see that $$$ and revenues businesses are making from advertising on digital screens.
I’m pretty sure that this digital signage TAX will flow through many of our countries and operator or the owners of the screens will be expected to pay the government for having a screen at the front of their store facing the public areas.
So let’s start a poll to see what your responses are.
Loading ...Are there any countries that are currently paying for digital signage Tax?
Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
DVI to Analogue
In one of our previous posts titled, “Using a DVI to VGA converter with a VGA CAT5E or CAT6 extenders, does this work?” we talked about using a DVI to VGA converter and one of our readers mentioned to ensure you use a DVI-A instead of a DVI-D adaptor.
Funnily enough, one of our clients encountered an issue regarding this. The client wanted to convert the DVI cable to VGA so that they can connect a PC to a KVM switch which only had a VGA connector. So they purchased a DVI to VGA convertor and when they tried connecting the convertor to the DVI cable it wouldn’t fit. Upon inspecting the cable and connector here’s what I saw:
So basically, the top connector was the DVI cable, which has the DVI-D pinout (dual uplink) and the bottom is the DVI to VGA converter which has the DVI-A pinout. If you tried connecting these two it would not work. The pinouts on the DVI-A has an additional 4 pins at each corner as shown here:
vga pinouts
Guess what the outcome was?
Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Digital Signage and GPS
How can GPS be integrated with digital signage?
The simple answer is that it can be use to trigger information. Here’s a typical example of how it can be used: you’re in a tour bus, a large LCD Screen in located at the front of the bus. The bus drives past the Sydney Opera house, the digital signage system detects the current location of the bus and triggers information about the Opera House. The bus then drives over the Sydney Harbour bridge and this triggers historical information about how the bridge was built.
Basically, digital signage that is integrated with GPS can be used to display useful information relating to it’s surroundings.
At Advertise Me, we have a good understanding on how Digital Signage can be integrated with various systems so why not talk to us and see what we can do for you.Visit www.advertiseme.com.au
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Weekend Fun: Checking out the Blackberry OS 6
This weekend we decided to look at the upcoming OS 6 version of the Blackberry and we were quite excited to see some of the amazing features. Also have a read of the comments of the video if you get a chance as its quite amusing. Also, I hope this version of the OS fixes some of the issues with the system memory – applications use system memory so I cannot install that many apps with only 256MB on the Storm.
So what do you think about the blackberry OS 6 video?
We’d love to hear your thoughts below.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Use the hash tag #digitalsignagearticles.com
It’s almost been a year since we launched the digital signage articles website and as a birthday gift we decided to introduce the twitter hash tag #digitalsignagearticles.com tool. Basically, if you use this hash in your twitter post it will be automatically added to the http://www.digitalsignagearticles.com website. It’s simple and it’s free.
So happy birthday digitalsignagearticles.com
Category: Digital Signage Blog News, Featured Post
A great digital signage sales proposal
What does it take to develop a great digital signage sales proposal?
Whichever way you look at it, spending the time and money to develop a great digital signage proposal is one of the best ROI outcomes that your business will see. So were do you start with creating a proposal if you haven’t done one before. Putting together the first digital signage proposal will always be the most difficult but if it’s done right you can re-use this and develop a template to suit your business and your clients. Now, you have to remember that creating a great digital signage sales proposal can be a major difference between your company’s success or failure and this depends on how well you delivered and prepared for the proposal.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Parramatta Westfield LED Screen
In one of our previous blogs http://www.digitalsignageblog.com/2009/11/24/shopping-centres-battle-of-the-big-screens/, we talked about the largest screens in shopping centres and apparently we saw another one the other day in the Parramatta Westfields centre. continue reading »
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Australian Uni Students develop rival to Microsoft Surface
I came across an interesting article on TheAustralian.com.au website (I was reading the article from my Blackberry via RSS) and I wanted to share this with everyone – especially after we posted an article on the weekend talking about the Microsoft Surface. What makes this article interesting is the fact that there may be a rival system (application is called Focus) to the Microsoft Surface. According to the article the application uses cameras to interpret gestures and movements made across a table to control an onscreen computer interface. In this case it can be a table like the Microsoft Surface. What’s more interesting is that the hardware costs less than $5000 (consists of a projector, a laptop, a motion sensor and a table) and it integrates with the Apple iPhone.
This may be a good opportunity for us to interview these students if we get a chance since they are local students.
Have a read of the article here and there’s also a video explaining how the system works.
Loading ...Category: Digital Signage Blog News
3D modelling and animation – content for digital signage
If you’ve seen the movie Avatar then you should know that I’m refeering to when I mention about 3D. Yes, 3D technology is now becoming more affordable but importantly its catching the attention of the digital signage industry. Various screen manufacturers have released 3D screens that do not require the use of 3D glasses. As more of these screens are being installed in retails stores or corporate offices, businesses will need 3D content to place on these screens.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Digital Signage software: Firefox 3.6
For those of you who didn’t know, there are quite a number of digital signage players in the market that are using Mozilla Firefox on the Linux platform as their default browser to play content. To the viewer, this does not become apparent since the developers cleverly designed the application to run in full screen so when content is played you don’t see the tool and menu bars.
One of the many reasons why most digital signage companies are using Firefox compared to Internet Explorer is due to the fact Firefox is open source and comes with many add-ons. One of these add-ons is the ability to run the application in Kiosk or Digital Signage mode. The other obvious point is that it’s free and comes packaged with many Unix based OSes.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Digital Signage Portal – myBlog
It’s nice to see several members of the digital signage portal taking advantage of the myBlog feature. For those of you who haven’t used this feature before it basically allows registered members to create their own blog entries and share this with the rest of the digital signage community. We realised that some of you don’t have a business blog or don’t have either the technical expertise or knowledge to set one up. So we’ve done most of the hard work for you. All you have to do now is just post your entries. All you need to do is register and post away. If you need help read this F.A.Q.
To view the latest myBlog entries visit http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/myBlog/
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
The perfect digital signage player
You may be quite disappointed when you read this but I’m quite sad to say that since the start of my professional career in the digital signage industry I do not believe there is a “perfect” digital signage player in the market. Like everything else in this world nothing is perfect and depending on our perception of what perfect is, we may not be able to find one.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
The importance of NTP in digital signage
First of all, Happy New Year to all our readers – we hope you had a relaxing break and are energised for another year of digital signage. To kick off the year, we decided to engage our techie community and discuss about the importance of NTP.
NTP stands for Network Time Protocol and is commonly used to synchronise a computer’s/digital signage player‘s date and time with a specific time source server. It can be a hardware based GPS time source server from Symmetricon which I’ve used in the past, an Internet NTP server – see ntp.org for more information, or even your local Windows Active Directory Server can be used as a time server. The most challenging part when using NTP is ensuring that your actual source server has the correct date and time.
Most digital signage businesses should know what I’m talking about since ensuring the Content Management Server and digital signage player’s date and time are all in synch is crucial for any large digital signage network especially when used for scheduling content.
Loading ...Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2010
advertise me would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
To all our clients and business partners thank you for your support and we look forward to catching up with you all next year.
To our readers, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our blog posts and don’t forget to send us your klips so we can share it with the rest of the world.
We are excited and look forward to 2010 as we anticipate this to be a BIG year for us.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Shopping Centres – Battle of the big screens
Shopping centres attract over $8 million customers each week nationally, so when you have these pairs of eyes walking in the shopping centres who would want to have the biggest screen to attract the attention of these customers. Using digital signage for advertising in shopping centres is one of the biggest revenue making streams and obviously we know the reason why…. exposure. continue reading »
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
How to enable the Blackberry Media Transfer Protocol
Today I had a breakthrough with trying to get my blackberry to connect to any computer and use it as a storage device. My dilemma was that I could not connect my blackberry to any PC for transferring files to/from unless I installed the Blackberry Software + the Media Manager.
See where I’m coming from… wouldn’t it be just great to connect the Blackberry to any PC using the USB cable and just transfer the files? We’ll after a bit of researching I found out the solution. It seems like many of the Blackberry users had this problem.
Here’s the step by step instructions on how to get this working:
On the Blackberry
1. Go to Option
2. Go to Memory
3. Make sure you have the following (this is what I have set up on mine):
Media Card Support: On
Encryption: None
Media Transfer Protocol: On
Mass Storage Mode Support: On
Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode when connected: Prompt
Save these setting.
Now you will need to download some software which I found from pinstack.com (registration is required)
1. Open the file using winrar
2. Extract the files to your computer
3. Execute the file called BB storage Activation new.bat
4. A DOS window will come up and it will start Connecting to the Blackberry to upload an image to the rom. Let this run until you see the pause prompt and it will ask you to press any key. Close this window by pressing the x on the top right hand corner. Pressing any butting will cause the application to upload the image again.
Make sure you wait for the blackberry to completely boot.
Once its done connect the blackberry to the computer and you it will start installing drivers and if you open up windows explorer you will see a drive for the blackberry.
Done. Wish I knew about this earlier… it’s been almost a year since I had the unit!!!!
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Weekend Fun or NOT: Displaying incorrect Facebook Events date
This weekend we almost missed an important event that was created and organised through the facebook events application. For some reason, the event displayed the correct date on the Facebook website, but on the iphone and the blackberry it showed the incorrect date (using the mobile application) – the reminders were not triggered because of this issue. My guess is that there is probably an issue related to the timezone (ie Australia). Does anyone else have the same issue?
If you’re integrating facebook with your digital signage application and are displaying events just make sure you check and test that the dates are displaying correctly before publishing this to the screens.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Digital Signage – Brisbane Casino
During one of our business trips to Brisbane Australia, we visited the Brisbane casino. When a colleague of mine told me the building I was looking at was the casino, I didn’t believe him. This is what I saw:
From the outside it looked like a museum, but it was not until we actually walked into the building that I couldn’t believe my eyes – it was a casino and most surprisingly digital signage was everywhere. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any photos of the screens but I noticed that each of the playing tables there was a screen displaying information. I was particularly intrigued about the roulette table, since the screen instantaneously displayed the winning number as soon as the ball landed. I stood there for a while trying to figure out how this was achieved and I came to the conclusion that the digital signage system included a sensor to determine where the number landed on the roulette table. Does anyone else know how this actually works? I also came up with the silly idea that someone watching through one of the cameras was typing this information in the system….
There were screen literally everywhere you looked; at the top of the teller stands, at the waiting areas, at the cafe, at each table and pretty much in every corner of the room. This got me thinking how maybe we should target and approach casinos with a good innovate digital signage system.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Digital Signage Portal reaches 300 members
Today, the digital signage portal (http://www.digitalsignageportal.com) has reached 300 members… although these numbers may seem small but we think it’s a good achievement considering we haven’t spent that much time to market and grow this website.
Next year we have a number of goals we plan to achieve and we have already started planning for some of these changes. One of them is offering advertising to selected digital signage companies (if you are interested please email info@digitalsignageportal.com) but more importantly we will revamp the design and layout of the website.
For those of you who haven’t visited the portal yet, what are you waiting for? Registration is free.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Digital Signage Marketing 101 – Pleasure and Pain
digital signage is one of the fastest growing digital mediums to help businesses market and advertise their products and services. For those who have been in the industry already know what I’m talking about. Just recently, a friend of mine shared some basic 101 marketing information which I found very useful and thought I’d “pay it forward” and share this with everyone. Basically, he heard this from one of Anthony Robbin’s seminars about associating advertisements with Pain and Pleasure. From what I could understand from his explanation it went something like this:
- We tend to avoid pain but we are attracted to pleasure.
- Use pleasure and pain in advertisements as a call to action.
- There was an example given for a telephone company advertisement. This advertisement showed how a son hasn’t called his mother in a while (this is associating pain) and it showed a picture of the mother being quite sad. Obviously the son was feeling guilty and by simply calling his mother, it made her happier (this is associating pleasure).
When we develop our digital signage content, do we use this marketing strategy?
Here’s an inspirational quote from Anthony Robbins:
My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain – and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel a lot more pleasure than they do pain.
- Anthony Robbins
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
To upgrade or not to upgrade… that is the question!
Sometimes being a digital signage solution provider can be a tough and challenging job. Not only do you have to represent the company you’re selling the product for but you’re also consciously looking after the best interest for the client and here’s a typical dilemma:
One of our clients requested a feature to a digital signage software component which wasn’t that much of an issue except we required the services of the digital signage software company and there was a cost associated with this feature (the client was happy to pay for this). But all this came with a little unanticipated catch – the client was required to upgrade to the latest version of the software before the modification patch would work. Many of us might be thinking, “That’s easy, there’s no harm in doings so as the latest patch will resolve and fix previous bugs”…. Ummmmmm…. WRONG!!!
By upgrading the software we found quite a number of bugs and spend quite a number of hours investigating and then reporting the issue to the manufacturer whilst the client had to workaround the problem. Fortunately, we provided the client with a test environment and didn’t upgrade the development system with the latest software.
I’m not sure whether many of you have experienced this but upgrading to the latest version can actually introduce new bugs. What’s worse is that a considerable amount of time can be spent investigating the issue and the time for this may not be chargeable – who do you charge for this type of work…. the client who has already paid for a working solution ? or the digital signage company who supplied the dodgy software?
This is a tough one and I’ll like to hear from anyone who has been through this experience.
So there are a few lessons that I have learnt from this:
1. ALWAYS make sure you test the upgrade or software patch on a test unit or environment
2. ALWAYS back up your content or system before applying any patches as you’ll never know the state of the unit after the reboot
3. PLAN for any changes you make to the system and carefully provide detailed rollback plans in the event the change failed
4. TRUST and have some faith that the developers have done their testing but acknowledge that they cannot test all the different scenarios
5. Make sure you charge someone for your work or include this as part of your Maintenance and Support costs… or even better get the manufacturer to conduct intensive testing with your configuration before applying any patches or upgrades
6. IF IT’S NOT BROKEN LEAVE IT AS IT IS… sometimes making a simple change can break the entire system… but if you’ve done the above point 2 & 3 correctly then this shouldn’t be an issue.
Have you been in this situation? Tell us what you think.
Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
Latest Digital Signage Forum Posts
Today, we thought we’d share with you some of the latest digital signage portal forum posts. Have you joined the portal yet?
digital signage portal Forum Latest Posts (17th September 2009)
- Digital Signage Site up and running.
Travis@BluePony 15-09-09 18:49 - Off Topic
Travis@BluePony 08-09-09 14:29 - Blue Pony News
Travis@BluePony 02-09-09 15:07 - Intel and Digital Signage
bvrabete 02-09-09 10:56 - IphoneTravis@BluePony 01-09-09 21:14
Category: Digital Signage Blog News
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