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It’s been another busy month and we’re very delighted to see the number of members on the digital signage portal growing.

For this particular newsletter, we decided to promote our portal and showcase some of the functionalities and features the portal brings to our members. Many of you may not have the time to fully take advantage of the portal functionalities but let me remind you that by participating in forum discussions and submitting your blogs entries (just to name a few), you’re actually exposing your business to thousands of readers around the world – this is one of the many advantages of using the digital signage portal.

 

Lets firstly look at the digital signage portal forum. http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/Digital-Signage-Forum/

Here’s the list of some of the recent forum posts:

  Re:RePromotion launches its new ITTV software Travis@BluePony Introducing your Business Saturday, 19 September 2009  
  RePromotion launches its new ITTV software RePromotionUK Introducing your Business Friday, 18 September 2009  
  Digital Signage Site up and running. Travis@BluePony Blue Pony Wednesday, 16 September 2009  
  Off Topic Travis@BluePony General Discussion Wednesday, 09 September 2009  
  Re:Using Blue Ray technology Travis@BluePony Video Wednesday, 09 September 2009  
  Re:Blue Pony News Travis@BluePony Blue Pony Saturday, 05 September 2009  
  Blue Pony News Travis@BluePony Blue Pony Thursday, 03 September 2009  

Here, we have the facility for businesses to introduce themselves and also if you’re looking for help with digital signage, then the forum is the place to search and post. This community is based on helping one another, so head out to the forum and get involved…share your thoughts and help your fellow digital signage businesses.

Secondly, the myBlog facility allows members to submit posts (yes…. PR articles and anything you would like to share with others). Once you submit your post, other members can comment your blog posts. Sometimes maintaining a blog website can be a challenging and tedious process, so we’ve done the hard work for you so start posting now. All you have to do is login, click Write a post in your user menu located on the left hand column and start posting!!! Here’s a few example of what people have submitted:

1. In Store Signage – Does this work: http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/myBlog/In-Store-Signage-Does-it-work.htm

2. Minicom Digital Signage and The Digital Signage Show Europe announce cooperation http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/myBlog/Minicom-Digital-Signage-and-The-Digital-Signage-Show-Europe-announce-cooperation.html

So for those of you who haven’t visited the portal in a while, I encourage you to log back in and see the changes we’ve made and we do hope you can frequently participate in the portal activities. When do get a bit of time, we’re going to re-vamp this website as well so keep a lookout for this. Finally, we’re always looking for feedback so if there’s anything that you would like to see or you think we should improve let us know.

To read past newsletters click here.

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Category: Digital Signage Newsletter

It’s been a while since we last distributed our digital signage newsletter but our excuse is… we’ve been busy. I know it’s a lame excuse but we’ve been seriously inundated with businesses contacting us for quotes, responding to emails and we’ve also been involved in digital signage installations.

We recently posted in our forum what people wanted to see in our newsletter and one of our digital signage portal members suggested we should discuss about issues installers face during digital signage rollouts. So thanks to Jon for your feedback, we always value everyones feedback but more importantly we take action!

Lets quickly summarise some of these issues and recommendations:

Physical Security – we have talked about this in the past in one of our blog entries titled Does your digital signage solution pass our security checklist? point number 7 – If you can’t recall what was discussed you can read the article and refresh your memory. Just make sure you physically lock your monitors to prevent thieves from stealing the units.

Use smaller pipes/brackets for monitors -Jon advises the following: “when hanging monitors from ceiling joints, that some companies are using very heavy pipes to hold the monitors. The monitors are getting lighter and lighter and a pipe that is heavier than the monitor is not necessary. Cutting back the size/weight of the pipes can still hold the monitors, reduce costs for shipping and cutting them to length is much easier as well”.

Use pre made Cat5E cables – it makes it easier for installers. “That way you can just connect to the box in the ceiling and to the back of the monitor instead of having one long cable that runs from the PC or rack straight to the monitor. This also helps with replacement of cables, so you don’t have to run an entirely new cable, just replace the bad one and drop it thru the pipe.”

Be green – try to help the environment and try to use equipment that does not need power. For example, there are several Video extenders in the market that do not require power. Some are hard to find but let us know if you run into trouble.

Backup plans – always have a backup plan and NEVER rely on just 1 single supplier. Make sure you have a backup plan for everything, otherwise if you hit a wall during your installation you will still be able to get the job done.

Costings – From jon’s professional experience: “One of the cost saving measures I use for my clients is flat rate billing. It includes travel, time on the job and materials used. There is a little more cost if there is a concrete ceiling as opposed to a tiled or drop ceiling. This way everyone involved knows the costs up front and there are no suprises on the back end for the client” Once again Jon, thanks for your tips. We have created a forum thread on the digital signage portal forum, so that you can all discuss this further. Click here to continue the discussion.

To read past newsletters click here.

Want to automatically receive the newsletters? Join the digital signage portal.

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Newsletter

For those of you that were not aware, the digital signage portal distributes newsletters to it’s digital signage members on a monthly basis. We are constantly on the lookout to feature businesses around the world in the newsletter. So, if you want your business to be featured in one of the sections in the newsletter, all you have to do is register and introduce your business on the digital signage portal forum section titled Introducing your business: http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/Digital-Signage-Forum/Introducing-your-Business/

The next newsletter distribution will take place on the 25th March 2009 so don’t miss out on this opportunity.

Want to automatically receive the newsletters? Join the digital signage portal.

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Newsletter, Digital Signage Polls

The digital signage portal is a forum for promoting and growing YOUR business, with the aim to lift the level of awareness of your business and digital signage.

We are excited to announce additional features to the digital signage portal website to make your experience and member profile more personalised. The whole intention for establishing the digital signage portal was to provide a means for businesses to connect with one another and also with potential customers but more importantly we wanted to centralise the digital signage community and information in one single location – that’s when the digital signage portal was born.

Now, here is a short list of some of the features we have recently added:

1. Biz Wall – you are now able to write messages on another member’s wall. Basically this can be used to share information with each other, keep each other updated and to improve communication.

2. myBlog – we have added the facility for registered members to create their own blog entries and share this with the rest of the digital signage community. We understand that most 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.

3. myComments – you are now able to comment on articles and other peoples blog posts.

4. Member List – this is the list of all the current members registered on the portal and its something we forgot to originally include when we first launched the website. Think of this as a large contact list so you can get in touch with other registered members.

5. Twitter Status – for those of you that have a twitter account then you now have the option to display your twitter status on your profile.

6. myNoticeboard – yes this is your own noticeboard that you can use to add messages to your profile. You can use it to tell others what you’re doing…basically use it as a noticeboard.

7. More features – we’ve added so many other features which may take too long to list so why not log in to the digital signage portal and see it for yourself. We will soon be adding a dedicated page and video to capture all these features so keep an eye out for this.

For those of you who haven’t visited the website in a while, I highly recommend you to log back in and pay a visit and don’t forget to add your business logo to your profile in order to expose your business further – as you are already aware branding is very important.If you need help with this visit our F.A.Q section.

We always love to hear your feedback so let us know what you think or what you would like to see on the digital signage portal.

Have you read the latest digital signage portal newsletters? Click here to view the latest newsletters.

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Newsletter

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In December 2008, Vodafone Australia released the latest Blackberry device model – the Blackberry Storm. Our team at Advertise Me always had plans to use a device which would allow us to reply to emails, take pictures and videos, and most importantly to post blog entries whilst “on the go”. We assessed our requirements then analysed the Blackberry Storm specifications and it was a perfect match. So now the majority of our team has one of these Blackberry Storm – mind you we came across quite a number of bad product reviews on the net but we just decided to ignore these and give the device the benefit of the doubt.

I have been a valued loyal customer of Vodafone since 1998 (if a customer rep from Vodafone is reading this maybe they can give me a call and send me something for being a loyal customer – c’mon 10 years must be worth something) and have have kept my mobile number the same ever since I purchased my first mobile phone – so thinking about switching to another provider was always a dilemma. Fortunately, we actually purchased the  Blackberry Storm from Crazy John’s – a reseller of Vodafone because they had a special deal: for $69 a month the following included in the package:

• the blackberry storm (9500 model)
• Unlimited internet and email (this was one of the main reasons why we went with the blackberry product. Just keep in mind that even though the plan includes unlimited internet it does not necessarily mean that everything is free. Vodafone have a strict policy on this. Basically, if you will be charged PAYG rates for streaming video)
• $340 worth of calls, SMS, etc
• A $50 voucher to spend on Dealsdirect.com.au ( Australia’s largest online department store and save up to 80% off – you should visit this website if you want to save $$)
  
• A $300 voucher to spend for your holiday

NOTE: To date, I have not received the vouchers yet and it’s been over a month.  I’ve spoken to a Crazy John rep and he will chase this up with Vodafone. Hopefully, I should receive that email soon.

If you’re like me I like gadgets and one of the first things I did when I came home was to play with the Blackberry without reading the manual – who reads the manual anyways. I guess that was one of my first mistakes because after a couple of days I started realising that things were missing from my phone. For example, I didn’t have all the messaging applications like Windows Live, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, AOL Instant messenger and ICQ (the image of the blackberry in the advertisement poster had these). When surfing the Internet I also noticed that I kept getting an error message saying that my phone was unable to connect to the data network because I was not in the data coverage area - I found this very peculiar especially when I was able to access the Internet at the same location with my previous Nokia N70 mobile phone . Feeling frustrated I gave in and started reading the manual which didn’t help much.  I then ended up calling Vodafone support and after several minutes of explaining what the problems were I found out that my mobile number was not activated with the Blackberry Internet Services - how was I supposed to know that I needed to activate this service when there were not instructions to do so in the manual! The customer services representative also mentioned that I should have received a Message when I first turned on the phone to call Vodafone Support to activate the Blackberry Internet Services …. opps, I ended up clearing all my messages when I first received the phone so I didn’t pay any attention to that initial message. Maybe in future they could put a small leaflet or pamphlet with these instructions stuck on the phone. Once they activated the Blackberry Internet Services the phone starting working as it should have had.

The other thing I found out is  that you can actually manage your email boxes on the Australian vodafone website by going to this URL: http://www.mobileemail.vodafone.com.au/ You do have the option to set this up on the actual unit but we found it much easier going to the website.

It has now been over a month since we’ve used the Blackberry and we discovered several good and bad points which we will detail below.  Although this device does not fall within the digital signage industry, we can see potential to use this device for remote managing a digital signage network. We won’t discuss this into too much detail in this blog post.

The bad

• Slow navigation – we have noticed that navigating through the applications and changing the orientation between landscape and portrait can be a bit slow. Doing a bit of research showed that hiding the logging can help to improve things (slightly). In order to do this follow these instructions:

In landscape mode - turn the blackberry to it’s side press the menu button (second button) and press Show Keyboard at the bottom of the list. Hold on to the !?123 button until you see the lock on the top left hand corner of this button. This basically means that it will be locked on the numbers and symbols keyboard. Press the / button, then “, then / and then ” again. You will notice the Event Log Warning on the heading of the screen. Press the menu button and then Clear Log. Then go back to the same menu and press on option – this will take you to the EventLogger Options. In this screen click menu and then press on Hide all types. This will disable all the logging.

• Slow capturing images – there seems to take a few seconds of delays when pressing the capture button but with a 3.2 megapixel camera the image of the quality is quite good. If you go back to some of our previous posts I actually took a couple of images with the Blackberry Storm.
• Not that many games or applications compared to the iPhone – there aren’t that many free games or applications that are available to download.
• The USB connector (micro USB) on the Blackberry Storm is not the same as the previous Blackberry units – so if you’re looking at upgrading your existing Blackberry and have existing accessories, you may have to upgrade these too. Also, be careful if you’re intending to buy a USB cable or a Car charger from eBay - just make sure that the item is actually for the Blackberry Storm. If you notice that the item description is also for other Blackberries then it’s most likely not compatible with the Storm.
• Streaming videos from youtube actually costs money! Read Vodafone’s fair use policy here.

We have also been advised that the next version of the firmware (4.7.0.90) will  improve speeds and rectify most of the above issues.

The good

• Nav4All – is a really good and free mobile phone navigation software for the Blackberry storm. The software is only free until the 1/1/2010.
• Good quality images – the quality is much better than the images I have taken with past photos.
• Watching video on the unit is awesome – I compared this to the iPHone and the video quality was much better.
• There are several cool features that we stumbled across and here’s our list:
  - When checking your emails you can filter your inbox by Sender or Subject – in order to do this you basically hold over the name or subject and you will see a bar scrolling to the left.
  - When listening to music, if you hold on to the up and down volume button it actually acts as a forward and rewind button.
  - GPS – this is a great feature to have especially when you get lost or need to search for the location of an address. Vodafone have a program called Vodafone Compass but once again this costs money.
• Emails – obviously the blackberry are renowned for this technology and we love this functionality to receive emails where ever we go
• Screen Push technology – something that people need to get use to but we like the idea of being able to push on to the screen to select something

Using the Blackberry as a modem

We actually spent quite a bit of time to work this one out but if you’re interested to setup your blackberry as a modem then follow these instructions:

Firstly, there are two options that can be used to connect to your laptop or PC – one is via the USB cable and the other is via the Bluetooth Dongle. You need to make sure that both of these connections are working (including getting the blackberry to communicate with the software Blackberry Desktop Manager) before trying to use the blackberry as a modem otherwise no matter how hard you try – it will not work. NOTE: we couldn’t really get the blackberry desktop manager to work with the bluetooth on our laptop but according to some documentation on the web we need to install the generic bluetooth drivers – the blackberry only works with the microsoft bluetooth drivers.

Once you’ve installed the Blackberry software go to phone and modem options in the windows control panel and click the Modems Tab. You will see the below screen:

Click on Standard Modem and click on properties and then the advanced tab. You will need to type the command string +cgdcont=1,”IP”,”vfinternet.au” – note you will need to replace vfinternet.au with your local APN (access point network):

Once that’s done go to network connections and create a new connection. Click Create a new connection – we won’t go into too much detail on how to set this up. But once you’ve set this up make sure you’ve included the below additional options (use the phone number *99#):

Click configure and make sure you have all hardware features turned off:

When you’re ready connect just dial the new connection. There you go hopefully this helped a poor soul out there.

Ever since we got the phone, we have received good feedback from our clients telling us how prompt and efficient we are with our email responses - I guess I just revealed one of our secrets for improving our Customer Services.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Newsletter, Digital Signage Reviews

Here’s a preview of the digital signage portal Newsletter 2009#2:

Here’s the link http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/Newsletters.html , but we do hope that you register on the portal so that you can receive the newsletter via email as soon as we publish it.

Have you registered on the digital signage portal? To register on the portal click here.

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Newsletter

If you’re not a member of the digital signage portal then you’ve missed out on receiving the latest digital signage newsletter but we didn’t forget about you. If you do want to read this newsletter we have made it available for you to read and enjoy.

Here’s the link http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/Newsletters.html , but we do hope that you register on the portal so that you can receive the newsletter via email as soon as we publish it.

Have you registered on the digital signage portal? To register on the portal click here.

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Newsletter