Due to the hype coming from the media in the last couple of weeks, we decided to further research about the Microsoft Surface. The unit was first announced in May 2007 and the first unit was sold in Australia this month. Apparently the unit costs $20,000 (ouch).

The  Microsoft Surface is a table-like display that is multi-touch. Basically responds to touch, natural hand gestures and placement of real-world objects which includes digital cameras, mobile phones and even business cards (I’m not sure how it would work with the business card).

continue reading »

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This weekend I decided to play around with the google search features and stumbled across the “Wonder Wheel”. So what I did was I typed the search term “digital signage” in the google search bar. Google displayed the most relevant websites related to this search term, in Australia our advertise me and Digital Signage portal are on the 1st page and we’re pretty happy about this result.

continue reading »

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

Besides the hot and then rainy weather in Sydney Australia, we thought we’d do something crazy and clean up our spammed comments since it was taking up a considerable amount of space in our database. We had 23,123 comments marked as spam since the beginning of last year and most of them were not relating to digital signage. The process of cleaning up this spammed comments in Wordpress isn’t as straight forward as I thought it would be. Under the Edit Comments section there is a button called “Empty Spam”. Obviously I want to empty  these comments so when I click on the button the process seems to time out… probably due to the number of spam comments. I basically end up getting a white page after about 40 seconds. When I logged back in to see how many spam comments were removed, the system somehow managed to remove about 1000 comments before it timed out – that’s what I’m guessing happened. If you do the maths, I had to do this about 20 times and I also just calculated that the ratio of the number of post to the number of spam comments  is approximately 1:107 – this is a large number?

So, to avoid this in future we will aim to remove spam comments on a monthly basis and please… don’t spam our digital signage blog. We have noticed several businesses adding their website links in their comments, although we don’t prevent you from doing so or added a plugin feature to automatically remove these, it does look a “bit” obvious on what you’re trying to do.

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

There seems to be quite a hype about Intels latest technology and I can see why. Have a look at this video and read some of the comments.

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

Blackberry Storm v5

For those of you with a Blackberry in Australia did you notice the Blackberry App World icon and v5 of the OS? On Saturday morning I restarted by blackberry and whilst browsing the icons on the home menu I noticed an new icon…. it was the App World Icon. To be honest I initially didn’t know what it was but after pressing on this icon, my jaws dropped. I then checked the Blackberry Desktop Manager and noticed v5 was available – this is where i jumped out of my seat and did the “dance of joy”.

I spend the next hour or so installing and browsing through the applications available on the App World and upgrading to v5. I was surprised to see most of the applications were FREE. I ended up installing and testing some of these applications and found some to be very useful.  I was however disappointed to the number of applications, in particular the number of games available.

continue reading »

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This weekend we thought we’d further connect with the social community and added the Gigya toolbar. What this means is that our readers will now be able to use the toolbar to share our posts on their Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Myspace, Email and more.

The toolbar looks like this and you will notice it at the end of the page:

Gigya Toolbar

 Loading ...

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This week we had the opportunity to drive the Audi A4 convertible and we realised how most luxury cars or new model cars will have LCD screens. These are the perfect opportunities to utilise these screens for digital signage and I wonder how many car manufacturing companies are actually thinking about this.

Audi A4 Convertible Front

Audi A4 Convertible Dashboard

continue reading »

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun, Featured Post

What a fun weekend!! Just recently RIM released the desktop manager v5.0.1 which introduces the feature to EASILY setup the Blackberry as an IP modem (tethered modem) and I’ve been using this all weekend.

Now, all you have to do is click on several buttons and you’ll be connected to the Internet via the Blackberry Desktop Manager – you just have to make sure your blackberry is connected to your laptop or pc. Great stuff guys! Here’s some screenshots:

Blackberry desktop manager main window

Blackberry Desktop Manager with IP Modem window

Blackberry Desktop Manager IP Modem connected

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Techie, Digital Signage Weekend Fun, Featured Post

If you thought digital signage could impress with advertising, have a look at what a water fountain can do!

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

The other day during a digital signage client install, we were asked the question, “is there a keyboard we can install at our kiosks without it being ripped out every couple of weeks?”.
I’m not sure if this is a possible solution, but it is definitely on the right track.

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This is just funny… it physically looks like the smallest computer in the world:

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This weekend I thought I’d play around with the Nikon D60 Digital SLR camera and test my skills in trying to take those “awesome” shots. Now, since we’re in the digital signage industry I thought I’d take photos of something relating to this industry (basically anything I had lying around) and here’s what I could find:

	High Definition Set Top Box and DVD player. Both were connected to a rear projector screen.
	S-video cable – this is becoming almost obsolete but you’ll be surprised on how many digital signage players are actually using this type of connectors
	Short VGA cable – at Advertise Me, we like to make sure all cables are to the correct lengths

I also took several photos of a vegetarian place I went to called Zen Oasis in Berrima Australia. We have a strong belief in our company that “a healthy body and mind allows one to achieve higher levels of growth”. The food was awesome and the environment was tranquil and peaceful. If you’re around that area, I highly recommend that you visit this place (make sure you book in advance as it’s always busy). Here’s a few photos that I took:  (by the way, I’ve had no lessons on photography so apologies if they look amateur).

	As soon as you walk into the restaurant you are greeted by this statue. For this particular photo I thought it would look good if the focus was on the flowers and this was the result.
	This is an all you can eat (just make sure you don’t waste the food) and there was so much variety. Yum… can’t wait to go there again.
	I think this is an “Awesome” shot. There is a stage with a piano surrounded by an aura of stillness.
	This picture was outside the Zen oasis restaurant that showcases a big tree with a wishing well.

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This is a funny digital signage video. It’s titled Amazing Powerful Window Shop Digital Interaction… I honestly don’t know whether its really meant to be serious or not but it was worth a watch (actually… I had to watch it several times just to make sure I understood what the video was about).

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

I spend quite a lot of time on my blackberry to  perform certain tasks (besides reading emails) for my digital signage work. So this weekend I will share with you some of the free applications I use on the blackberry. Here’s the list in no particular order:

	1. Viigo – this is a RSS reader application with a nice intuitive interface. I use it to read most blog entries related to digital signage (and of course I’ve added the http://www.digitalsignageblog.com/feed to the list… don’t forget to do that as well). You can download Viigo from the Application Center on the blackberry or you can download it from here: www.viigo.com
	2. Wordpress for blackberry – I use this to type some of the digital signage blog entries whilst on the go. I found it a bit hard to navigate on the Blackberry Storm (it was not designed for the touchscreen and surepress technology) but it does the job. You can download wordpress for blackberry here http://blackberry.wordpress.org/
	3. Nav4All – this is an awesome application that is basically like the navman but free…well until 1-1-2010. It is a mobile phone navigation application which gives you turn by turn instructions. I use this when I have to travel to unfamiliar locations for meetings etc. The website has a whole list of mobile phones that it supports so head over there now to download it. http://www.nav4all.com
	4. GPSed – this is an application that maps your tracks and photos. I use it for both tracking when I go running and also for tracking locations where I saw digital signage solution installs. Great little application and it’s free. http://www.gpsed.com/
	5. BBFileScout – a file browser for the blackberry. There are times whereby I have to send files and photos to our clients so this is a perfect solution for browsing files. You can download the application from here. http://www.emacberry.com/bbfilescout.html
	6. Twitterberry – the twitter application for the blackberry. We use this to update our twitter status http://www.twitter.com/advertisemeAU I also find it hard to navigate using this application as it wasn’t designed for the Blackberry Storm. You can download this application from here: http://orangatame.com/products/twitterberry/
	7. Core applications – Finally, there’s the built in apps like Youtube, the camera, emails, browser etc that we use and there’s always Facebook – I don’t think anyone can resist from installing this application if they have a facebook account.

There may be others which I haven’t used before. Let me know if there’s any other application which I should use for my digital signage work.

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

For this weekend fun, we want to share with you a comic on digital signage. I think this one has been floating around for a couple of days and it’s from the Blondie comic series by Dean Young & John Marshall. Thanks guys, we’re glad to see that the digital signage industry is getting noticed and acknowledged by the comic industry. Also, thanks to Ronnie for sharing this.

Blondie comic - digital signage

Source of the image: http://www.jsonline.com/comics/32402404.html?feature_id=Blondie&feature_date=2009-08-25

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This week we were approached by an individual who was interested in purchasing one of our domain names. We are not too sure what their intentions were but we thought that for this weekend fun post we would ask our readers how much do they think this domain name (www.digitalsignageblog.com) is worth. By the way… we are NOT selling this domain name.

 Loading ...

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Polls, Digital Signage Weekend Fun

It’s another weekend and for this particular post we’re going to look at a fun and innovative digital signage solution in Taoyuan Airport. Basically, as you’re waling down the duty free alley in the Taoyuan airport Terminal 2, you will notice that an advertisement follows you. I’m not sure whether the ads as targeted specifically based on the gender or characteristics of the person walking past but do you find this too intrusive? Have a look at the video:

 Loading ...

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Polls, Digital Signage Weekend Fun

It’s the weekend and thought I’d share an exciting and fun video clip – you’ll be also surprised as well.

We previously talked about how the iPhone can be used as a digital signage player (there’s already a few companies out there who have created an application on the iPhone) but now how would you like to be served by a humanoid robot with an iPhone attached to it’s head? Watch the funky video and we’ll discuss later:

In the examples in the video, the humanoid robot with the iPhone attached as it’s head, can be used to:

• wake you up – morning!!! maybe even give you a hug or a slap
• entertain – it’s a dance machine…shake it’s robo booty
• teach it new tricks and moves – next thing you know it will start imitating your moves
• and if you’re nice to it… it might even make you a coffee (just kidding – ummmm may be it is possible)

BUT more importantly it can interact with YOU – think about it from a sales and marketing perspective and you’ll start realising that this robot can be used to attract more customers into your store and even possibly serve it’s customers (stick your own photo image as it’s head ). The screen itself can be used even to promote sales, products and specials whilst it’s dancing around entertaining it’s customers (yes it’s  digital signage after all). And yes…. I’ve said it before… the possibilities seem to be endless with the future of mobile phones as digital signage players.

So that’s our weekend fun for this week and we all hope you’re having a great weekend.

Tweet This Post

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog Products, Digital Signage Blog Video, Digital Signage Ideas, Digital Signage Weekend Fun