This will be our last post and digital signage klip for 2011 so enjoy. 2012 will be another exciting year for digital signage so please come back and pay us a visit.

One of our Sydney readers sent us a photo of a mobile phone charging station with a digital screen.

The company that developed this innovative system is actually from Australia and they are called ChargedMedia. Their idea is to provide a means of charging your mobile phone power for free but there’s a twist, you will be exposed to ads whilst you wait for the phone to charge. Now that’s quite a clever idea.

If you have klips you would like to share with the rest of our readers let us know by sending an email to info@digitalsignageblog.com

Category: Digital Signage Klips

Have you been in this situation:

1. You’ve installed a digital signage player and want to remotely manage the unit

2. You don’t want to install a telephone or ADSL line because the costs are too high

3. You only need the Internet connection for a short perid of time i.e. 1-2 months

4. You don’t care about the speeds and bandwidth

5. You need the player to connect to the Internet

After months of researching I have found the solution in Australia….. (drum roll) Virgin 3G prepaid modem  – YES can you believe it Virgin!!! is the only provider that allows Internet inbound connections. Most other providers only allow you to do this if you’re on a contract (post pay). There are several items or checklists to consider before purchasing any 3G modem and these are:

1. Is your digital signage hardware compatible and be able to support the 3G modem?

2. Is there coverage in the location where you intend to use the 3G modem?

3. Does your player have the ability to automatically connect to the Internet in the event of coverage dropouts? If not, we would recommend you use a 3G Modem router that has the ability to automatically connect to the Internet.

The APN information that you will need to use is Virgin.Internet

Good luck and let us know if you find any other prepaid providers that uses a Public IP Address and allows inbound connections from the Internet.

Category: Digital Signage Techie

Here’s another awesome and innovative solution. This weekend we were able to catch up on some fun and stumbled across a video of a smile-activated ice cream machine. Basically it’s a digital signage vending machine that uses facial recognition to capture and measure your smile 15 times a second which determines the age and gender and – if you smile big enough – rewards you with ice cream. You can even upload and share your smile-for-free-ice-cream picture on Facebook. Just watching the video makes me smile. It will be anytime soon that we’ll soon see one here in Australia.

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

What a great start to 2011. This month we will be working with clients in different industries; one is a large government agency with a roll out of 17 screens and players. Another one is in the real estate industry and the last one is a University. We will blog more about each project in the next couple of weeks.
digital signage is constantly growing and becoming more popular in Australia. Let advertise me help your business realise the benefits of digital signage and digital technology.

Category: Digital Signage Blog News

In Australia, we love our Bunnings and we noticed how they are using small digital signage screens in their warehouse. I guess the idea is to show product video and information to people interested in the product.

Category: Digital Signage Klips

We recently received the first digital signage magazine published by an Australia company (alchemedia publishing) and this is really a good sign of the growth of digital signage in Australia.
The great thing about the magazine was the case studies of digital signage implementations of local business in Australia. There is also the traditional advertisements of digital signage companies and manufacturers and this is really good to have as a local directory. We look forward to receiving future magazines and hope to eventually feature in an article.

digital signage magazine

Category: Digital Signage Blog News

Multitouch whiteboards are now becoming quite popular in schools and meeting rooms. In particular, having the ability to share content, collaborate information with others at the same time is something of the past. Being authorised resellers of Panasonic we want to introduce our readers the latest multitouch whiteboard UB-T880 (77″) from panasonic. This unit was launched in Australia last month and they have been available in the US and other parts of the country for a while. The cost for one of this unit is RRP $2,869 but we’ll be able to hopefully reduce this price. For those that want bigger screens you can get the UB-T781W – obviously for a higher cost.

Multitouch Whiteboard Panaboard UB-T880

Below is a video demonstration from Panasonic. As you can clearly see from the video there are many uses and industries this whiteboard can be used in. If you think about it, this can also be used for digital signage implementations…

Category: Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Reviews

Being authorised resellers of the Cayin product, we want to take this opportunity to review their latest product – the SMP-WEB4.

The SMP-WEB4 was only recently launched in Australia and we were fortunate enough to get our hands on this unit.

continue reading »

Category: Digital Signage Reviews, Featured Post

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!!!

continue reading »

Category: Digital Signage Blog News

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

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 »

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 »

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 »

Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun

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

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

If your digital signage solution is not implemented correctly it may work against you. Let me explain…

On the weekend whilst walking past a busy street I spotted across the road a real estate company with several LCD screens located at their front window. This is what I saw: (excuse the quality of the pictures but it was late at night and I was using my blackberry):

Digital Signage Screen not working

Digital Signage Faulty Screen

Digital Signage Faulty Screen

Now, in Australia quite a number of real estate agencies have moved away from using the traditional static posters for displaying their property listing and have implemented some form of a digital signage solution (visual display screens or touchscreen technology).

What I was most surprised about this particular installation and setup was that 1/3 of their screens was either turned off or had a fault with the LCD unit. Does this mean that 1/3 of the properties were not displayed? How would the property owner feel knowing that they are potentially losing interested buyers.

So what I have learnt from this situation is the following:

1. If there’s a hardware fault fix it immediately

2. Always have a backup plan – don’t be afraid to revert back to the old method of using traditional posters when required

3. Use a mixture of digital signage solutions and traditional posters

4. It looks unprofessional and embarrassing for both the digital signage solution provider and owner if the solution fails

5. You will definately lose customers if the problem is not rectified in a timely manner

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info

We all knew this was going to happen and it eventually did. Coca-cola has released digital signage vending machines which are interactive. Here’s a video to show you what we mean:

And here’s a video of someone actually using the vending machine… I like it how he had to press the right arrow several times before it scrolled to the right and it also has the Pay Pass payment option (I haven’t really seen this been used in Australia):

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog Products, Digital Signage Blog Video

Who are we?

We are a group of technology enthusiasts who are passionate with the uses of gadgets and nifty pieces of equipment.
When digital signage came into our picture, we got excited and decided to take it for a ride. In fact, with the tremendous popular rise of digital signage and its applications everyday, it has now become part of our profession.

Our first success was Advertise Me, an established digital signage company in Australia.
Through establishing many clients and partners, we created the Digital Signage Portal.
And if that wasn’t enough, we decided what the heck – let’s blog about it!

So what is this Blog about?

We have been operating in the digital signage industry since its birth in Australia, and have come across many experiences in this line of business.

Apart from working, we also obtain many useful sources of news and information that we think would be beneficial to the digital signage community.

So where else would we collaborate all our experiences and news? Right here of course!

Contributors

There are currently several contributors to the digital signage blog.

From time to time we like to invite others to write something or submit a topic to us, and we will post it on the blog.
Having said that, if you would like to share a post with us, feel free to send it to info@digitalsignageblog.com.

Don’t forget …

To visit our Digital Signage Portal to interact with the digital signage community from around the world or visit the Digital Signage Articles for a mix of different digital signage articles from around the world.

Now if you’re looking to exchange links visit the Digital Signage Experts.

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News

I just finished reading an article from TechDirt and was shocked to find out how much the yearly licensing fees are for playing music in a nightclub or a restaurant. Here is a short extract from the article:

“It wants to increase licensing fees in a 120-seat restaurant to $19,344 a year — up from $125. Small cafes would be slugged with a 4729 per cent yearly increase from $124 to $5860.”

Source: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090615/0329305236.shtml

For those digital signage businesses who provide their clients with a digital signage solution that plays music in the background, have you considered what legal implications are involved and what the licensing requirements are? Even if your client has paid for the music clips or videos!

In Australia, retail stores that play music – whether from the radio, purchased CDs, computers, digital signage are required to pay a licensing fee otherwise it may be considered breaching copyright laws and eventually be fined thousands of dollars.

Now we all know that music can set the mood and atmosphere in your store, nightclub, restaurant or cafe but did you know that you may have to pay a licensing fee for playing music in your business environment or anywhere in public areas? Basically, if you play music in your store you need to have a PPCA public performance license to play protected sound recordings and an APRA public performance license to play musical and literary works. For more information about this visit https://transactions.business.gov.au/BLIS/musiclicence.aspx

All I can say is, just make sure that if you’re running a business or if you’re installing a digital signage solution with audio for one of your clients make sure you mention these licencing requirements to your client otherwise they (or possibly your business) may end up paying a hefty fine – so don’t risk it.

After thinking about this situation, do you believe a license is required for playing videos of unsigned artists playing original songs from Youtube in your store or business environment?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that because these artists are unsigned (i.e don’t have a label) the PPCA, or APRA won’t be paying them one cent so why should you pay for the license fee if all you’re playing is songs from these unsigned artists. For example, here’s one of my favourite Youtube R&B groups called LEGACI playing an original song. Keep it up boys.

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Featured Post

We’ve been pretty busy working on a project and slacked off in posting blog entries. We’ll hopefully post information about the project that we are working on at a later stage but we thought we’d mention how digital signage is everywhere. We recently walked in the busy streets of Bondi junction Australia and noticed how common it was for businesses to have display screens in their stores. The majority of these shop were displaying content from a DVD player, or showing live TV whilst others were actually displaying in house advertisements.

One thing that I noticed was that even thought Mothers day was approaching, not many businesses had any relevant messages relating to this event. Even today, being mothers day, businesses were not using digital signage to their advantage. Oh well maybe its just Australia… My thinking is that maybe one day, businesses will be educated and skilled in the digital signage technology to update and stay connected with their audience.

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info

I wonder how many businesses will be showcasing digital signage products.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Events

As you may already know, digital signage is rapidly becoming “the” advertising medium in Australia and around the world.

There are quite a number of digital signage players and digital signage software tools out in the market which allows the screen to be partitioned into different zones. The SMP-WEB3 and NDSP-500 are two great products which perform this very function.

One of the main reasons for creating zones, is to enable live TV, Foxtel, DVD, CCTV or basically any video input source to be displayed on the screen with surrounding advertisements or any type of content. The main advantage of having this setup, is to entertain your audience with live video content whilst at the same time engaging this very audience with advertising material and other information. That’s the beauty about digital signage!

Having said this, there is some speculation whether displaying live video content eg. Cable TV, Foxtel etc. with other content around it is a breach of copyright. Is this the case in Australia? What about in other countries?

When we queried one of the digital signage manufacturers about this, they provided us with the advice that as long as the actual live video content is not modified ie. there is no other content that overlays the live feed, we should be ok. Which seems to make sense to me. I mean, most of the latest LCDs, Plasma Screens and even Set top boxes have a feature called Picture-in-Picture, so what implications are there if we use this very feature to split the screen in half. As an example, we can use the Picture-in-Picture feature to split the screen with FOXTEL showing on one side of the screen and the other half we can display Sales advertisements driven by a local PC. Isn’t this almost the same setup as what a digital signage player does?

We are more than happy to hear you comments about this issue on our forum.

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info