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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Category: Digital Signage Weekend Fun, Featured Post

Coincidently on my third trip back to Melbourne for a digital signage project rollout, I came across something that is too familiar to me.

Digital Signage gone wrong

Almost 9 out of 10 times when digital signage goes wrong through my observations, they are running Windows. There is no perfect system out there regardless what hardware, operating system, or configuration you may have, but according to Murphy’s Law, when something does go wrong how do control it? Does your software allow you to show an exception or alternate display?

Weirdly enough, these observations have now become second nature to me, whereby I notice all other people would just walk right past it. Not to mention the urge for me to take out my blackberry to snap it.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info

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.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog News

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

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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!

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Category: 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.

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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:

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