There are several ways to receive the latest digital signage portal forum posts and these are listed below:

1. Email Subscription - on the top left hand side column of the digital signage portal website there is a section called Forum Posts Subscription - all you have to do is enter your email address and hit the subscribe button. Once you have successfully subscribed, you will receive daily forum updates via email.

2. RSS feed - at the bottom right hand corner of the forum you will notice the RSS button. The RSS feed you should subscribe to is: http://www.digitalsignageportal.com/component/option,com_fbfeed/f,1/func,rss/

Just use your default RSS reader/viewer to receive the latest forum entries.

3. digitalsignageportal.blogspot.com - visit this website and you’ll be able to view the latest forum posts.

Our question: What do you use RSS feeds for in your digital signage solutions?

One of our members on the digital signage portal submitted a very interesting and intriguing post about establishing a world wide network of small digital signage operators. My thought on this is how we go about approaching this and what standards, if any should all the operators follow.

Has anyone else thought about this approach or wanting to establish a digital signage network with other operators? If so, feel free to participate in the discussion forum.

Today is Jayden’s birthday (the son of one of our staff members) - he turned 1 so the Advertise Me team wanted to wish him a “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!”. Now, grow up quick so that you can be part of the Advertise Me team, this shirt might be too big for you now but you’ll grow into it soon.

Here’s the cake that one of your aunties made (thanks Lilia), its one of the best cakes that I have ever seen.

Today, we came across a news article titled “Porn shock for tourists”  - just from reading the title of the article you’re thinking - “what has this got to do with digital signage?”. There is a lesson to learn from this article so here is a copy of the article:

Computer pranksters in Croatia hacked into tourism board computers and downloaded blue movies onto a town centre information screen.

Red faced officials in Slavonski Brod managed to shut down the link but only after a cheering crowd had gathered around the screen, which normally gives cultural tips to visitors.

Police called in special IT crime experts to help track down the hackers.

Meanwhile the local council have pledged to splash out on a computer security upgrade to make sure nothing similar happens again.

Deputy mayor Zeljka Kristof said: “This is something we take very seriously because we have worked hard to give our town an image among tourists and visitors that we do not want sullied in any way.

“This incident shocked a lot of people and made our visitors feel very uncomfortable. It just proves our computer systems need to be made more secure.”

Source: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3074964.html

Like any other IT solution, digital signage needs to be secure - it needs to protect the solution from hackers and unauthorised access. In this case, the screen was hijacked and the tourist information was replaced with a porn video. We might have giggled when reading the article but it’s a serious issue if it happened to us *Not many parents would have been impressed if their children were there*. The consequences could have been more devastating - the screen could have been used to display sensitive information.

Like the Internet, digital signage solutions have many vulnerabilities and security holes and it is the responsibility of the network operators to ensure the solution is secure.

We also previously talked about ways to mitigate various security issues in our previous post called “How Secure Is Your Digital Signage Solution?“. Here’s the link if you’re interested to read further.

Lesson learnt: make sure your digital signage solution is secure before you have the public looking at your screen!!!

Digital Signage Blog is viewed by thousands of unique people every month and this number continues to grow with the high popularity and interest in digital signage technologies.

We are partnered together with our sister site Digital Signage Portal combined to maximise our audience and your exposure.

Whether you want to showcase a new product or just be heard, this is the opportunity for you to reach out to the digital signage community and stir up some viral impressions.

Quick Stats

• Thousands of unique visitors every month to a global audience (and growing)
• Ranked 1st out of 3.5 million search entries from google.com (as well as google.com.au, google.co.uk, etc)
• Top Ten Digital Signage Blogs by Nate Nead
• Our blog entries are used and displayed by other digital signage websites and blogs
• Increasingly growing number of daily RSS readers
• Over 95% of our readers have some sort of involvement in the digital signage industry, and all have a found knowledge in digital signage technologies

(Detailed statistics are available upon request)

Our blog entries are also picked up by Google Alerts for all users using the Google Alerts notification service (on digital signage). If we post a blog entry on that day, you can be sure that users subscribed to the service will receive a link to our blog entry in that day’s alert.

Advertising and Sponsorship

We currently offer two ways of advertising - through Ads and Sponsorships.

Ads

Ads are served on a rotation basis with a selection of either at the top header of the page (468 x 60), on the right side pane below the sponsors (300 x 250), or both (discount applies for multiple ads).

Ads are offered on an impressions basis and are available in prepaid blocks.

Sponsorship

Sponsorships are made available in the dedicated sponsorship section on the right side pane (125 x 125). They do not rotate and stay fixed.

Sponsorships are offered at a fixed monthly rate (discount applies for longer periods).

We also provide statistics of both the advertising and sponsorship campaigns for your benefit.

If you’d like to advertise through our blog or secure a sponsorship with us, please contact us here and we can help you come up with a suitable plan. Or simply email us at info@digitalsignageblog.com.

Today is Melbourne Cup day in Australia - for those of you who don’t know what this event is about have a quick wiki read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Cup
You may be wondering “what is all the excitement about a horse racing event”, but like the “Superbowl” and any of the “World Cup Events” at approximately 3:00pm almost the whole nation stops to watch this event. Mind you, the event is also about dressing up for the glamour, drinking, gambling but more importantly, bringing people together to celebrate an annual horse race.

So just before the start of the race, millions of people in Australia have their eyes glue to screens to watch the event. If you’re a pub owner or a shop owner have you thought about ways of promoting your own products during this event? If not, then you’re obviously missing out on making money.

With the current digital signage technology out in the market, you will be able to display Live TV feeds whilst displaying your own advertising. Have a quick read of this previous post for more information about this technology.
Good luck to those who are placing bets!!!

If you’re a business and are new to digital signage, the first thing that you might wonder is “How will I earn revenue through digital signage?”. The answer is simple, ADVERTISING. You basically sell advertising space on your digital signage screens to potential customers/advertising agencies/manufacturers for a premium price.

How will you sell this idea? People like to deal with facts and figures and the best way to sell advertising space is to let your advertisers know what they’ll get. Now, the only problem you will encounter is how to provide your clients or advertisers with “proof of play” reporting information. Currently, the only methods of tracking this information is to use either the built-in reporting tools (what time, how long and what content was played) that comes with the digital signage player/software or you can purchase additional equipment to capture information about your audience i.e face recognition (normally the cost of this unit is almost the same amount as the digital signage player so the overall solution may have just doubled in cost and there may be potential privacy concerns).

For most businesses, it will be difficult at first to get advertisers interested especially when there are several limitations on the methods to track whether an advertisement was played and who saw it. Simply providing a report that states that the player executed a command to play a file is not good enough. Even providing a report that someone (gender and potentially what age) saw the screen may also be not good enough.

If I was an advertiser I would want to know whether my advertisement was actually displayed on the screen (the screen may have been turned off or the cable between the player to the screen could have been disconnected - so why should I pay for advertisements that were not displayed) and then potentially determine whether the advertisement met its targeted audience.

At the moment a complete digital signage tracking solution is missing in the market. We hope that a company will come up with an ALL-IN-ONE solution to further engage more advertisers.

If there is a solution out there, let us know. You can be our eyes and ears on this one.

A lot has been made of the visual aspects of digital signage. We all know it’s a great tool to view items or sales but the benefit of digital signage over the ordinary paper advertising has always been the multimedia aspect of digital signage.

For this very reason, it’s interesting to note that the audio aspect has not been given much of a chance when digital signage solutions have been implemented.

Now I know what you are thinking, sometimes having the sound turned on interferes with the message you are trying to get out there but I think the use of sound in your digital signage solution does depend on what you want to achieve.

Sound is one of the easiest ways to ge someone’s attention but what is the best way to do this? Having someone yell out the content on your digital signage screens will get what’s on your digital signage screen some attention but then you may lose customers this way. Having music playing will create a great atmosphere but will it get the content on your digital signage screen any attention?

This is where creative thinking and a flexible digital signage solution will be able to help.

Including sound for some of the content on your digital signage screen will get people’s attention for specific content for example the item that you are trying to really sell that week while giving people the noise freedom not to have to constantly listen to someone telling them what’s on sale.

Creating a song or special sound to indicate hourly specials may keep customers in your store for longer.

If it’s a service you’re trying to promote then create a video clip which explains what you are selling - infomercials work and they work because not only can you see what you are getting but you are also able to get to know the product/service without having a read the fine print.

So next time you are considering how to best use digital signage ask yourself - can you hear it?

The wait is over… WE’VE JUST LAUNCHED OUR NEW DIGITAL SIGNAGE BLOG!!! Can you feel the excitement?

As promised, our team has worked hard (let’s call it fast-tracked) to get this new blog out so that you, the reader, can further enjoy this new facelift. Now, we hope you like the new look and feel as we have designed it to make it more attractive (wink!) and user friendly. More importantly, our aim is to encourage more readers to return as well as contribute to our blog.

So browse around and tell us what you think as we love hearing people’s feedback/comments (we strongly believe in the improvement process – hey no one is perfect)!

Feel free to comment. Happy reading!

It has almost been a year since we officially launched the digital signage blog and during this period we had a significant growth in the online digital signage space. We have managed to get to the top of search engines for various search terms but more importantly our website is getting more popular (more visitor hits and page views). We also have other businesses linking and feeding our content which gives us a good indication that people find this website useful and because of these reasons we will be soon launching a new website.

What changes will you see?

The most significant change that you will see is the design of the website. It is clean, professional and has an easy to use interface. Our team at Advertise Me has customised and designed the new website.

We have improved the searching capabilities and we have reserved space for advertising and sponsorship.

When do we plan to launch the new website?

We intend to launch the new website in the next couple of days (that’s if everything goes well), so come back and visit the digital signage blog soon.

Once we have completed this new website, we will then update our digital signage portal so watch out for that as well.

The KioskCom Self Service and the Digital Signage Show event will run over the next two days (15th and 16th October 2008).

For those who didn’t know, the KioskCom Self Service Expo delivers strategic, marketing and technical business solutions for organizations utilizing - or looking to utilize - self-service technology whilst the Digital Signage Show is designed for technology and marketing executives from a diverse range of industries. The event will be held in New York City.

We are excited to get visitors or exhibitors to send us information (this includes pictures brochures etc) of anything you found interesting during this event.

You can either comment on this blog post or discuss it on the digital signage portal forum thread.

Last month, we were excited when we were approached and invited by a Cisco’s Product Sales Specialist (Emerging Technologies) to attend a meeting at their head office in North Sydney Australia.  To cut a long story short, the Product Sales Specialist landed on our digital signage portal website (www.digitalsignageportal.com) and wanted to talk to Advertise Me about the direction of the website and Cisco’s digital signage products. We were keen to understand more about Cisco’s digital signage presence in the industry and because Cisco is an International and reputable company, we couldn’t say no.

We obviously won’t be able to tell you exactly what we discussed in the meeting but it was quite interesting to understand Cisco’s digital signage products and company’s direction in the digital signage industry.

Early last year, I was reading an article about Cisco’s acquisition of a company called Tivella. I’ve never actually heard of this company in the past, but Cisco saw enormous potential for digital signage to be integrated into its existing enterprise streaming and live video broadcasting system and hence the acquisition.

There are two models of the Cisco Digital Media Player (4400G and 4305G). In the demonstration we only had the opportunity to see the 4305G but the main differences between the two models are as follows:

 

4305G 4400G

 

Cisco Digital Media Player 4305G

 

Cisco Digital Media Player 4400G

 

Internal storage

2GB CF

4GB CF

Network Port

10/100Mbps

10/100/1000Mbps

Number of USB ports

1

2

Adobe Flash Support

Version 7

Version 9

Physical Dimensions/Weight

7.5 x 5 x 1.5 in. (190 x 127 x 38 mm); weighs 1 lb (0.45 kg)

10 x 8 x 2 in. (254 x 203 x 51 mm); weighs 4.5 lb (2 kg)

Video codec

Video MPEG4 Part 2: Advanced Simple Profile at Level 5

Video MPEG4 Part 10 Baseline and Main profiles

 

 

 

Now, the great feature about this unit is that it supports the HDMI video connector - meaning it is able to play High Definition video. This is actually the first small form factor unit (with no moving parts) we have ever encountered that has a HDMI connector. The other great thing about these units is that it comes with a remote control. Yes… a remote control unit which enables people who are interfacing with the digital signage player to control and browse through the content displayed on the screen. The overall system can also be used as a Video On Demand solution, so it’s ideal in hotels and corporate environments.

During the demonstration we actually saw a live streaming video feed from the US and the video quality was awesome. We found it difficult to distinguish whether it was a live streaming video feed or not because the quality was crisp and the video didn’t appear to have any lag or jitter – we were very impressed with this technology. Basically, we were advised that Cisco’s digital signage players actually use 2 video rendering chips - most other digital signage players use software video rending.

Cisco Digital Media Manager is the backbone system for managing, scheduling and publishing content to the Digital Media Systems (Digital Signage, Enterprise TV, and desktop video). It has a great tool to create the digital signage content. It’s actually all web based (java based to be exact). The application enables content owners to easily upload, catalogue, edit, package and publish digital media content for live or on-demand playback.

The only downsides we saw with Cisco’s Digital Signage solution are:

• Proof of play reporting. The unit doesn’t actually provide a detailed report on what content was played. Just keep in mind that Cisco developed these units for the corporate environment and not retail.
• The overall solution is quite expensive - we were told that a typical digital signage solution would cost around the $80k - $100k mark

Here are a couple of pointers that we took away from the meeting and the demonstration:

• Cisco doesn’t just sell switches, firewall and routers. They have a large product range that includes equipment such as wireless CCTV cameras, Video encoders, Desktop Video, and the list goes on
• With the convergence of voice, data and IP video technology there is an increasing dependency for a stable network infrastructure and this is where Cisco can also help
• The Cisco Digital Media solution is scalable and has been designed so that it can be integrated with other systems eg Microsoft Outlook
• Cisco Australia is interested in the direction of the digital signage portal and wants to be more involved in this area
• We found the solution to have good value in the digital signage market and we intend to work with Cisco and Cisco’s channel partners

Finally, here’s a Cisco product video for the Digital Media Player:

About Cisco Systems

Cisco, is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.

 

This question has been on my mind this past week and I’ve been wondering whether digital signage businesses have been impacted from this economic downfall.

After speaking to several people about this topic I came to the understanding that out of all the departments in a company, the marketing team would be the first group to go. The marketing team generally spends money to make money so this is one of the main reason why a business would strategically decrease the head count of this department. What this may potentially mean for digital signage companies is that less marketing people would look for spending money in deploying digital signage solutions even thought the solution may increase sales and profit (needs to be qualified and quantified).

We haven’t felt the wave yet in Australia but I’m sure that it will hit us any time soon.

What are your thoughts on this? Visit the digital signage portal forum to discuss further.

SaaS stands for Software As A Service and is gaining momentum in the digital signage industry.

Wikipedia defines SaaS as:

“a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Conversely, customers relinquish control over software versions or changing requirements; moreover, costs to use the service become a continuous expense, rather than a single expense at time of purchase. Using SaaS also can conceivably reduce the up-front expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing. From the software vendor’s standpoint, SaaS has the attraction of providing stronger protection of its intellectual property and establishing an ongoing revenue stream. The SaaS software vendor may host the application on its own web server, or this function may be handled by a third-party application service provider (ASP). This way, end users may reduce their investment on server hardware too.“

For more information about SaaS visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service

The main benefits of using Digital Signage SaaS are :

• affordable and cost savings - low monthly costs (no maintenance, ongoing operation and support costs) . Some companies are even providing this service for free.
• cut the upfront costs associated with digital signage deployments
• all the digital signage software is centrally hosted and managed by the company which means all software upgraded are performed by the company

Finally, watch out for SaaS as it will be the next model in the digital signage industry.

To discuss this further visit our digital signage portal forum.

AO Narrowcast Inc. began operations on March 7, 2008, headquartered in Sunnyvale California. Sunnyvale, CA has been the center of the semiconductor industry for decades and has now evolved into the technology capitol of the United States. In knowing this AO Narrowcast Inc. set up operations in Sunnyvale to utilize the immense educated work force and leverage the knowledge gained through the rich technology history of the Silicon Valley. AO Narrowcast Inc. has focused their resources on developing a revolutionary web based digital signage management software solution to the growing digital signage industry within the United States. This Software as a Service (SaaS) will incorporate all the functionality of current comparable solutions into one centralized web based digital signage management program. AO Narrowcast Inc. will also add new to market functionality to meet the growing demands of the digital signage industry. In creating this software AO Narrowcast Inc. realizes that there is a lack of scalability and functionality with current digital signage management solutions. With that knowledge AO Narrowcast Inc. will deliver a digital signage solution which can be scaled up from one device to thousands while still adding functionality that out paces all contenders.

About AO Narrowcast Inc.

AO Narrowcast began in early 2008 focusing on next generation digital signage management software. With the spotlight of scalability, reliability, and functionality AO Narrowcast Inc. understands that it will soon become the number one provider in the web based digital signage management software marketplace. AO Narrowcast is well funded and is quickly outpacing its expectations. AO Narrowcast is currently targeting complex application development, including intranets, extranets and web-based software. AO Narrowcast will launch a beta version of its digital signage management software application by the last quarter of 2008.

Today, the digital signage portal has registered its 100th member. Having only launched the site since late last year, the website has grown exponentially in the past several months. As the digital signage market continues to grow, we also anticipate for the digital signage portal to grow in visitors and members.

Our members range from basic digital signage users, manufacturers, distributors, graphic designers to large corporations and our audience is from all parts of the world. Don’t miss out in being part of this online digital signage community and if you haven’t done so already, visit digital signage portal.

Cisco and Filmaka want you to make a film about a “Digital Crib” - a home that uses digital technology - and send it to us. Find someone who has a passion for digital technology and is using it in their home in a unique and creative way. Interview them in their space and get them to talk about what they do, why it excites them and how they are using technology in their personal lives. The person should mention their favorite digital service and who their service provider is. 10 winners will receive $7500 USD and another 10 will win $5000. Winning Digital Crib clips will be placed on over 200 sites across the internet, for the whole planet to see! Submissions should be 3 minutes each, and in your native language and are due October 13

Visit our Digital Signage Portal Forum for more information or ask any questions you may have regarding about this competition.

One of our digital signage portal member recently posted this entry:

 ”Hi, i am from India and i am new to business of Digital Signage. We are basically providers of customeised software solutions in India. The idea of Digital signage for me came from the solution that we had provided for displaying meuns at concession counters in cinema halls.

In India many companies have started OOH (Out of Home Signage system) , so we also believe that there is great potential in this medium and an opportunity for us. But one thing about this medium is its capital intensive and we are just a bootstrap company. I have come across some interested parties who are willing to invest in a pilot of 20 to 30 locations but what i lag is a business plan to present them.

It would be great if this forum could help me in getting my business plan done.

Hope i would definitly get some positive response from this forum.”

What are your thoughts on this? If you want to respond, share your thoughts or experiences, help or guide this member in the right direction feel free to do so by visiting the Digital Signage Portal Forum entry

I was flicking through the various TV channels today and I ended up stumbling across the new comeback TV show “Beverly Hills 90210″.  I must admit that back in my younger years I was a fan of the show I’m not sure about this new season, but the only reason why I kept watching till the end of the episode was that this new series showed a strong use of digital signage in the High School. It was pretty much everywhere - in front of doorways, in hallways, in the cafeteria and also inside the classrooms. It was primarily used as a communication tool for students but its use could be extended for advertising. 

Even through this was just a TV show, it does give a good indication that there is a strong presence of digital signage in the education sector.

There will be two upcoming digital signage expos:

Digital Signage Expo East - 16 - 18 September 2008

KioskCOm Self Service Expo + The Digital Signage Show 15 - 16 October 2008

Don’t forget to register for these events.

These events have been added to the Digital Signage Events calendar.

If there are other digital signage events coming up let us know by either visiting the digital signage portal and adding the event yourself or send an email to info@digitalsignageblog.com