I’ve had the good fortune to be involved with the Digital Signage Association since it’s inception a few years ago, as well as membership in the SSKA (Self Service & Kiosk Association).  In the past few months both of those organizations combined into one non profit association which makes my life a lot easier.  The new association is the Digital ScreenMedia Association ( notice how the kept the DSA moniker). And with a membership of over 650 end users, deployers, manufacturers and agencies it is a pretty powerful organization.

I’ve been the chairperson for the DSA Marketing & PR committee for about 1.5 years now and with the merger of the two associations and two committees it was a bit up in the air if I would be the new combined committee chairperson or if the esteemed Bill Lynch of the SSKA committee would lead going forwards.   Well it’s official that I am indeed the new chairperson of the combined committee and we had our first conference call a few weeks ago to engage the now larger committee.  It was a great call as we reviewed old news and new items including some very exciting programs we will be recommending to the board.   I can’t speak of them yet but I’m hopeful they will make an impact in the marketing of the DSA, giving us several PR opportunities and help fulfill the mission of the DSA.   More word on this when it’s public knowledge.

To learn more about the DSA and get involved as a user/integrator/agency of digital signage, mobile or kiosk technologies visit their web site at: http://www.digitalscreenmedia.org/

We recently integrated a digital signage management system for the Kenton County Public Library system in northern Kentucky.  The project included a content management system to allow the library staff to create or upload media and schedule that content for individual screens across all of their branch locations.  The browser based tools allow for setting content via a scheduling tool to push out media to each screen at a chosen time.

The energy efficient commercial grade LCD screens can be set to automatically turn on and off when the library opens and closes and they have smart cooling systems to help preserve their lifespan.  Each screen has a networked player appliance that receives the content from the digital media server and outputs it to the screen as scheduled.

This is another example of how to digitally communicate with a broad audience and cut down on the time to deliver content versus the traditional printed methods.  Digital signage is often used for museums, retail and corporate communications.  Libraries are an excellent place to communicate to the local community and keep them informed of local and regional events as well as news, weather and library related topics such as the NY Times Best sellers list.

Photos from this installation:

For more information about how your organization can utilize digital signage to communicate to your audience, contact us via our web site.  If you are interested in some of the hardware available you can visit our new hardware catalog at www.TouchScreenHardware.com

Do you have a comment?  We’d love to hear from you by commenting in the blog below.

For years we have offered hundreds of hardware options to our clients but have found it difficult to show everything we offer on our site. So we’ve been working in the background to build an online catalog that will enable us to fully showcase the different kiosk hardware and digital signage hardware components in our line card.
This includes everything from full kiosk enclosures, panel pc’s, LCD panels, mounts, stands and more. Everything from IBM & Samsung to Ergotron and Premier mounts.
So keep an eye out for our updates coming in the next few weeks. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, just ask… we probably sell it.

Well, its that time again when we pack up touch screen kiosks and LCD screens and rush to get our software apps ready to display at the upcoming www.KioskCom.com trade show in Las Vegas on April 14 & 15th 2010 at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino.  We’ve exhibited at this show for many years and  are happy to be a part of it all again.  This time we have a larger 10 x 20 booth and have one of our many hardware partners who have offered to share the booth with us.  The good folks at www.Zivelo.com are providing their kiosk hardware for the booth including the C10, C2, C6 and the NEW C5 model being built just for the show!  We resell all of their models and are always impressed with the quality of the craftsmanship.  We often partner with Zivelo and provide the software applications for many of their clients.  Come meet Ziver and Ross from Zivelo at our booth.

Also, you’ll see our www.Lobstr.net product that has been rebuilt with new CSS3 based programming and a new pricing model for local operation (no subscriptions!).  And a new kiosk application that offers SMS coupon and lead generation services to drive traffic to your store, along with many of our past projects for various fortune 1000 clients.

Some news, next year the show will have a new name and location.  Goodbye Las Vegas, hello San Francisco! And the new name focuses more on the customer and less on us vendors:  Customer Engagement Technology World which will be at www.CETWorld.com . I like the new direction and the guys at JD Events who put on the show are some really nice folks that do a great job!  We are looking forward to the new format next year. See the press release here.

Are you planning to come to the show or perhaps still on the fence?  Well, let me offer you a free pass into the Expo show floor so you can come visit us  and our peers in the industry.  We will be in booth #205 right across from our business partners at Samsung.  Use the discount code at checkout of:   2LV49F and you’ll get the $50 expo fee on us.   Stop by and see us!  Register at http://www.kioskcom.com/register.asp

I hope to have some good photos and interesting products to discuss after the show, and you can follow my tweets on Twitter during the show at:  http://www.twitter.com/KioskGuy

Do you have a comment?  Add your comment below and I’ll give you a special shout out at the show!

Bill Collins

Last week I organized a panel discussion on digital signage or “digital Out of Home” (DOOH) at the Cincinnati based Digital Hub Non-Conference.  This conference was a regional showcase of all things digital with some national keynote speakers.  At last year’s event, I was shocked that a digital conference could have no digital signage discussions so I got involved and got on the programming schedule for digital signage.  The problem is that I was too chicken to do the whole topic on my own. Its the whole fear of public speaking. So I thought… hmmmm  who else can I draft into this?  A panel discussion would be much easier for me to stomach.

I know many people in our industry from our many years of experience, and first turned to some of the partners we have in the business such as Samsung.  Samsung suggested we use Dayton based Stratacache since this event was a regional showcase, and I have been aware of Stratacache for years, even though we had not yet worked with their tools.  Turns out the director of marketing there, Louie Hollmeyer was a classmate of mine in elementary and high school.  I hadn’t seen him since.  (He looks the same as when he was eighteen years old!)  Done!  Then I turned to respected national speaker and research analyst for the kiosk and digital signage industry, Mr. Bill Collins.  He turned me on to Mike Collette of Healthy Advice Networks.  Their firm operates about 7000 screens in their network of patient education content that is placed in waiting rooms around the continent.  He would bring a great perspective on how to manage or operate a large network.   Done!   My connections connected me to new and relevant prospects for the panel.   This was working out quite well.

Now, the reason they call this a Non-Conference is that while the keynotes are held in the main ballroom of the local Hyatt Regency hotel, the breakout sessions are held in local pubs and artsy venues.  The attendees walk the 3-4 blocks to the venue that is hosting the session you are interested in attending.  Our session was held in the Lodge Bar on 7th street in Cincinnati.  The decor is very log cabin ‘ish with deer heads mounted to the wall along side of fishing paraphernalia and similar sporting trinkets.  Certainly interesting when your session attendees are drinking a Gin and Tonic during your talk!  The problem with the Non Conference idea is that the day of the event, there was a large rain storm that started right at the time our session started.   So our attendance was low at first, and the room filled up more as the wet and dripping new media types “poured in”.

Samsung had provided two LCD panels for our use at the event (Thanks Guys!) and our firm, Electronic Art provided the stands and media players.  Stratacache brought a sample reel of Digital signage content and so did Healthy Advice Networks.  Bill Collins brought a great PowerPoint deck with some good visual examples of signage installations and his take on definitions and metrics.   Some folks noted that the content from Stratacache had localized data in it that was set to Nebraska (and we are in Cincinnati),  but they need to understand the lack of internet connectivity and amount of setup needed for this short 45 minute session.   I think everyone understood the scenario being shown.  (The Twitterati can be so picky!)  There were discussions about the reasons to use commercial grade hardware and the reasons why, the slow adoption of signage by retailers in the past and how this has been changing.  We also discussed how traditional agencies have been slow to understand the medium and how interactive agencies (like Electronic Art) have been providing a lot of the content and consulting.  And we talked about the benefits such as localization, day parts, and how the content can be specific to the viewer.

In all, the event was a success.  We could have gone on for another hour but sadly these were short sessions.  We knew that going in which is why we titled the session “Digital Signage 101: – Networks, Components, Media and its impact on traditional media.”.    I heard a lot of people ask for more of this content next year.  We hope to be able to provide a longer session and incorporate more signage into the event overall for way finding and sponsor promotion.

The keynote speeches of the event are available online as PodCasts at http://cms.screamingbob.com/content/null-dhi09/podcasts. To see some of the Twitter posts on the overall conference, look up the tag #dhi09 on Twitter.  And here are some photos from our session at the Lodge Bar.

This is an educational topic that I have to teach quite often to prospects and newbies to the digital signage market. People see cheap LCD screens at Best Buy and think that they should integrate that quality into their retail location. A commercial grade screen costs more and people often think too shortsightedly at the initial cost, not thinking about the total cost of ownership. Like replacing that screen in a matter of months because you ran it 24 hours a day, burning in the image and frying your motherboards. And your limited consumer warranty will not cover you.

A commercial screen will often come with a 3 year warranty, is made for 20+ hours of commercial use with fans, lower overall power consumption, and in some cases, technology to prevent burn in (image retention). Many other reasons exist too, and so it was good to see our partner Samsung sponsor a white paper on the topic. It does a decent job of explaining why the initial up front cost will save you much heartache and money in the near future.

Download the PDF here

The Kioskcom.com show last week was really good.  We were nervous going into it because of the economy.  We wondered if customers would come out to the show.  We were happy to see a great turn out by VP’s and decision makers with real projects in hand.  In years past you would see multiple team members from a brand attend, perhaps marketing folks, IT staff and VP’s.  Kind of a “design by committee” mentality. But this year, they seemed to not need to bring the whole committee out, just the decision makers, which all of the vendors appreciated.  We met with folks from Motorolla, Ikea, Target, Ceasars Palace, Delta, American Airlines and many more.

Our booth showcased the new Lobstr application on a 37″ touch screen, the new Zebra Kiosk Print Station with our “Hike & Bike” kiosk concept,  as well as our demo kiosk of various past customer implementations.  Our partners at 5Point also showcased Lobstr on their newest enclosure for Interactive Digital Signage (IDS) Platform, the Concierge.  Our app looked so cool on their 40″ screens that we are partnering with them to have this as our default hardware option for Lobstr. More to come on that soon.

Our booth chotsky was a full pack of Orbitz gum.  I figured it was better than most of the squeeze balls and pens given out by many vendors.  And also the obvious reason which is that I was tired of talking to people with bad breath.   Hmmm, I think Orbitz just found their next commercial idea!  Now if only I could brand the packaging with my company information it would have been perfect.

The educational break out sessions and tech talks were a big hit with attendees.  DT Research gave a session on “Interactive Digital Merchandising: Expanding brand and product impact and creating customer engagement.” which is a topic we can get behind.  Andrew Fischer did a great job in this session.   Another session was titled “Return on Message – Optimizing your digital signage network for success. ” which was giving by Keith Kelson who is the Chairman of the Content Best Practices committee of the Digital Signage Association along with Roger Sanford of the MediaTile company.  Return on Message (ROM) is the new buzzword in our industry and a methodology that  provides standards based processes to guide companies through complex variables that must be considered for a successful digital signage deployment.   This also showcased many of the best practices laid out by the association in the past years.

Speaking of the DSA (Digital Signage Association) of which I sit on the advisory board: we had our board meeting the night before the show at the M resort just south of the strip.  This new Casino / Hotel was only 62 days old and our board members were treated to a behind the scenes tour of the facility and the technology used by their VP of IT services.  I doubt I will ever get to see the NOC and security areas of another Casino in my lifetime, it was very interesting to see and learn about how they operate and how they use Digital Signage for both customer facing areas of the facility and also employee facing messages.  I appreciate the hospitality of the M Resort in Las Vegas.   During this meeting we did a review of several committees, discussed goals, events and recapped the past year’s success.  I am now the chairman of the PR & Marketing committee for the Digital Signage Association.   We have some good people on the committee already, so I’m excited about working with them to help promote the association, drive awareness and education, and help increase membership of the DSA.

As for new technology, there was a lot of the same hardware at the show that has been seen before.  I got a sneak peak at a new product from MicroVision which is a Pico Projector (ultra small projector) about the size of an Iphone.  Useful in our industry for some small digital signage applications for rear projection, etc.  However the brightness and resolution are the only current drawbacks I could see.  This may be addressed in the second and third generations of this unique laser projector called ShowWX.  See their site for a preview and watch for it to be launched later this year.  The projector is unique becuase of an ultra tiny red, blue & green laser that allows the image to be in focus at any distance.  It was really nice, but the first generation will likely be a consumer model.  They are interested in finding new products they could embed the engine into, such as a cell phone, or other device.

We enjoyed the opportunities to talk with many customers about their projects, hardware or software needs and to explain to them once again, that no… we are not THAT Electronic Arts company in California.   The “S” at the end of their name is short for dollar signs and no, our firm does not make games for the Playstation or Nintendo.   You have to love our name, but the similarities do make it confusing.  I’m pretty sure the lady at the Paris Casino was treating me really good because she thought that was our company when she saw my shirt.  For a free drink… I didn’t correct her.

I’m on a Samsung partner webcast at this very moment listening to new product information, end of life information on old SKU’s that will no longer be offered, and info on video wall connections. Samsung does a great job with partner channel education and today’s call about large screen displays for digital signage is very informative.  They have commercial screens with built in tuners and speakers to look like consumer grade (but with all of the commercial grade benefits) but the biggest sellers are the CX series and UX series.

I really like their video wall options, with small bezels (as small as 2.4mm). Very cool options for stacking screens together in free standing video walls much like a tower display.
They also have prebuilt IR touch screens out of the box instead of having to apply touch to existing SKUs like we often do from many LCD vendors. Nice to have only one vendor responsible for the components.

They also have high bright screens for outdoor signage. The model 460DRn-A is a  46″ high bright panel is 1500 NITS is weatherproof with built in HVAC, PC and shockproof. Vandal resistance has camera built in to snap a picture if someone trys to damage it.

They also mentioned that they are working on a multi-touch series that will hopefully be avaiable soon.  A preproduction version was shown recently at a show.

I will be gathering specs on many of the new products like the outdoor LCD. If you have interest, give me a call and we’ll get the right product for your needs spec’d out.

Samsung product info is available on their public web site.

Samsung Partner

The Digital Signage Expo 2009 was described as “successful” by several retailers in attendance, according to event organizers. The conference and trade show at the Las Vegas convention center, which ran in February drew just over 3,000 attendees, down from last year’s 3,500, and 188 exhibitors, a record number. The trade show floor was 19 percent larger than 2008, with over 58,000 square feet of exhibitions.  I’ve attended this show for years and could not see all of the expo booths in the short time I was there.  But what I did see was great, so I’ll share with you some of my favorite items from the show. I was posting a lot of what I saw on Twitter that day and by the end my feet were sore and my eyes were bleeding from all of the signage.

We did not exhibit at this show due to time and budget constraints, but we will be exhibiting and speaking at the upcoming KioskCom.com  Self Service Expo May 6-7th, 2009, also in Las Vegas.  KioskCom has a broader audience of both kiosks and digital signage as many deployments utilize both technologies.  There is a lot of crossover in the two technologies, which is why agencies such as ours attend, since we offer solutions in both segments.  By the way,  I wish the show management would pick some others venues from time to time.  Seems like I’m always in Vegas and that town can wear you down.  But I digress.

The DSE show was much larger than the DSE east show in Philadelphia back in October 2008.  That event was very small and didn’t have much traffic.  Disappointing to everyone.  But the Vegas show always seems to be huge.  I went to Vegas early to attend the Digital Signage Association’s bi-annual advisory board meeting, of which I’ve been a member since the beginning.  We had some new board members from Target and Six Flags Inc..  who added to the lively discussions on how to improve the mission and structure of the organization.   It was good to see many of my peers in the industry and I was fortunate enough to share some drinks after with several of them.

Now for the review of the products and services I enjoyed at the show:
It was interesting to see the number of 3D screens from makers such as LG, Samsung, Phillips and others.  Everyone was trying to impress with this new variation of the medium.  Photos don’t do it justice but the effect can be really interesting.  Most people I spoke to think it is a bit of a fad or gimmick and are unhappy with the shallow viewing radius.  You also must be many feet away from the screen to get the effect and not make the eyes strain.  So this is not to be hung too close to the audience.   Another consideration is that the content must be rendered in 3D using tools such as Maya or 3D studio max.  It is often more costly and time consuming to produce content in 3D.   With that said, I think the early adopters will get a lot of buzz around their use of it, if done well.  And for many brands, this point of difference is worth the investment.   We hope some of our customers will consider the use of 3D when appropriate.

We met with and really like the Premier Mounts folks.  Their products incorporate a oval tubular design that gives their stands, wall mounts and ceiling mounts a upscale look.  Their easy to swivel mounts make switching between portrait and landscape modes very easy.  Check them out online at www.Mounts.com .  These guys can fabricate just about any metal mounting need you may have.

The good folks at Tightrope had a very yellow booth and were showcasing their content management tools.  We’ve never used their products but I enjoy their Twitter posts about the industry.  As I was driving to Vegas from California I was keeping up with them and several other DSE attendees. At these events there are literally dozens of management products.  Most very good, each with their own unique spin.  We are VARS for several as some are better for certain campaigns then others.  We saw our partners Scala at the show, as well as Stinova, Wirespring and Web DT.  Stinova was showing off their web based management tools which we like very much for the middle market.  This German based firm is now making headway in the USA with VARs such as Electronic Art.   Web DT have really good thin client players that we resell and they’ve made some good improvements to their software.  They also have a nice app we can offer our clients that you’ve probably seen which allows for triggers to play content.  For example if you pick up a cell phone in a wireless store, it triggers the tool to play content on screen about that particular phone device.   By utilizing this tool, we can deploy this solution much faster than building from scratch and can focus more on the content being provided.  We are excited about offering this tool and will have more details to share soon.

The guys at SpaceNet provide satellite networks for digital signage and kiosks.  They provide the network for Shell Gas & C-stores for the video content at the pump.  This solution broadcasts a variety of media (news, ads, TV shows) via multicast enabling both local and national media/ads with day parting.  Integrating this solution could also provide a retailer with a backup network should a store network ever go down.  Great idea and cool technology!

Another product which we use here at Electronic Art that was seen at DSE is LogMeIn.  This remote management tool goes way beyond remote desktop or VNC.  It provides a unique web based remoting tool that enables providers such as ourselves to help maintain remote systems, do file transfers, remote printing and even mini-meetings like WebEX.  The new product from them that I like is the LogMeIn Embedded product.  It supports the Windows XP Embedded OS found on many kiosks and digital signage players, and enables a one-to-many centralized management interface that can allow us to work in the background while users are still interacting with Kiosks or signage.  All with an 256-bit SSL encryption.  This tool is awesome.

GestureTek was back this year showing off their multi-touch table hardware.  This is similar to Microsoft Surface and their product along with many others are starting to show up in retail and hospitality.  While I liked the hardware and overall concept, the WW2 Tank game they showcased didn’t respond very well.  I was disappointed in the multi-user game that wouldn’t allow me to change direction of the tank.  Not sure why, but I’m sure it was due to being in a trade show environment.  Things go wrong.   But GestureTek has been around for a long time. I first saw them at a kiosk show in Orlando back in 2004 where they showed off the AirPoint system.  It’s good to see they are still in the marketplace and innovating.

At Electronic Art we offer a lot of commercial LCD screen options, and each were present at the show such as LG, Samsung, Phillips, and more.  But a unique screen provider that we really like is Tek Panel.  They have military grade screens with built in player PC’s and are available with touch screens.  We are big proponents of interactive digital signage to allow your customers to touch your digital signage and be ultimately measurable.  Their new thin bezel hardware enables us to give you an all-in-one signage solution much like our IBM AnyPlace kiosks are an all-in-one kiosk system.  Too often with other screens we have to have a touch overlay put onto a client’s screen, but this system is ready to go out of the box and makes for a really clean installation.  Contact us for pricing.

We also saw our new large format outdoor signage hardware at the show.  Symbicon is based in Finland and makes a really nice system with built-in HVAC to keep the enclosure warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  It is water tight with built in PC and great for retail, ski resorts and more.  This sign is impressive and built to take the brutal outdoor environment that most signs just cannot live in.  Contact our sales staff for an introduction and pricing.

A much smaller screen that we liked is the AdView DM10i Smart Sign.  This retail onshelf player allows for a low cost and easy to deploy video player.  We really like the 10.4″ LCD display and multi-level drill down menus to select up to 80 different video files. It supports Mpeg, Jpeg and MP3 file formats and has a replaceable custom frame.  It even records which keys were pressed most and can export to a USB format in Excel format for a simple reporting interface.  Let us know if you’d like a demo of this really nice retail shelf talk solution.

One of my favorite items was the projection touch signage from Brain.  This film enables us to project either traditional passive content onto a glass storefront window, or provide an interactive touch film to the window to allow guests to search through interactive catalogs after hours, view specials and coupons, or play a branded game.  All through the exterior of the glass, though the film is applied to the inside of the glass.   They were showing that even with a low cost project ($600) you can get a good quality projection onto their product.  Even better with a higher quality projector, obviously, but the projectors they used were great. This is also a way to enable a multi-touch screen as described above for GestureTek.  But this enables us to fabricate a custom enclosure or simply use your existing window and contour cut the film to any shape you like.  In many ways it is better than a plasma screen! It is available in up to a 145″ diagonal size, as a wide viewing angle and is even good in high ambient light environments.  We were so impressed that we are setting up a reseller relationship to begin to offer this product to your company.

I enjoyed catching up with some old friends so I’ll give a shout out to Ed Crowley formerly of 5Point now with OneSource, Dick Trask formerly of Scala now with StarMount,  Linda Hofflander of Wireless Ronin, Tom Nix of Dynamax, Mike Honkomp formerly with ESP now with DigiKomp, Bill Gerba & Michael Smith at Wirespring,  Jimmy Dun of DynaSign, Bob Fincher and all of the guys at Networld Alliance, and Margo Meyers formerly with the USPS and now consulting in our industry. She is a great resource and has been on the user side of interactive for years.  I enjoyed my time with each of you, even those of you who are my competitors.   It’s good to see a class act like you helping to grow our industry.

Scala, provider of end-to-end solutions for the advertising management and digital signage markets, announced that it has released Release version 4 of its Scala5 connected signage software to its customers known as InfoChannel.

Scala’s Research and Development team has expanded since the last release with new resources in the U.S. and in India. The R&D team has also adopted a stronger development methodology for product releases. The growth of the team and the new methodology allowed Scala to announce Release 4 on time and with more features than originally anticipated.

The highlights of Release 4 are:

• Web Services for Content Manager: allow third-party applications to interface with the Scala Content Manager functionality
• Ad Manager Tie-In to Content Manager via Web Services: the first phase of integration of Scala Ad Manager with Scala Content Manager
• Playback Audit EX Module: the new module generates proof-of-play reports showing what media played where, when and how often
• Media Playback Controls: including “playlist shuffle,” “play N times” from a playlist and “play fullscreen”
• Time Triggers: added to trigger a playlist at specific times or regular intervals.
• Scala Designer more Photoshop friendly: Ars Media Photoshop Plug-in has been added to convert Photoshop layered elements to ScalaScript
• Adobe Flash support has been greatly enhanced to provide smoother, faster, high-quality playback including interactive support, alpha channel and “FlashVars”

Electronic Art will be providing upgrade assistance to our Scala clients and performing the upgrade for those of our customers that we directly provide the service.  This upgrade will bring your systems up to the latest versions.

Looking for digital signage solutions, Scala is a great enterprise wide system for large networks or systems that need to integrate with a lot of proprietary 3rd party data.   Other tools are also available for smaller networks or single screens.  Contact us to find out more information.