The $85 Asus Chromebit Now Shipping; Google Halves Device Management Fee For Digital Signage Apps November 17, 2015 by Dave Haynes The Google-backed Asus Chromebit is now on the marketplace in the U.S. and select countries, with the U.S. version priced at $85 for what’s billed as a computer on a stick. The device is an HDMI stick that plugs into any monitor or TV with that port. It has built-in WiFi and runs on a Rockchip …
Projects: GM Canada Rolling Out Screens Across Auto Dealership Network November 15, 2015 by Dave Haynes A well-planned and executed video can get a pile of marketing mileage for a company, or team of partner companies, and I suspect this piece about a digital signage deployment now rolling out in Canadian GM auto dealerships will do that nicely. I have direct experience going dealer to dealer selling the digital signage dream …
Adflow Gets U.S. Patent Grant On Interactive Retail Technology November 15, 2015 by Dave Haynes The guys up the street from me at ADFLOW Networks have announced a new patent grant for the process of lifting and looking at products in retail environments. The longtime signage CMS firm, based in Burlington, Ontario, says U.S. Patent No. 9,152,986 for “lift and touch” technology simplifies the complex problem of maintaining and updating content related to …
Projects: Lowe’s Goes Virtual To Squeeze More SKUs Into NYC Stores November 12, 2015 by Dave Haynes Commercial space is insanely expensive in Manhattan, so if a big box store wants to have a footprint in New York City it has to slim down the number of SKUs it has on hand and get creative with how products are marketed. One of the ways the DIY chain Lowe’s is doing that is …
Joan E Ink Door Signs Honored In CES Innovation Awards November 11, 2015 by Dave Haynes The massive CES trade show in Las Vegas is just weeks away, and ahead of it each year, the newly renamed Consumer Technology Association runs an innovation showcase for selected products. There are dozens of honorees, for all kinds of tech and gadgets, and among them for 2016 is the Joan Meeting Room Assistant (or Joan), …
Live Data Is Great, But Clutter, Not So Much November 11, 2015 by Dave Haynes I really like the automated content approach and utility that start-up TransitScreen is bringing to digital signage, however I can’t help but think the cluttered layout rule that applies to every other kind of digital signage should apply with this stuff, as well. In short, there’s way too much going on at once on those screens. …
Projects: Using Slick Kiosks To Change Company Culture November 11, 2015 by Dave Haynes This is an interesting take on how something as simple as a kiosk pedestal can influence company culture. The gaming company Kabam redesigned the lobby of its San Francisco offices to celebrate the completion of a new product Star Wars: Uprising, it did up a Star Wars scene and layered in a pair of illuminated tablet-powered AURA kiosks from …
Projects: The Space Needle’s 20-Foot Wide SkyPad November 10, 2015 by Dave Haynes The CBS Morning News had a piece this morning about new technologies that have spruced up the 53-year-old Space Needle tower in Seattle, and the element that caught my eye was something it calls the SkyPad. Developed and guided by the local studio Belle & Wissell, the SkyPad interactive wall is a set of tiled …
Projects: A&W Canada Goes Digital With Menus November 9, 2015 by Dave Haynes A&W Food Services of Canada Inc, or A&W as we’re going to call them, has announced it is going digital with its menus at the roughly 850 stores across the Frozen North. The rollout has already started, running on software and services, like creative, from Cineplex Digital Networks, aka EK3. “We are extremely pleased with our …
ScreenHub Joins Crowded Digital Signage CMS Market With Platform Touted As Free November 9, 2015 by Dave Haynes It is fairly remarkable that a teeny little tech sector like digital signage has 100s of software options for doing variations on the same thing, and even more remarkable that as observers like me steadily suggest the numbers will thin out, they instead keep growing! I don’t get it. But as a consultant who gets …
