Missed marketing opportunity? August 17, 2010 by Dave HaynesThe Canadian burger chain A&W is testing some new concept stores aimed at urban 25-40 year olds in major cities – featured around self-serve ordering stations. The first one, reports Marketing, is now open in Vancouver. Knowing what’s coming in from tests on digital menu boards in QSRs, as in crazy-good sales lifts, all that …
If Content is King, Power is God August 11, 2010 by Dave HaynesWalmart Smart Network endcap. No power or dead unit. It happens. But it really can’t in retail or anywhere else. Pic from reader
Japanese vending machines use video analytics to make drink recommendations August 10, 2010 by Dave HaynesIf I ever squirted out of the rail car at a stop on the JR East transport system in Japan, I doubt anything would make me feel finer than a cold bottle of Pocari Sweat. Yes, evidently the Japanese have a drink called Sweat – presumably some sort of sports drink that maybe wouldn’t run …
NASCAR Hall of Fame fan board lit up with 250-plus of Christie's MicroTiles August 5, 2010 by Dave Haynes(Disclosure: I do some writing for Christie, and prepared a case study on this project) One of the first BIG projects to come along for Christie Digital’s much-covered, much-praised MicroTiles technology is a signature installation at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, NC. The facility opened this spring and a focal point is a …
NEC joins the stretched screen crowd August 5, 2010 by Dave HaynesSomeone will correct me, undoubtedly, but as far as I know LG was the first display manufacturer to come out with a monitor that looked like someone took a circular saw to it and cut it in two. They called it a stretch monitor and it gained a lot of attention in the marketplace maybe …
And the point of this is … is … umm … July 29, 2010 by Dave HaynesAkihabara News is reporting a new Hitachi gesture technology that the Japanese electronics giant thinks has a role in several sectors one day, including digital signage. Here you are the last bit of our tour at Hitachi exhibition, with the company vision of a “Minority Report” like interface. Perhaps closer to Microsoft Kinect UI, Hitachi …
Nice many-many tiled display in Austrian club July 28, 2010 by Dave HaynesMontreal-based Matrox has put out a case study about an impressive install at a club in Linz, Austria. In a nutshell, 40 big flat panels are tiled together and running around the perimeter of the venue. The system runs off three Mac Pros and drives 15 Matrox triple-head video thingdoodles. If I am reading the …
Kroger's digital coupon offer improves bargain-buying, but … July 27, 2010 by Dave HaynesUS grocer Kroger has introduced a digital coupon system that appears to make that whole exercise a lot easier and more interesting. Instead of getting coupons from here and there and everywhere, and printing them off websites or having printers in kiosks, the coupons are all hived together from a central location of the Kroger …
Digital signage for queues controlled by dead-simple touch UI July 26, 2010 by Dave HaynesThe queue management systems business seems really well suited to bolting digital signage on to the offers, since you have people in lines or crowded waiting rooms starting at at a little screen as the numbers count up and down to the time when they can get served. That little screen gets a lot of …
AR app brings old street life back in London July 21, 2010 by Dave HaynesI struggle, a little, with the notion of many of us walking the streets and corridors of our daily lives with smartphones in front of our faces, taking in all the augmented reality enhancements. Will we need to start wearing helmets because we keep crashing into each other as we stare at little screens instead …