A Wider Net

WindowGain, based in Newton, MA., has developed a unique model around outdoor video billboards. They have gathered ideas from event/staging companies, digital signage networks, retail displays, and billboard ad sales, then greatly extended the practices and technology to create a first of it’s kind network of large-scale daylight-visible video billboards. There are lessons here for everyone in the marketing, exhibit, and advertising industries.

The opportunity: WindowGain realized there are plenty of empty storefront windows around the country that create inexpensive opportunities to place content in busy public locations. They needed a way to get great quality content on those surfaces, keep them constantly changing, and keep the costs reasonable.

The technology: They needed very bright images and a system of distributing content to multiple locations. Similar to the edge-blending techniques that are being used for large scale video projection at corporate events, they created their own blending and warping technology that allows them to combine multiple video projectors to seamlessly produce massive High-Definition images with twice the light output of any single projector on the market. Arrays of smaller projectors have other big advantages: They tend to be cheaper to buy and maintain than big single projectors and they require a fraction of the projection distance so they can fit in tight storefront window-sized spaces. Once they had the image projection problem solved, they created their own digital signage software that allows them to distribute content to all the signs in their network. Similar to the big signage platforms, they can mix media - video, flash, powerpoint, and live feeds - and combine different content types onto one screen. They can tailor the content by time of day, day of week, time of year, and location. It sounds like a very comprehensive solution.

The most popular storefront signage solution that I have seen uses see-through holographic screens, which do not block the windows for visitors trying to look through the window. But they tend to be small screens, since most holographic screens are only available in smaller sizes, and because they are semi-transparent, they can look quite cluttered if the area behind the screen is brightly lit. WindowGain has solved these issues by targeting windows that no one uses anyway and using solid screen materials.

Content creation: While they accept content from automatic feeds and from customer’s agencies, they also produce content for customers upon request. Their ability to automatically receive and publish content from data feeds also means that these displays can provide information such as news, stocks, weather, and scores that viewers will appreciate in return for having to look at the big advertisements.

The result: They have created a network of high profile high quality digital signage opportunities that they sell to advertisers - local, national, and global. They have also taken dull empty windows and filled them with brilliant images, breathing life into a busy business district. This is a great story about finding ways to reach people, overcoming technical obstacles, and delivering something attractive in place of emptiness.

I suspect the people from this thread will have something to say about the possibility of lots of big video displays around the city, but I personally love the idea. I think that as long as they can maintain a minimum level of visual quality and appropriateness for a public space, and mix it up with artistic elements that people find attractive, then the lack of precision targeting will be forgiven and the visual improvement to the area much appreciated.

Reactrix, a gesture-based interactive signage company who is best known for their permanent interactive floor installations in malls all over the USA, partnered with Samsung at CES to showcase a new product called WAVEscape. Clearly a competitive offering to Gesturetek’s Gestpoint, the WAVEscape appears to be considerably easier to stage. You simply hang a 3D Infrared sensor bar above the screen and you’re ready to go (I think). The sensor can detect hands and fingers in 3D so it can react to motion such as a horizontal sweep or a forward point, which it would probably interpret as a mouse click. It appears to work with several people at once.

The video at Gizmodo makes it look fairly decent, although it suffers from the same awkward lag that Gesturetek’s products can have when the application isn’t well-tuned. They demonstrate the device being used in a “box the panda game” (has PETA seen this?), a traditional point-and-click application, and virtual volleyball.

As a method for creating a compelling interactive experience, with one or more participants, this looks like another promising offering. Is it as intuitive and slick as Microsoft Surface? Not even close - but it can service a larger crowd, will probably work through storefront windows, and is much easier to hang on a wall. It is also much easier to keep clean!

CNET has a nice article about it, too.

Billboardom covered these great video billboards/digital signs that feature the character in one billboard hucking a snowball at the character in the other billboard. Good clean fun. And very achievable with multiple screens in your exhibit, your lobby, the hallways of a trade show, or on the screens of Times Square. Just think outside the boxes.

Is happening over at “The Web Outside“, a blog written by LocaModa’s Jayne Karalow.

The gist: Is digital signage a good thing for society? How can we make it NOT resemble a future shock movie?

Gesturetek, makers of some of the coolest gesture-based interactive displays and software products, recently announced an interesting upgrade to their Screen Xtreme product. Screen Xtreme is a compelling digital signage product that allows the user to interact with the sign simply by passing in front of it. A camera picks up their motion and converts it to a variety of effects and controls. Users can point or wave to control the experience. Often times this experience involves “playing” with a sponsor brand. In one example for the Venus Razor, the screen is filled with colorful flowers, and when the user waves their arm, the flowers scatter as if the user created a virtual breeze. In other examples, the arm wave causes a page flip to additional content. Since the sign can react to someone who merely walks by, it can attract attention far more effectively than a simple video screen or static sign.

The announcement states that their Screen Xtreme system now supports a variety of standard Active X controls, which allows the software to run in coordination with standard digital signage software. Using this approach, retailers and exhibit marketers can produce an informational digital sign that features a highly interactive portion, rather than dedicating the entire sign to the interactive element. That way, the interactive eye-catching part can be the sponsor or big promotional area that pays for the sign, while the rest can be utility information that provides value to the viewer. Everybody wins that way.

In the picture above, which I grabbed from the video on their site, you can see a typical digital sign with a variety of content on the lef side and bottom. The large image shows the President of Gesturetek interacting with the Venus brand by moving his body and arm in front of the camera. Notice how the primary brand image in the lower right is in front of the rest of the interactive, so he can’t mess that part up. This layering effect is a nice bonus so you can be sure to have a sponsor’s logo present at all times.

In fact, the layering capability is core to most of their effects. In many cases, a wave of a hand pushes an array of virtual objects around on the screen, temporarily revealing an image behind them. Eventually the objects manage to flow back onto the screen to once again cover the image. It is that sense of interaction and discovery that makes these types of displays fun and engaging. Now that they can pair up with more traditional signage apps, they just got a whole lot more practical

For more information:
Gesturetek Press Release

Counting eyeballs is on every marketer’s “measurement 101″ curriculum. The eyebox2 from Xuuk (zook) allows you to count people who look at your digital sign. It doesn’t count heads - it counts eyes, and only eyes that are looking at the sign. It is actually a more accurate representation of impressions than a web ad server. Web ad servers cannot tell you if someone looked at an ad - only if they looked at the page.

The device is loaded with invisible light emitters and a tiny camera. The camera can detect light from the emitters reflecting off the back of people’s eyes - similar to flash bulb “red eye”. They must also have some logic in there to tell the difference between different people and people who stand there a long time.

You could, I suppose, use this with advertisers to verify impression counts against a campaign goal. I believe this tool is best used as a method for determining the optimal location of a sign, the optimal types of ads, rotation times, etc. It’s a tweaking tool. And I also imaging that you could use this for applications beyond digital signage. You could use it as a measurement tool at trade shows. Highway officials could use it to determine if that 20mph speed limit sign is sufficiently hidden from view for maximum speeding ticket revenue (I just know they do this somehow already).

I’d like to see this combined with the people-tracking systems offered by Smartvue. That would be one amazing onsite visitor measurement tool.

Are the Tour de France sponsors taking notice of this? Tech blog Everything USB highlights a Japanese website offering a programmable device that you clamp onto the spokes of a bicycle wheel. When the wheel spins, a row of LED’s displays a rotating message for all to see.

Idea: At your next big offsite conference, schedule a bike rally for the attendees. Outfit them with rental bikes and have them ride through the city sporting these LED message boards. They get team-building and energy-building exercise and your company or organization gets splashy promotion. Throw in a charity contribution for everyone who rides and you have headlines, tax benefits, and a noteworthy “green” activity.

This devices is technically ready for purchase, but you’ll have to navigate a rather insane (to my American eyes) Japanese website that features bizarre videos of the product being demonstrated by a guy wearing a horse head mask to hide his identity. I guess. If you want to make your own, these are even better.

Sunrise Systems of Pembroke, MA, a leading manufacturer of custom and semi-custom LED signs, recently launched their semi-transparent LED curtain product shown below. Unlike the LED curtains of their competitors, this product is very transparent and looks great at shorter distances. Also, because it’s optimized for permanent installations, it has the right set of hardware to look nice up close - it’s a great architectural product.

I would consider this a nice piece in a large atrium, museum, or in a large trade show exhibit. This is an attractive, elegant LED product.

You can see more on their website, which is a little frustrating to navigate in Firefox - IE recommended.

Wiffiti, the offspring of Somerville, MA based LocaModa creates digital signs and website objects to which anyone can send text messages for public viewing. It’s a way of creating a comment stream, a shout out board, or a stream of requests for a band or DJ to play. Seems like events can use this as a way to capture the pulse of the show, as a stream-of-consciousness brainstorming exercise, or countless other fun activities.

LocaModa has a powerful offering for mobile-phone-controlled digital signs. Rather than deploy a touch screen, which is fragile, not-very-hygienic, and typically limited to one user, signs that use mobile phones as their control mechanism open up all sorts of interesting possibilities, including two-way communications, group activities, after-hours secure applications through windows, and so on.

I love a great billboard. If you’re going to have to smear ads on the world, at least make ‘em good.

This one, found on Billboardom, points to this site for a few more cool photos.

The challenge for us: find ways to execute ideas like this at conferences, exhibitions, and meetings.