By Rob Everton
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.
By Rob Everton
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?
By Rob Everton
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