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 kiosks are located in the New KPF Money Stores being added to many of the grocery chain stores, one kiosk will be public facing while another will be in office where a representative can help consumers with the offers.

The kiosks are currently in a pilot phase at the newly opened Kroger location in Norwood.  If you live in Cincinnati, stop by and check them out.

A few more images below

More information at: http://freedomcenter.org/freedom-forum/?p=1156
And check out upcoming events at:
http://freedomcenter.org/freedom-forum/index.php/events/

If you have not visited, you will be amazed at this experience. If you have, you may be amazed at what has been updated since your last visit, or the temporary exhibit may be a great way to spend a couple of hours out of the summer heat with your family. Don’t forget they have a great deli / cafe on site for when you get hungry.

We hope you have a nice holiday weekend!

Symbicon has a great line of outdoor LCD enclosures that provide full environmental control.  Heat in the winter and cooling in the summer, super high bright screens for daylight readability and completely sealed and durable enclosures.   Many options are available such as integrated PC, Wifi, various finishes and more. Being from Finland, they build these to resist some very cold and harsh climates.  Many ski resorts in Europe and the USA use these products for outdoor marketing, wayfinding and promotion.  These units are super engineered and well made.   Electrograph had one in their booth at the DSE show in February 2009 which was huge!  Just what you need outside to message to large crowds.

See our Symbicon page for more details and spec PDF docs.

Informational screens at Helsinki mall

Outdoor 57inch LCD on Chicago train station

Symbicon outdoor LCD 57 inch in Saalbach

82 inch LCD in Austrian ski resort

Kiosk Print Station shown as a grocery app.

We recently showcased the new Zebra Kiosk Print Station at our booth in KioskCom, Las Vegas 2009. It is an off the shelf printer enclosure for all in one kiosks or point of sale devices. The new product can be wall mounted or table top mounted to provide printing capabilities to your kiosk terminal in a very small footprint. Made by Zebra, who manufactures printers that are used in retail, POS, and many kiosks. We first saw the kiosk print station at the National Retail Federation show back in January (NRF in NYC) where Zebra was unveiling the new product.  I think this will be a big hit with applications such as gift registries, loyalty card programs, product locators and HR applications.  We have one at our office if you’d like to see one in person. And, those of you who subscribe to our E-Newsletter got a special promo price last month to kick it off!  Those of you who don’t subscribe should consider it to get monthly specials on hardware as well as brief information about recent projects and happenings at Electronic Art.

More details on the Zebra Kiosk Print Station are available in the kiosk section of our web site. And if you are looking for a kiosk enclosure that includes a printer, you know you’re in good hands with Zebra components!

In this role, Burke plans to provide marketing and PR guidance to promote the awareness of the industry association and increase membership. He expects to work with other association committees to help them achieve their missions as well.

“Marketing is one of my key strengths. I’ll help drive awareness through social media, trade shows and other events with attendees that consume digital signage,” Burke said.

Burke’s first goal is to get the DSA involved with the Cincinnati Digital Non-Conference to be held on Sept. 24 - 25, which provides a targeted audience for the DSA to provide education and drive awareness of the association. He will also encourage involvement in the Digital Signage Expo and other events that serve to educate agencies, media and IT professionals, architects, and property management firms about digital signage.

DSA members are some of the most prominent and respected suppliers in the digital signage industry. Other committee chairpersons were named at the board meeting, including Margot Myers of the Platt Retail Institute, the chair of the Education & Certification committee, and Greg Masingill of Seneca Data, the chair of the Membership committee.

“Our industry has grown tremendously in the past three years and is expected to double in size by 2012. I want to help lead the organization meet its mission and play a role in that industry growth,” Burke said.

For more information about Electronic Art, contact Tim Burke at (513) 321-1771 or tburke@electronicart.com, or visit www.ElectronicArt.com.

About the Digital Signage Association

The purpose of the Digital Signage Association (DSA) is to accelerate the growth and advance the excellence of digital signage deployments worldwide. The DSA strives to help those deploying digital signage solutions be as successful as possible. The Association is built on three pillars: advocacy, education and networking. For more information, visit http://www.digitalsignageassociation.com.

About Electronic Art

Electronic Art (www.ElectronicArt.com) is a Cincinnati-based interactive agency specializing in kiosks and digital signage as well as many related online services. Originally founded in 1998 and incorporated in 2002, Electronic Art began primarily as a Web studio offering high end custom programming, ecommerce, and design. Electronic Art provides custom solutions for many industries in kiosks, digital signage and website development. Sales of kiosk and digital signage hardware allow for a complete solution from one vendor, and an onsite IT staff handles build, integration and support needs.

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.

Leave your twitter username in the comments below and we’ll follow you back.