Finally, after a slight delay brought about by a global financial crisis, RedPost today is announcing our new commercial leasing program. We’ve found a great partner in TriLease Corp, a Raleigh, NC-based company with over 10 years experience with a wide variety of assets (from software to recycling systems) and companies, from corporations to non-profits.

So why would you care about leasing? Because we can wrap everything — and I mean everything — into one monthly payment. This includes:

• hardware: digital signs, mounts, cables
• installation: by professionals, on-site
• maintenance: extended warranty, on-site troubleshooting
• software: subscription prices, support and training
• event content: professional graphic, video or animation design and management, if you need it

In the example of the graphic above, for one 19″ RedPost/Sign, all of the above (excluding content) works out to about $63/mo. Not too shabby. And after 3 years, you own the hardware and your monthly payment drops down to just the software and maintenance, if you need it.

Of course, TriLease has to approve you for a lease. And you have to be credit-worthy. But they’re great to work with and flexible in their terms.

All-in-all, a great option that can really simplify the entire process.

• a redesigned home page: we’re trying to keep it simple and yet add some fresh elements (News & Updates and the photos) and keep some motion (the photos)
• Advertise: this page shows off our three ad networks, two here in Goshen and one in Chicago — we’ve gotten complaints that it’s hard to figure out where to go to buy ads, this is an attempt to solve that problem. When we’ve got hundreds of networks, we’ll add a nice interactive map and search feature. For now, it’s pretty basic.
• Leasing program: Yes, we now have a commercial leasing program! It just took us about a year after announcing leasing for everything to fall into place. A global financial crisis didn’t help much on the timing of things.
• User Photos: we’ve updated our photos page with a bunch of new photos
• New local expert: We’ve added Digital Sign Solutions to our Get Started page. DSS is based out of Raleigh, NC, and has many years experience with all sorts of digital sign hardware, software, implementation and content.
• We made a bunch of other tweaks and improvements throughout the site

What do you think of the new home page?

Either way, the job market will still be in terrible shape. The unemployment rate, at 9.8 percent in September, could conceivably hit 10 percent for the first time since 1983. When that happens, some economists are bound to argue that the normal mechanisms of economic recovery have broken down.

So it’s a good time to remember that when an economy is just coming out of recession, its weaknesses are always more obvious than its potential strengths.

“Of course, there is a long list of things to worry about,” says Robert Barbera, an economist and the author of a recent book on the financial crisis. “But it’s ever thus. If that were the reason you didn’t have a genuine recovery, you would never have a genuine recovery.”

People tend to become overly pessimistic at the end of a recession, partly because they can see that the forces behind the last boom — housing and mortgage lending, in this case — won’t be around for the next one. If anything, the excesses from the last boom seem likely to hold back the economy for years to come. People are left to wonder where future growth will come from.

So essentially, the things that are going to power the next economic boom in our country we are blind to right now. But they’ve already started and are all around us. And in a year or so, we’ll be talking about them like they’re normal, everyday things. Kinda like Twitter, right? Except they haven’t made a dime yet…

• digital signage
• DOOH = Digital Out Of Home
• SIP = Screens In Public
• Captive audience networks
• Place-based media

And many more. All of them suck. I prefer “digital signs” over digital signage, as I hate that “-age” append-age. A great discussion going in between the digital sign blog-o-sphere, started by this essay on BroadSign’s blog:

Of all these terms, the only one to really stick through the better part of two decades is the term digital signage. The new kid on the block seems to be digital out-of-home and to its credit, it is the only alternative to digital signage that has really stuck.

And Barnaby over at Screens.tv:

This sector clearly isn’t part of TV, and until interaction is almost universal it’s mischievous at best to classify it under digital interactive or other umbrella terms for Internet and mobile. Yet what is undeniably true is that it is entirely out-of-home, and this is one of the few characteristics that unite what Parisien points out are an extremely diverse bunch of networks and applications.

LCD’s are starting to go “un-noticed” – they’re everywhere. Projection is back ! “floating content” is as modern as it gets

If that’s true, that LCDs are being totally ignored, 95% of this industry will be in ruins tomorrow. My rant, as usual, is that it’s not the technology, it’s the content. Whether it’s projected or LCD’d or TV’d — if it’s crap, no one will look at it. Stay tuned for tomorrow.

While it has been our hope that health centers who submitted their CHC-TV paperwork before the end of October would have their installations complete by the end of 2008, we regret that we must adjust our installation timetable. Due to unforeseen issues related to manufacturer-led recalls of CHC-TV system components, and effects stemming from the nation’s ongoing financial crisis, NACHC and its partners are unable to guarantee installation of your requested units before the end of 2008. Please rest assured though, that NACHC and its CHC-TV partners are doing everything possible to ensure that previously submitted installation requests will be fulfilled by the Spring of 2009; and any installation requests submitted after October 2008 will likely take place soon after.

So far, the response to RedPost’s IHIN concept has been positive. We’ll see if we fare better than CHC-TV has. We’re not trying to give it away for free, supporting it with ads. We see value in the concept and our test-marketing shows that people are willing to pay for ad-free content.

The digital sign industry has very much depended on the “free” model for a lot of its growth so far (Ripple TV, CHC-TV, many others). I don’t think this is a winning, long term strategy. Time will tell.

Check it out next weekend, right after First Fridays, of course.

Universities don’t teach Ruby on Rails because universities are not vocational schools. Universities teach theory, ideas, and thought processes, not individual implementations. This is also why universities do not, as a rule, teach each of: Drupal, Django, WebX, CakePHP, Zend, web.py, Google Web Toolkit, Struts, Spring, Wicket, and all the 10,000 other web frameworks available today. The idea would be that a CS department teaches students how to PROGRAM and the THEORY of computer programming, rather than any one explicit technology. If a school taught only COBOL, for example, it would have seemed very progressive 20 years ago, but the students it produced would be very unprepared for new programing languages and paradigms today.

Some of the features of the website:

• lists detailed information on over 14 events held in downtown Goshen, with the ability of participating businesses to post to the event pages
• allows downtown business owners to submit promotions for downtown events
• manages a directory of about 200 business listings
• manages donation records to the non-profit that runs the website

Isaiah and I joined Dave Pottinger, who’s almost 80 and in much better shape than most 40yo’s, in rotating the kiosk so that the screen faces the street; before, it was facing the sidewalk. Elkhart County’s new regulations don’t effect this sign, either, as we’re in the city, although, I’m not sure what their definition of “flashing” is, as ours doesn’t “flash” it “flips” between images.

Anyways, as I was walking home this though struck me: by my very unofficial count, the city of Goshen has approximately one digital sign for every 1,523 people. This is possibly one of the highest per capita number of digital signs anywhere in the world. “Facts” like these are better left unproven.

• Current health issues (H1N1 flu precautions, MRSA, HIV / AIDS)
• Healthy lifestyles (Infant / child car seats, Immunization, Healthy diets and exercise)
• Office procedures (programs and services, sliding fees and payment procedures, scheduling and keeping appointments)
• Contributing to the community (Register to vote, Places to volunteer, How to become a health center advocate)

Here’s a flyer with some basic details. More info to come. If you want to join the network, contact Don.

Oh yeah, and get this: the cost to participate is approximately $150/mo for a 3 year lease (we won’t know the final cost until we know the total number of participants). This includes everything: two 26″ digital signs, installation/maintenance, Indiana-specific health care content, software login to add local info, support and training.

Greencroft Central Manor Inc.

Goshen College Inc

Elkhart County Consortium

County of Elkhart

This is along those same lines, from Science Friday two weeks ago:

Here’s the summary:

How can your friends — and your friends’ friends — affect you? We’ll talk with Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, two researchers exploring social networks and how they affect our health and behavior. In their new book ‘Connected,’ the pair describe research into how social networks tie into obesity, smoking, voting behavior, happiness, and more.

So people two degrees away from you, your friends’ friends, who you don’t even know, can actually impact your life. And you theirs. Fascinating!

Shirley sent shared this link with me today of a blog post about a PR distribution company, eReleases, who welcomes new customers with a photo of their staff and the customer’s name written on a whiteboard. Great idea! A good way to put a human face on an all-electronic service.