The SignSwift Blog
Digital Signage For Small Business
SignSwift HD1080p Player
Jul 28th
The SignSwift HD1080p Player is now available for purchase. Featuring an HDMI output this player can turn any 1080i or 1080p capable LCD screen into a vibrant digital sign that will be sure to attract more attention to your business.
We are currently shipping this item through eBay, please visit ebay.com.
Using Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Techniques to Create Better Digital Signage
Apr 24th
Techniques used for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optmization (SEO) might seem like they would have nothing to do with the techniques used in Digital Signage but there’s a lot that Digital Signage Professionals can learn from the world of Search Engine Marketing.
When you sit down to plan a Digital Signage Campaign you need to come up with the text and graphics you will use on your displays. But how do you know which words will attract the most attention within your target audience? How do you pick your key headings to drive the greatest attention? For example, if you were making a digital sign for an Indian Restaurant how could you know that the words ‘tandori’, ‘vegetarian’, ‘spice’ and ‘saffron’ where all words that people associate with that type of business? And how could you know how important each of those words was to them?
Well, that exactly the kind of information you can get from SEO Keyword Tools! They can tell you exactly what phrases people associate with any particular word or term, so by simply entering “indian restaurant” and “indian cuisine” into an SEO Keyword Tool we get the answers we need to craft our Digital Signage Display.
One of the newest SEO Keyword Tools is actually one we wrote ourselves, you can find it at http://seokeywordsearch.com. Unlike every other tool out there it provides a unique graphical approach to SEO Keyword Analysis because it creates for you a complete map of the keywords for any starting phrase and it shows you just how important each word is and how they relate to each other. In a matter of minutes you have a clear picture of the subject matter and can craft great looking digital signage displays that meet your end-users’ expectations precisely.
So stop guessing what people want to see on your digital signage displays, and start using SEO Keyword Analysis today to improve your work.
SignSwift featured on Microsoft.com today
Apr 12th
As part of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 launch today a case study featuring SignSwift appeared on Microsoft.com. You can read the case study here.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006885
Fonts and typography for digital signage
Apr 8th
High quality typography gets your message across better
The fonts and typography used in your digital signage display will be critical for determining how visible it is across a room. SignSwift includes best-of-breed rendering technology based on Version 4 of Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Format (WPF) technology. Compare our output against that of any other digital signage solution – we don’t think you’ll find anything better.
According to Microsoft “The WPF text rendering stack … brings improvements to text rendering configurability, clarity, and support for international languages. The new text stack now supports explicitly selecting aliased, grayscale, or ClearType rendering modes. The text stack now supports display-optimized character layout … optimized text hinting and snapping for either animated or static text.”
Because SignSwift renders each image at exactly the right resolution for your display it is able to render great looking text for any display size. The addition of contrasting drop shadows and complementary color selection further enhances the way our text looks.
When it’s your brand-image on the line, we think you’ll agree with us that having crisp, brilliant typography is critical and you shouldn’t accept anything less than the best.
Digital Signage Reliability Metrics
Apr 7th
You need reliable software/firmware for digital signage displays
One statistic you probably won’t find in any of the literature for the various digital signage systems available on the market today is a reliability metric. All of us have seen displays like this one where the computer powering the digital sign has crashed or failed to start up.
There are several ways to deal with the inherent unreliability of computer software:-
1. Use a simpler solution. If you are running Windows or Linux behind your digital signage display you will eventually have to deal with updates, device drivers, configuration changes and other issues that affect overall reliability, up-time and maintenance costs. If you use a fixed-function digital signage player these issues are less likely.
2. Use a solid-state device with no moving parts: Disk drives are inherently unreliable over long periods of time, SSD’s with no moving parts or flash-memory-based players are likely to be more reliable in the long-run.
3. Keep it simple: If your digital signage display combines live video streams, RSS feeds, scheduled playback of content and more it’s going to be inherently less reliable than a simpler system. It’s a simple mathematical fact that 99.9% reliability applied across, say, 4 subsystems, will give you only 99.6% overall reliability (and often less when the communication failures between these subsystems is taken into account). 99.6% may sound just fine to you as a reliability number but that’s over a day every year when your digital sign is not working! Let’s hope it’s a quiet day for your business and that you notice it in time!
Working on our new design
Apr 3rd
The new site design is coming along and should be up shortly. Here’s a preview of the direction we are moving:-
Seattle skyline by night
Mar 20th
Seattle skyline
Here’s a picture we took last night of the Seattle skyline
The Anatomy of a Digital Signage Software Service (SaaS)
Mar 8th
For those of you who are technically inclined you might be interested to know a little about how SignSwift works so we put together the attached block diagram. As you can see from the diagram: behind the scenes here at SignSwift, LLC there are a lot of moving parts that come together to bring you the high quality rendered images and text that you need for your digital signs. You’ll also note the use of Amazon’s highly reliable S3 storage system – any images you upload to SignSwift are stored here, securely and reliably.
Digital Signage Example: Floating screen with product feature information
Mar 2nd
Digital Signage Display for Whirlpool Washing Machines in Lowes
I came across this digital sign in Lowes today for Whirlpool washing machines. It had an interesting floating mount that put the display right above the washing machine itself. It was running a video loop but also had a touch screen interface allowing users to pick features and explore them in more detail.
Click the image to enlarge it.
As digital signage becomes ever more prevalent in major chains like this there will naturally be a trickle down to smaller stores and that’s what we are focused on here at SignSwift – bringing the same benefits that the major brands are enjoying with their digital signage projects and making the process easy and fun so that any small business can create, operate and maintain their own in-store digital signage display.
Templates make it easy to create great looking digital signage with character
Apr 13th
Posted by Ian in commentary
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Templates make it easy to create great looking digital signage with character
Templates are one of the features of Signswift that makes it easy to create great looking digital signage without much effort. Templates bring a consistent look and feel to your digital signage display even when different images are used on each slide in your project.
Signswift plans to continually add new templates and we are always on the lookout for great ideas, so if you have a favorite color scheme or layout you’d like to see us add, just add a comment below or send us an email and we’ll add your suggestion to the pot from which we pick out new template ideas.