Catalyst

Intel's AIM or Audience Impression Metrics suite offers a complete set of tools for determining audience characteristics such as impressions, length of impressions, potential audience size, and gender and age range demographics. Not only does this provide a more accurate picture of your overall viewership, but it also allows you to tailor signage content in real-time based on the individual or audience demographic.

We've partnered with Intel to provide complete integration of AIM into our PC based players. This provides the ability to deliver engaging, dynamic content that is driven by the age, gender, or size of audience in front of your screens. For example, a clothing retailer could change the emphasis of their ads to be more male or female oriented based on the average audience gender. A sign could switch from an 'attract mode' playlist to a more focused playlist based on audience size. The flexibility of the RevelDigital platform combined with the intelligent analytics of AIM provide a whole new level of customer engagement.

For more info on the AIM Suite see the Intel website here: http://intel.cognovision.com/intel-aim-suite.
Call or email us about getting your signage connected to AIM.

With modern web browsers closing the performance gap with native applications coupled with HTML5 support for everything from 2D immediate mode graphics to databases, we are starting to see things thought only possible in a desktop app. A great example of this performance is the ability to emulate old hardware right in the browser! You can find emulators for the Nintendo, Sinclair ZX, and Gameboy all created in nothing more than some Javascript and HTML. I decided to make a contribution to this collection with the emulation of the RadioShack MC-10 micro computer. This was a sentimental choice being the first computer I owned and unfortunately serves no modern practical purpose whatsoever. It still gives me the warm fuzzies and hopefully will for all the other mc-10 owners out there, all 12 of us!

Check it out at mc-10.com.

In the wake of all the extreme weather events recently we thought it would be a good idea to make our alert system a little more robust. We have always had support for manually triggered alerts, but the likelihood of anybody taking the time to initiate an alert when a tornado is bearing down on them is next to nil. For this reason we've done some work to integrate seamlessly with the national EAS (Emergency Alert System) and NWS (National Weather Service) to automate the alerting process in the event of a severe and immediate emergency. This means that when a warning is issued for your area your digital signage will automatically switch over to a highly visible 'alert mode' which has warning details along with an alert tone. The warning details include the type of alert along with the full text of the warning message. When the warning has expired your signage will resume playing your 'regularly scheduled programming'.

Enable automated alerts for your account on the Account > Tools > Configure Automated Alerts page, or just click here. We strongly encourage enabling this feature as a service to your viewers!

For you technical folk out there we've put together an example of using our REST API to create a mobile app. The purpose of the app is to compliment your signage by providing viewers the ability to view a playlist in slideshow format on their mobile device. The playlist could be one currently playing on your sign or a completely different playlist from your library. To access the app viewers scan a QR code on the sign which loads the app in their mobile browser. A great example scenario for this would be in a retail environment where customers could scan and take the signage with them for viewing coupons or store specials. Scan the QR code for a preview of the app in action.

We've provided a KB article on our support site here: http://support.reveldigital.com/kb/advanced-topics/use-the-rest-api-to-create-a-mobile-app

For documentation on the REST API check out our wiki site here: https://sites.google.com/site/revelapi/home

Finance Template

A few more sample templates have been added to the gallery, this time with financial and conference themes. The financial template utilizes Google Gadgets for both real time stock quotes and also for a financial news feed. Customize the stock quote gadget to display any number of your own symbols. The news feed gadget allows for any RSS/ATOM feed and supports rich HTML content. The QR code on this template points to the RSS feed for mobile viewing.

Conference Template

The conference template provides an example of using Google Calendar to supply a fictional event schedule for this years CES show. This of course is just an example which is loosely based on actual events from the show. Again we used a gadget to pull data from the calendar which can display events in both a consolidated (as shown) or tabular format. Events are displayed in chronological order with the next scheduled event shown first. Viewers are able to quickly determine the next event and how to get there.

We've also published the original template art for all sample templates in Photoshop PSD format which can be downloaded from our support site here: http://support.reveldigital.com/kb/advanced-topics/template-gallery-downloads.

We've rolled out a couple more sample templates in the template gallery which incorporate some of our platforms' newer features. Following up on our previous blog post we've utilized Google gadgets as a means to deliver the more dynamic template content including Twitter updates and Google Docs data.

Twitter Template

In the Twitter template you'll find a section for live Twitter updates, a media zone for video/images/flash/etc, and a QR code which encourages the viewer to engage in the conversation. The Twitter zone continuously updates with the latest tweets giving viewers a way to follow the twitter conversation in real time.

Directory Template

The Directory template is a simple example of a business directory which pulls the listing information from a Google spreadsheet. The QR code in this template directs viewers to an HTML version of the same spreadsheet which they can reference at any time from their mobile device.

The Gadgets in these examples are all available at our Google Project page at http://code.google.com/p/reveldigital-gadgets/. We've found Gadgets to be a relatively easy way to get some simple dynamic content integrated into your signage. If you require a bit more control over the template or require more complicated integration you can always utilize template scripting.