Archive for August, 2008

Posted on August 19, 2008 - by Nate

Henry Cejudo, another Great American Wrestler.

I’m big into wrestling. It was my sport of choice in high school. I loved it. I’m not sure how many have been paying attention to the Olympics lately, but America had a wrestler place gold for the ninth time in nine Olympics. Henry Cejudo, a 21-year old son of undocumented Mexican immigrants won the Gold Medal for Freestyle in the 55 kg weight class.

I think it’s a great testament to the American Dream and the unconquerable nature of the American spirit. He’s story is pretty amazing. From humble beginnings, Cejudo could not stop the flow of tears after defeating Tomohiro Matsunaga in a 2-2 tiebreaker, beating him in the series 3-0.

My personal favorite wrestler, Cael Sanderson, I’m sure was watching on. Cael himself completed college with a record of 159-0, 4 NCAA titles, 3 Dan Hodge Trophy awards, 4-time NCAA Outstanding Wrestler, and 4-time Big 12 Champion. Not too shabby. Dan Gable himself even admitted, Cael was better than he had been.

Good to hear America is still dominating in the oldest and greatest sport: wrestling!

Posted on August 18, 2008 - by Nate

Digital Signage Directories and Forums: How many do we really need?

Just like digital signage vendors and networks themselves, there seems to be a lot of “me-too” offerings for digital signage directories and forums. Forums seem to be the most popular. I just noticed another Digital Signage Forum pop up. It was created by DSN3G.com, a cellular digital signage connectivity company.

It’s merely a Search Engine Optimization ploy to build critical mass onto a particular group of websites. We’ve already got the directory run by The Digital Signage Group and The Digital Signage Universe, both of which have their own forum which they’re associated with. Incidentally, AKA.tv also runs their own “Screens” forum as well. The 4 forums (at least those I know about) and 2 directories charge digital signage vendors for advertising on their particular site. They are cannibalizing each other’s profits. Silly, silly, silly if you ask me.

While everyone is scrambling to gain the “most hits” and “most visitors” to their digital signage site, it may be wise to avoid the “Red Oceans” of competition, and bring something new to the table. Just a thought. I’m not going to give specific advice, but trying to build something unique that would help theirs and others’ businesses succeed.

Posted on August 14, 2008 - by Nate

Short Code Procurement for Mobile Marketing and Digital Signage

I just wrote an article on the integration of SMS mobile marketing and digital signage. It explains some of the benefits of implementing a mobile marketing campaign with a digital signage network. It also outlines, in broad terms, how to procure a short code and implement standard SMS interactivity with digital signage.

In a larger network situation where scalability is possible, SMS short code procurement is almost a must for cutting costs and increasing efficiency. But, it’s all a numbers game. Is your network scalable enough to warrant paying $500 to $1000 a month for the short code fees, not to mention the cost per text? Is it worth it to you to go through the hassle of software development to ensure your SMS campaigns work flawlessly? If so, then procuring your own short code may be beneficial for you.

In some instances it may be a question of whether you want to go there. Am I an SMS company or a digital signage company? Or do I want to be a digital signage company who integrates their own SMS solutions? These questions are of vital importance when working on integrating mobile marketing with your digital signage.

In my opinion, it’s not a matter of “should I” implement mobile marketing into my digital signage platform, it’s” how do I implement it?” Hopefully this whitepaper outlines general terms of how to get started on procuring your own short code.

To view the article in its entirety, please CLICK HERE.

Posted on August 13, 2008 - by Nate

Google Knol and NoFollow or DoFollow Links: Spam?

Google Knol is truly another me-too internet application which allows Google to push more traffic through their servers (as opposed to Wikipedia). This will allow them to make more from advertising because more of the traffic will be coming to them. It’s like having Google ads on a Google version of Wikipedia. Of course, Wikipedia was cool with it. The internet is a source for free information right?

This is truly another genius move my Google to increase their bottom line. The only problem is I’ve seen a ton of negative backlash in the blogoshere to Google Knol. Some have even “prophesied” the demise of the new project. I doubt it. Once information starts getting populated it will end up a great resource for information on the internet.

Which reminds me to talk about the benefits of it over Wikipedia as well as the downsides when compared to Wikipedia. Knol is not heavily guarded for accuracy. There may be much more “garbage” information that will show up in the Knol database than on Wikipedia. In addition, it appears as though the site allows for no-no follow or dofollow links to be placed in articles. This could be used as a type of spamming. At least, that’s certainly a possibility.

Posted on August 7, 2008 - by Nate

Let’s Showcase Funny Digital Signage.

I’m not sure if you ever feel like this? I have some family members living in Asia right now. I was just chatting with them and we started talking about the funny signage in such countries.

So, I directed them to Engrish.com. What a great website. It had been a while since I had visited, so there was quite a bit of new content. On some of them I teared up I was laughing so hard. It’s interesting, because this type of content on digital signage would be awesome! I’m sure it’s out there. But, I’m also sure that the dynamic nature of the signage would make it difficult to snap a picture before the signage changed.

However, for those who ARE able to snag such a picture, it sure would be great to bring it all together. I think there needs to be a showcase of funny digital signage. If it’s caught, we need to have a place to post it so it gets attention! What do you think? How should we about doing this? Is anyone else in?

If you think there should be a showcase somewhere of interesting and entertaining digital signage caught on tape somewhere, let me know by commenting to this post your suggestions on how it should be done.

Posted on August 2, 2008 - by Nate

SMTP, Sendmail, PHP Tutorial For Joomla 1.5 and Gmail Integration.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably got the same problem I had: you get some sort of error when you use the Joomla Contact form. You’ve read through all the online tutorials and you’ve probably tried all the suggestions and manipulated the contacts, the server under “global config” etc., but to no avail. Am I right.

For some reason I could not get the PHP or SMTP function to work on my digital signage site. I already have Gmail set up as my email client in Hostmonster and it works fine. I also had all my contact information setup with the client email as my email of use. The problem I was getting was that the sendmail was working for the “copy” email, but it was not sending me the email–which was the most important part of the process.

Here was the problem and here was how I fixed it.

Under my MX mail settings in Hostmonster Cpanel, I changed one thing. Where it says, “Always accept mail locally even if the primary mx does not point to this server” my settings were set to “yes.” I merely changed them back to “no” and now it all works swimmingly. I hope this helps. The reason I’m posting it is because I spent WAY too long trying to figure this out–for just a simple fix.

Posted on August 1, 2008 - by Nate

Bizzo Media Digital Signage Lights up Salt Lake City.

This photo was snagged by Ben Beck waiting for the bus downtown Salt Lake earlier this week. The company has placed some rear projection digital signage in a vacant storefront. It’s a great use of space not being utilized. In addition, the signage sits where countless people are waiting for the bus, so it gets quite a few eyeballs.

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