Monthly Archives: November 2016

Seenspire launches Social Media Wall

Seenspire is a European firm that specializes in developing attention-grabbing, and high-impact digital signage content.  The company already offered some really good digital signage content but this new product takes them in a whole new direction.  The Seenspire Social Media wall fills in a gap that has been underserved in the marketplace.

For example, most CMS software vendors and paid content providers offer varying levels of support for social media content.  Some products will let you display social media content from specific sources but you can’t preview or curate the content.  This is why Seenspire created a new product that includes professionally designed layouts, a preview feature, and a sophisticated content curation system.  You can apply a range of filters to any social media feed, then curate the content yourself or let the Seenspire social media system filter the content based on your parameters.

You can filter social media posts based on hashtags, or pick from a range of options to ensure only approved content gets displayed on your screens.  This content plays well with most CMS products out there and the solution can even be used on its own, assuming your’re only publishing social media feeds on your screens.  It’s not a total replacement for a good CMS product, but it offers enough features you could use it on it’s own with a full screen browser.

It’s a great solution for retail stores, hospitality, social events and trade shows.  Social media is a hot trend right now so anyone looking for engaging and relevant content should check it out!

sports_screen

Seenspire Traditional Digital Signage Paid Content

HP launching powerful multi-screen capable mini-PC

HP has recently announced a new Xeon-powered mini-PC that may be attractive to folks deploying digital signage for multi-screen menu boards.  The company refers to the new PC as a mini workstation with Intel Xeon CPU and NVIDIA Quadro graphics card.

HP multi-screen capable mini-PC

HP mini-workstation

The case measures only 2.3 inches tall, making it easily mountable behind a display.  The unit features a custom cooling system that is said to be 63 percent quieter than HP’s current business-class mini PCs.  These are interesting specs for anyone considering a solid digital signage PC.

You will be able to order one with a lower-class CPU, like an Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 and different RAM and SSD storage combinations depending on your needs.  Prices are said to start around $700 USD and ramp up depending on the configuration.

This small form factor PC may offer a really good alternative to many industrial PC brands that have been active in the digital signage market.  It’s hard not to ignore HP’s support and service infrastructure when you’re planning a national deployment.  It will be interesting to see if HP can make inroads into this market.

Click here for the full engadget review.

Comedy show makes fun of Tim Hortons digital menu boards

This Hour has 22 Minutes is a popular comedy show on the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster.  The show likes to poke fun at politics, current events, and pretty well everything else.  In this clip, the show takes aim at Tim Horton’s digital menu boards.  The clip was posted originally on the program’s Facebook page (see below screen capture – couldn’t find a direct link to the file).

We’ve all seen menu boards that rotate their content too quickly for anyone to read anything.  I saw something similar recently in a Burger King that was swapping out their English and French menus so quickly that you couldn’t read everything.  It’s frustrating and illustrates some of the issues QSR operators face when deploying digital signage.

Well done guys!