Scala Digital Signage Web

Scala will be present at the Screen Expo Europe, Earls Court, London. Come check us out at Stand B23.

From the press release:

Scala will be teaming with Scala Certified Partner DigiSigns.co.uk to present the world's most widely deployed Digital Signage software platform in the world. With over 30,000 licenses in use around the globe, Scala's InfoChannel® is recognized as the leading Digital Signage software platform in the industry.

Labels: digital signage, infochannel, screen expo

Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

I've added a new area to the Scala home page called "Resources". This will serve as a repository for all kinds of information about the digital signage industry from various sources. The inaugural content concerns "Retail Signage" and is a great starting point for this area, so please head on over to the Scala home page for more information.

There will be more resources being added to this area in the very near future; check back often and watch it grow!

Have a great weekend!

Labels: digital signs, resources, retail signage

Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

Check out the Scala Home Page and take a look at the new videos available for streaming. These videos will also be available for download at full size; stay tuned and I will update this post with the location.
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

One of the advantages of virtualization that I did not mention in my last post about disruptive technologies is the remote administration possibilities. You can remotely log in to the guest operating system just like any machine, over RDP or perhaps VNC, but virtualization also allows you to connect to the host machine, if it's configured to allow it. The key advantage here is that it allows you control of the virtual hardware itself - you can do shutdowns and reboots, allocate drive space, even add new hardware remotely (as long as it's physically available to the host machine).

But what if you are not using virtualization? Using VNC or RDP to a given server or networked appliance could get you console access, but that's as far as it gets. Enter the new IP Control KVM product announced by Minicom. According to their press release:

The palm-sized hardware device lets service administrators perform BIOS level access and control operations for remote computers, via a standard web-browser. With IP Control, extended downtime becomes a thing of the past as mission-critical computers and intelligent devices can be rebooted, without direct physical contact and without having to wait for a field technician to arrive on site.

This is similar to the access you would get by connecting to a VM host OS remotely. Their remote KVM technology even gives you access to the BIOS which can be necessary at times. So if you're not planning on moving to virtualization, or if the application you're managing does not lend itself to running in a VM, the Minicom IP Control device will get you a great level of remote administration access to your machine.
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

David Strom from ITNews.com.au writes an interesting piece on 5 technologies he thinks we should keep an eye on during 2007, including a few of my personal favorites: RFID, advanced graphics, and server virtualization. Do they have the potential to be disruptive?

Let's get back to basics and discuss disruptive technology, or really, disruptive innovation. This is a term dating back to 1997 when Clayton Christensen wrote "The Innovator's Dilemma". Disruptive technology, according to Wikipedia, refers to a "technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or product in the market."

Christensen eventully realized that technologies aren't inherently disruptive and so shifted his terminology to "disruptive innovation" - disruption depends in large part on how things play out in the market which includes strategy, funding, etc.

RFID is seen by many as a potentially disruptive innovation that would displace barcodes. It's already happening in warehouses and shipping, with Walmart being an oft-cited example.

RFID could also find its way into some scheme that interacts with digital signage. Strom talks about the new generation of graphics hardware that can actually take significant loads off a CPU in certain cases, but when I think of graphics as disruptive, I think of digital signage. This medium is spreading like wildfire and is making inroads anywhere you can see a physical paper sign now. And with the advent of ePaper, plastic circuits, and tiny projectors, you can easily see how disruptive digital signage might be. As adoption increases and hardware costs come down, along with awesome new form factors, we're sitting on the cutting edge of a highly disruptive wave of innovation.

Flexible, low-cost epaper could be used one day wallpaper a house! Forget bumper stickers or waving your arms outside the car - lightweight flexible displays on your car could tell people what you really think. Labels on store shelves can update themselves automatically when a new product is placed over top of them (another RFID application). And as we now know, perhaps one day your fast food restaurant tray might be an endless source of entertainment.

I need to do a bit of thinking yet about server virtualization with regards to its disruptiveness. My experiences with it have been very positive so far with modern hardware underneath it. No more hours of babysitting Ghost operations - a 5-minute "snapshot" will suffice and then you can copy your entire machine snapshot while the VM hums along undisturbed. Need to bring a new web application live very quickly? Chances are, someone's made a "virtual appliance" that you can download for free, customize and then secure relatively fast. Have backup copies on warm standby that you can bring live within minutes of a disaster. Afraid of what might happen with the next round of Windows updates? Take a snapshot so you can roll back you system effortlessly. And so on...
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

This article from Ryerson University's unofficial student newspaper (nice site, BTW) mentions how Scala digital signage is being used to keep the students informed. Most interesting, however, is the reference to a system they implemented in the 1970s, long before Scala came about:

Brad Fortner, the RCC program director of operations & technology, who is responsible for the RCC screens said, “My hope in reestablishing Scala (news system) in the RCC was that Ryerson would enter as whole, take common information and move it to a central screen and another screen that is local.”

Fortner said that in the seventies, Ryerson had news feeds in a wheel that included 6” by 4” cards with messages that were taped with a camera, then broadcast to the campus. They were presented on screens at every entrance and every main office. However, during cutbacks in the 1980s, the system was abolished. “I thought the effect of the message system then was to bring a sense of community.”

“Without a coordinated messaging system it’s really difficult to promote (information) across campus and it would be pretty easy to put that in place.”

If I recall correctly, my college had Scala running on the campus cable channel in the mid-1990s, which played in many locations throughout campus as well as in anyone's dorm who could afford a television :-) It was actually a very handy way to get campus announcements and was probably one of the most watched channels when severe weather might lead to cancelled classes.

As for Ryerson, one student quoted in the article states that the screens seem unlikely to influence purchases, but we know that 75% of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale....
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

New to Scala.com: Dick Trask, Scala's Director of Marketing, writes an informative article about planning for future expansion in your signage network. You may think you only need 10 players, but when choosing your signage platform be sure to take into account that you may have some growth in the future.

For companies considering deploying a digital signage system it is very important to look into the future requirements of their application and identify a software platform that can deliver the solution that includes being able to scale and grow with your business and integrate with your in-house database systems.

Scala InfoChannel is designed around the idea of signage networks that can scale from very small deployments into very large ones. For more information check out the article above, or head over to Products on the Scala web site.
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

Mediox, Inc. mentions Scala in their press release discussing interactive multimedia restaurant trays.

This sounds like an interesting concept. I have a number of questions though:

1. How is durability achieved - these will be carried, dropped, shuffled around, soiled, cleaned, and possibly stolen


2. Won't there be food placed on top of the tray? I'm sure they account for this, and it will be fascinating to see how


3. What OS it may be running...


4. ... and if not Linux, how long until we see a Slashdot thread showing how someone has installed Linux on this platform


5. Does it have WiFi capability or is all content transferred in the sync/wash cycle

I'm actually quite intrigued by the possibilities here. Let's keep an eye on this concept and see what it brings to the digital signage industry.
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

BBC News reports that a UK company is building a plant that will manufacture flexible plastic-based electronic circuits.

The firm is working on "control circuits" that sit behind screens on electronic displays. In particular, it is working on the electronic circuitry for "electronic paper" displays.

While I constantly hammer on the idea of ubiquitous displays that can fit any space large or small, mobile or stationary, one of the concepts necessary to make that idea work is the development of computer hardware that can support these displays. Along with flexible displays, we will need flexible circuits in the long term for ubiquitous displays to become truly practical.
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

Following up on a previous post about SMS and Scala digital signage, I thought I might point out an example of someone that has a solution: BlueFire Digital. Their approach seems to be to use Bluetooth and SMS to allow your signage network to send content to mobile devices, and I can imagine that their solutions can be used in many creative ways. While I haven't seen one in action yet, they are Scala partners so their solutions should work well with our software.
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala

I'm still digesting this one, and I thought it interesting enough to pass along. Peter Gutmann wrote up an analysis of the costs to the computer industry that may stem from Windows Vista's content protection capabilities. His summary:

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to
provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data
from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources.  Providing this protection incurs
considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical
support overhead, and hardware and software cost.  These issues affect not
only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the
protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever
come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for
example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server).  This document
analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral
damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.

The document addresses direct and indirect "disabling of functionality", "decreased playback quality", "Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support", "Device Resource Consumption", "CPU Resource Consumption", "Decreased System Reliability", increased costs,
and the scary "Denial-of-Service via Driver Revocation".

I'm personally taking a wait-and-see approach... it will be interesting to see which of these things will come true (just because it's possible doesn't mean it will be a big occurrence).
Tags: digital signage | narrowcasting | Scala