Maurice Doran Consulting

More drivers spending longer in traffic = increased DOOH revenue

2012-03-05T12:51:00.001-08:00

A recent article published in Montreal's La Presse ties Astral Media's growing revenue to the city's crumbling infrastructure. Many of the island's access roads and bridges are going through major renovations so gridlock has been a huge problem for motorists. This has created a truly "captive" audience that Astral Media aims to reach with its growing network of LED billboards located in and around the city.

This is an audience that cannot switch channels which is great for the company's out-of-home advertising division.

Here is a link to the original article (in French).

Anyone taking advantage of gridlock in your town?

How to apply branding to your digital signage screens

2012-03-05T12:29:00.001-08:00

I recently posted a new video tutorial on how Navori QL software users can apply branding to their screens. The technique is quite easy to implement. It relies on the software's Ticker feature. Click here to view this short tutorial online.

Using YouTube videos with Navori QL

2012-03-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

YouTube is a fantastic source of content that you can use onyour Navori QL digital signage Players. Youcan search YouTube’s huge library of videos online or even upload your ownvideos and then stream them to your Players.

Click this link to download a free PDF document that explains how you can integrate YouTube content into your Navori QL digital signage.

Micorosft releases Kinect for Windows

2012-01-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

Microsoft announced the commercial availability of Kinect for Windows at this year's CES event. This is significant for the Digital Signage space for the following reasons:

With the SDK and PC specific hardware available, DS software publishers can begin to integrate gesture and voice technologies into their applications. Imagine letting the public interact with ads via Kinect enabled displays. Expect to see lots of folks waving and talking to DS screens in the near future.
The people who manufacture PC and flat panel mounting hardware will have something new to sell. Kinect sensor mounts!
This opens up the interactive advertising industry. What used to be a niche market (remember Gesturetek?) could explode in the near future. In fact Microsoft licensed some Gesturetek patents for Kinect. This has the potential to create a lot of "sticky" ads...

Hello 2012!

2012-01-03T06:37:00.000-08:00

The New Year has arrived and it's time for the resolutions. What should we improve, what should we change... I read a great blog posting on DailyDOOH that reminds Windows DS users of the basics. How to deploy Windows based digital signage players so that you get reliable and predictable results. There are some great tips in that posting that we should all follow. Lots of basic stuff that we tend to forget sometimes in the rush to get boxes out the door.

NDSR - Consultant's toolkit

2011-11-09T12:46:00.000-08:00

This is non-digital signage related (NDSR) but relevant to all consultants and office workers out there...

I'm sharing here some of the most useful and practical tools I use on a daily basis:

Freshbooks. This is the best online tool to manage your invoices, clients and budgets.
Dropbox: If you don't already have a Dropbox account, get one now. I use this service to share and synchronize content across all my PCs, iPad and iPhone. Its an essential part of my toolkit.
Evernote: Great for stashing away stuff you find online. Also great for sharing across multiple devices. I probably don't use this one to its full potential.
LogMeIn: If you are in the digital signage business or in any technical field, you need some type of remote access solution. I have used many but the free LogMeIn service has been the best I have used so far (and I have used several).
GoToMeeting and Join.Me: Two indispensable tools for anyone who needs to perform online meetings, product demos and training sessions. These tools have never let me down. Highly recommended.
Google Docs: As much as I rely on Microsoft Office for my day to day work, I also often use the various tools in Google Docs. I find their presentation tools particularly easy to use when integrating the material on sites like Linked-In for example. Another great service that complements Google Docs is Zoho Office.
TechSmith applications: TechSmith has a great suite of products you can use to capture on screen content. I rely on Jing! and Snagit daily.

I'm sure there are other tools and services I could have added but these are the ones I use on a daily basis. Don't know how I could spend a day without them.

Setting up a good studio

2011-11-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

I do a lot of online training and audio recording for training videos. One of the biggest challenge is having an office environment that is suitable for recording. I found this excellent posting on the ZD Net web site that covers this subject. I haven't had to paint one of my office walls green (yet) as I mostly record voice, not video. But there are lots of good advice in this article and I recommend anyone who needs to record themselves to read up before they start spending bundles of cash on various acoustic treatments and expensive recording devices.

Digital Signage Expo 2011 feedback

2011-03-08T05:13:00.000-08:00

As reported in DailyDOOH and other industry blogs, DSE 2011 was a big success. Several records were broken, including highest attendance and most exhibitors ever. I have attended other DSE shows in the past and can confirm this. I worked one of the booths and it was so busy I hardly had the chance to wander off.

I was finally able to do a quick tour about an hour before closing on Thursday and saw some interesting stuff. Will be posting more on this shortly.