Alabama Teachers Credit Union Installs Digital Signage In 4 Branches
Posted on Fri, January 29, 2010
The Alabama Teachers Credit Union recently installed digital signage from Rise Display in 4 of their branches. The LCD displays are strategically located to help reduce perceived wait time by providing the latest market updates, current weather, and a live CNN TV feed.
If you would like to learn more about digital signage for banking and credit unions check out the following link.
Loyola University Adds LED Ticker Display
Posted on Thu, January 28, 2010
Loyola University in downtown Chicago added a full color LED ticker in the window of their Graduate School of Business. The ticker scrolls through the logos and latest prices for the Dow 30 constituents helping to create a financial atmosphere and attract the attention of people passing by.
With their MBA program ranked in the top 20 in the nation by US News and World Report the ticker should help attract attention to their commitment to excellence in business education.
Custom LED Clocks
Posted on Wed, January 27, 2010
What time is it? For one of the large energy firms in Houston they will have about 50 new custom designed blue LED clocks throughout their facility to ensure no one has an excuse for being late to a meeting.
How High Schools Can Create “Wow Factor”
Posted on Tue, January 26, 2010
Digital signage has a lot of practical purposes for a high school but for private and technical high schools competing for top recruits one of the keys to success is making an exceptional first impression. To attract honor students private high schools need to provide state-of-the-art facilities and real-world experience to help their students get into top-notch colleges.
While we have seen many diverse uses of digital signage within education there appear to be 4 main areas that are emerging within private and technical high schools to help create “wow factor”:
Student Communication - Traditional bulletin boards and printed posters can’t keep up. A digital signage network instantly informs students of speakers, sporting events, honor student achievements and gracious donors. In times of crisis, these displays can be transformed into an emergency communication system, allowing staff to post visual alert messages quickly.
Digital Menu Board – Whether the students are standing in line or sitting down to eat, digital signage is a great way to catch attention. In addition to the specials of the day users can post current local weather, stock market updates, or breaking headline news to help students stay informed on local and world events.
Financial Trading Lab - Establishing and promoting unique “centers of excellence” are vital to marketing schools, which draw many families and visitors to the school. For schools with a business focus one trend is to create mock trading rooms to simulate the stock markets and prepare business minded students for college?
Donor Walls – Every school has distinguished alumni, strategic business partners, and generous donors that help expand and improve the facility. Etched glass and wood plaques are nice, but a more advanced option is to build an interactive experience that tells a story. Along with a pictures and video share information about their donation, why they gave and how the money was used to better your institution all in an interactive format on a large touch screen enabled display.
To compete with iPods, Twitter, text messages and the barrage of other messages hitting teenagers every minute, schools need to use vibrant and flashy technology to get noticed. What better way than digital signage?
If you want to read more about digital signage in high schools please check out the following related blog posts:
Why High Schools Are Building Trading Rooms
Digital Menu Boards for High Schools
Emergency Alerts At The High School Level
Custom LED Ticker at University of Illinois
Posted on Mon, January 25, 2010
This photos is a great example of how a business school can utilize an LED ticker outside the finance lab to draw attention to the room. In addition to the LED Ticker University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign did a really nice job of designing the space and using glass to create a “fish bowl” so potential donors, prospective students, and visitors can see the trading lab and classes in action.
Why High Schools Are Building Trading Rooms
Posted on Wed, January 20, 2010
Establishing and promoting unique “centers of excellence” are vital to marketing high schools. Private and Technical high schools are aggressively recruiting the best and brightest students. To get commitment from these honor students they need to have state-of-the-art facilities that attract attention and make a lasting first impression.
For high schools with a strong focus on finance and business a natural fit is to add a financial services lab. Over the past decade 200+ mock trading rooms have been established in colleges and universities across the US and Canada. In the past year we have seen growing interest from the high school level with a handful of early adopters beginning to implement these specialized classrooms to attract new students and better prepare their graduates for the top tier colleges.
If you are a high school looking to investigate this growing trend one place you can start is by downloading our white-paper on university trading labs to learn from some of their experiences.
If you are a high school principal looking to utilize technology and create ”wow factor”, two other articles you may find of interest are Digital Menu Boards for High Schools and Emergency Alerts at the High School Level
Digital Signage - Get A Sponsor
Posted on Tue, January 19, 2010
Are you a high school, university, hospital, or public space looking to implement digital signage? Want the “wow factor” but don’t have the budget?
Many people will tell you to segment the screen and sell advertising. While viable, if you don’t understand how to sell ad space it could be complicated and time consuming.
An easier way is to simply find a company or individual to sponsor it. Sports complexes have done it for years by working with Coke, Pepsi, local banks, etc to sell the naming rights to the scoreboards (and everything else). So why not follow their lead. Partner up with a local business that is looking for exposure to your students or patrons and have them fund or help fund the technology and give them name recognition.
A great example of this can be seen in the attached photo of the displays Ag Country purchased and donated to the new college of business at NDSU.
Rise Display Installation: Quinnipiac
Posted on Mon, January 18, 2010
A little over 6 years ago we installed 2 LED wallboards for the trading lab at Quinnipiac University. This past semester we worked with them to update the technology from the original 3 color LED displays to two banks of LCD screens set up in a 2x1 configuration allowing live market data to be spanned across both screens. The original LED displays allowed for showing simple graphics in three colors (red, green, and amber) while the new displays provide much greater resolution and the ability to show full motion video and the entire range of colors.
If you are currently using a LED wallboard take a moment to check out the short video we created comparing the technologies.
Digital Signage = Reduced Perceived Wait Time
Posted on Fri, January 15, 2010
A strategically placed electronic display, conveying appropriate and informative content, can help your customers pass the time while they wait in line to talk to your staff. According to a series of Bank of America studies, people who stand in line for more than three minutes often start to overestimate their actual wait times significantly. But when televisions showing CNN were installed in a test location, the degree of overestimation of wait times dropped from 32% to 15%.
Why is A Tri-color Ticker More Economical Than Monochrome
Posted on Thu, January 14, 2010
Logically one would think that buying a single color (such as red) LED ticker would be more economical than a tri-color (red/green/amber). Surprisingly the monochrome ticker is actually more expensive. Why? It has to do with the basics of market demand. There is far more demand for Tri-color because of the added flexibility to show things such as market conditions in red for negative and green for positive. This demand translates to more production and more inventory which lends to greater efficiencies thus bringing the price down.
The markets are posturing for a change once again after the introduction of full color tickers in the past 18 months. While the pricing of full color is still quite a bit more than tri-color the volume and demand for full color tickers is growing at an accelerated pace meaning there should be a tipping point in the near future where the spread between these prices will get much closer.
If you want to learn more about the basics of LED tickers I would encourage you to watch the following brief video overview.
Digital Signage in Education: Washington and Lee University
Posted on Wed, January 13, 2010
Digital signage is increasingly being used to replace traditional bulletin boards and printed posters on college campuses. What better way to communicate quickly and efficiently.
Washington and Lee University started investigating digital signage last June at the Educomm Conference. While looking at the big picture of how do we cover the entire campus they selected a system that was scalable to ensure their future needs were met, but they also new it was best to start small with a couple of buildings to get their feet wet. Over the last few months we have steadily installed a few different locations allowing them to grow into their system and learn the best ways to operate their new network.
Also, if an on-campus emergency were ever to occur, their digital displays can be quickly transformed into an emergency communication system, allowing them to post visual alert messages to notify students and faculty.
Check out our new interactive demo
Posted on Tue, January 12, 2010
An interactive experience requires a lot of pieces. You need a touch screen monitor, media player, software, and properly build content to fit that screens orientation, resolution, and environment. So how do you simulate or demonstrate something with so many pieces and make it so it works with any OS, any browser, and for any client to view easily.
Here is our fist pass at a simulation. As you review try to remember it is much larger on a touch screen and instead of a mouse you are using your finger to navigate.
Rise Display Installation: Horsehead Corporation
Posted on Mon, January 11, 2010
Enclosed is a photo of a LCD screen installed by one of our partners Global Sign. Nice simple project requiring displays in 6 locations to keep employees and guests entertained with the latest news, weather, and information while mixing in corporate announcements.
If you want to learn more about digital signage for corporate communication systems visit our website to learn more.
Rise Display - Red Ribbon Sponsor for AIA in Kansas City
Posted on Fri, January 8, 2010
For 2010 Rise Display has partnered with the Kansas City chapter of the AIA to network with the architect community and to take part in the weekly Chow & Tell educational series.
As part of their new space in downtown Kansas City we have set up a 40” LCD running our Display Wire software to enable them to greet guests and thank all of the sponsors that helped make their move to the new location possible.
LED Ticker Technology Tip: Outdoor Displays
Posted on Thu, January 7, 2010
Our expertise is primarily with indoor technology but from time to time we get inquiries for outdoor ticker displays. The term “ticker” is generically thrown around sometimes so when looking for an outdoor display it is very important define what you are looking for.
While there are many types of outdoor displays from billboards to video displays, people referring to “tickers” usually have 1 of 3 types of displays in mind:
Message Center - Most outdoor displays you see are what I would refer to as message centers. A message center is a matrix display which means you can stop the text, scroll up, scroll down, and in general present your message as an animation in a page by page format. Examples of some outdoor message centers.
Ticker Display - A ticker is a continuously scrolling display that steadily scrolls from right to left and you can’t stop the data. This technology is idea if you are looking to put up a news zipper, sports ticker, or show stock quotes and you are looking to use the display to create the atmosphere. A good example of this is the enclosed photo of the outdoor ticker we installed for Fidelity in New York.
Ribbon Display - The hybrid of the two is what I would call a “ribbon display”. This is the technology commonly see wrapping around the inside of a sports arena or stadium. These displays tend to be more complex and expensive but they do bring you the best of both worlds. Examples of some ribbon displays.
If you are looking to put an outdoor display start by making sure you can legally put one up based on local zoning ordinances and then determine what type of information you want to display. If you are looking to put in a true LED ticker to show stock quotes, news, or sports scores please let us know if we can be of any help.
Digital Signage from Rise Display Creates ‘Dynamic Ambiance’ at University of Oklahoma
Posted on Wed, January 6, 2010
The University of Oklahoma is known both for sports teams that consistently win national championships, and for its students’ high academic achievements. Indeed, the university’s Price College of Business ranks in U.S. News & World Report’s top 50 in undergraduate business schools and in the top 15 in undergraduate business specialties for international business. One way that OU maintains its standards of excellence is to offer the latest technology to its students—most recently, digital signage from Rise Display.
“We were searching around for the best vendor to help us get this [digital signage] up, and that’s where Rise came in,” says Robert Dauffenbach, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Programs.
The digital signage was to be installed in a new, approximately 1,500 square-foot trading room at the business school. The room seats 32 computer stations, where students study, research, and put presentations together, and Dauffenbach dedicated significant time and energy to determining the best and most appropriate vendor for the project. As part of his research, he learned which other business schools around the country were using digital displays, and even went to visit several campuses in person. The vendor these schools kept referencing was Rise Display.
The digital signage installation began during the summer of 2009 and ended just in time for the university’s fall semester to begin. Now the trading room boasts an impressive 36-foot long, eight-color LED Ticker, 2x2 video wall using ultra thin bezels, and two single 46-inch displays. Rise Display Systems remotely handles the content, including financial data streaming, for the monitors. On any given day, students will see stock information on Oklahoma public companies, as well as data on worldwide markets, displayed on the digital signage.
“The scrolling LED ticker display increases the dynamic ambiance of the room,” Dauffenbach says, “Rise was the only [vendor] I found that was able to get that for us.”
Because of the room’s new, professional atmosphere, it is perfect for certain Price College events. Recently, a breakfast meeting was held there for the Price College Board of Advisers, with a special guest in attendance: Jim Kramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money.” “We had the ticker display going and, of course, all the statistics from various markets around the world displayed,” says Dauffenbach. “It was a nice backdrop for the get-together with Kramer.”
Interactivity Verses Germs
Posted on Tue, January 5, 2010
I think everyone can agree that interactivity for digital signage is a growing and inevitable trend (you can read more about my opinions on how it will change in 2010 at Three Ways Interactivity Will Change Digital Signage
The other interesting trend is that hand sanitizer is everywhere you turn and people are fearful to touch anything for the spread of germs, bacteria etc. So the question I am seeing frequently is how often should an organization clean their touch screen and is there any special options or coatings to help minimize the spread of germs?
I welcome any feedback or guidance on cleaning methods or recommendations to share with our users.
