The first issue this series will address is the question of screen quantity. Is one screen enough or should you install a network of screens? This question is an important element in the process of figuring out how to improve the number of viewers and their engagement with the messages on screen. Is one screen enough to meet the foot-traffic that your location generates or would installing multiple screens be more beneficial? You may be concerned with difficulty of implementing a second or third screen and having to deal with content management for those as well.
With UCView’s ViewEdge advantage, you can control all your screens from one portal at the click of a button even from your smart phone. You have the freedom to select what content is displayed at what time and on which screen within seconds. We take the hassle out of signage management and simplify the process across all displays in your network.
For some locations, such as small shops and offices one screen may be enough. However, for most locations, one screen can not keep up with the foot-traffic that is generated. If a big crowd gathers around a screen, chances are people in the back will not be able to see what’s going on and their interest in the subject will be heightened. Enter the second screen running the same content and now more eyeballs are viewing the content and viewership has increased significantly. This is a great example of how installation of multiple screens can lead to more awareness and engagement with patrons at your business.
Not only do multiple screens increase engagement levels, they also boost impression numbers from a given ad that runs on the screens. Impression levels can increase exponentially, providing for a way for your company to generate increased advertising revenue.
Multiple screens can also cut down on the time your employee spends with a certain customer. For example, displaying information about your products and services on screen can help cut down on employee time spent answering basic questions, and that time can be reserved for more in depth conversations about a product or service.
At this point you may be asking yourself, “All of this multiple signage talk makes a lot of sense; but what about the extra time and effort I’ll need to put in to manage the network?” This is where UCView’s ViewEdge advantage takes over. With our system you can create, implement, and manage your display network seamlessly from anywhere in the world. All you need is internet access, not even a computer is necessary as you can access our portal from your smart phone. With UCView, you can manage your displays, from 1 to as many as you need, all at the click of a button.
The next step in the process is positioning your displays properly. Our next blog will go into further detail about positioning and placement of your screens.
You may be wondering why that digital display you installed has not delivered expected results. Well, here are some questions to ponder as you analyze your strategy. This blog is the first of a 4 part series that will feature each of these questions individually.
1. How many screens are you running?
This question is an important element in the process of figuring out how to improve the number of viewers and their engagement with the messages on screen. Is one screen enough to meet the foot-traffic that your location generates or would installing multiple screens be more beneficial? You may be concerned with difficulty of implementing a second or third screen and having to deal with content management for those as well. With UCView’s ViewEdge advantage, you can control all your screens from one portal at the click of a button even from your smart phone. You have the freedom to select what content is displayed at what time and on which screen within seconds. We take the hassle out of signage management and simplify the process across all displays in your network.
2. Where are your screens?
If only one screen is placed in your location, and it’s positioned in a low traffic area, you might want to reconsider its placement. Positioning a screen in common areas provides for more viewers and as this number increases, the opportunity for audience engagement goes up as well. Just like supermarkets place their weekly specials at the endcaps of aisles, placing a screen by the cash registers, or near an elevator entrance will lead to much higher levels of engagement with viewers.
3. What are your screens displaying?
Last but certainly not least, the most important factor in audience engagement and retention is content. If people are not interested in what’s being shown on the screen the next time they won’t even take a glance at it. In an environment where we are bombarded with content 24/7, every one of us has developed internal mechanisms to block out excess noise. However, when we see something unique or different, we are bound to observe it and even recommend it to family and friends. Word of mouth has grown into a major player in the decision making process, and with high quality content your displays can generate that positive buzz.
This is where UCView’s EZBoard Editor comes in. With this state of the art content creation / management tool, you can create eye catching layouts that are guaranteed to get people talking. Whether it’s a dynamic menu board, an RSS feed, a live feed from Twitter, or even 3D content; with EZBoard you can bring together all these elements into one display and rest assured that your displays will not just be another screen, but the screen people want to visit every time they are at your business.
In our quest to further expand the capabilities of the UCView content management platform, we have recently released a new feature for EZBoard – the ability to animate your content. This new addition sets your text, image, and Flash (.swf) files in motion, giving you the ability to make your content enter and exit the screen in a number of ways. Your digital signage content no longer has to stay glued onto the screen, and you can even create animated sequences with images without using Flash.
As is always the case with EZBoard, using this new feature is a breeze. Once you have an idea of what you want to do with your display, the creation and design process takes mere minutes. The animation feature’s highlights include:
Design and Style
- Create content that glides, bounces, or stretches as it enters the screen
- Control whether you want a segment to leave the screen or stay after it appears
- Make content fade in and out or grow and shrink instead of simply popping up and disappearing
- Make multiple combinations for your content’s entrance and exit to create the best presentation for your messages
Timing is Everything
- Specify when each segment enters and exits the screen
- Determine the amount of time each segment spends on the screen
- Control animation timing down to milliseconds for maximum flexibility
The attached video is just a small sample of what you can do with this new animation feature. It was created in just a couple of minutes using EZBoard.
If you are already using the UCView content management platform, you can find the controls for animation on the bottom of any expanded Active Field in EZBoard. If you are new to UCView Media and would like to learn more about this or any other feature of our platform, contact us to request a free demo.
We are happy to announce to our partners in Canada, France and South America that the UCView platform now offers support for French and Spanish languages for the Yahoo! Weather module. This recent addition to our content management software is another step towards meeting our clients’ growing list of demands worldwide. As one of the most popular features on display networks, the weather module brings the city/location name, current local weather conditions in the area, and a graphic icon depicting current conditions.
Ever since its release, EZBoard has been a huge hit with UCView’s partners and clients worldwide. This content creation and modification tool has been one of the key features of our software, allowing network operators to save valuable time and energy. As our platform continues to grow more powerful and flexible, it remains user friendly thanks to EZBoard.
To understand why EZBoard has been so popular with our customers, you have to understand the process of updating content on a digital signage network. The only way to edit on-screen content used to be uploading the new content to replace the old content. To get the new content, the network operator would have to wait for the digital artist to create the new design. A simple mistake like a typo could take hours to replace. Imagine how long it took to update the content of a large network where dozens of screens featured different content and the updates were to be made daily. It would take a whole department just to keep up with the demand. Even a small network like a restaurant would balk at the task of changing the menu daily because of the time-consuming nature of the process.
With the coming of EZBoard, a quick and effective solution was finally presented for the problem. Now you could create a background layout and easily manipulate the text data that was presented on top of it. A process that used to consume hours of several employees’ time became a quick hassle-free update at the fingertips of a single person. The person responsible for the updates also didn’t have to have knowledge of any design software such as Photoshop or InDesign – anyone could update a screen’s content since it was merely data entry. Another added benefit was the fact that this was all achievable remotely using only a browser. This eliminated the need for being on-site to change the content of a location, as well as allowed one person to update several locations’ content from one place.
Today, EZBoard maintains its status as one of the most important features of our platform. Over the last few months we have lent the content creator even more flexibility by adding new features such as:
• Simplified solution for creating interactive displays
• Support for multiple languages, including right-to-left languages
• Ability to customize RSS/XML feeds to include images and break up the feed into separate sections
• Placement of rich media (video, Flash-based animation, etc) into designated content areas
• Ticker option for scrolling information (either pre-typed or live feeds) across the screen
• Streaming live television within a designated content area
UCView Media’s development team continues to work daily on integrating all the latest technological advances into our platform. With each new feature added, we enable our customers to make the most out of their digital signage network. We have a list of exciting additions coming up in the near future that will make the UCView platform stand out even more.
Interactive displays – we all love them because they are eager listeners, they take our commands without questions, and they respond with information to answers our needs. They are tireless providers of assistance, as well as a symbol of modernity that enhances our experience in any given environment. Every industry can find a great use for interactive displays, but most digital signage network operators will not even begin to dream about them.
For a long time now, the privilege of creating a network of touchscreen displays has been reserved for companies who had the budget and manpower to invest in the technology. Despite all the technological leaps made within the digital signage industry in the last few years, touchscreen capabilities remained far from accessible to most customers. The required knowledge of HTML and other programming languages prevented most clients from even exploring the possibility of using touchscreen displays on their network.
Following its long-standing tradition of simplifying digital signage network operations through innovation, UCView‘s development team has found a way to make touchscreen capabilities accessible to any network operator. Our content creation tool EZBoard eliminates the prerequisite programming skills and trained personnel needs for producing interactive displays. Gone are the thousands of lines of code and the hundreds of hours invested in touch screens. Even a novice user can design and deploy interactive displays across an entire network in minutes using UCView’s web-based platform. The only thing you need to be armed with is a vision for your interactive display, and our software will provide you with the tools to embody that vision.
Thank you for visiting us at the 2010 Digital Signage Expo. We enjoyed all of the inspiring conversations, and the positive feedback we received regarding our products exceeded all our expectations. UCView Media had a very fruitful experience, and we will continue to champion digital signage solutions for our partners worldwide.
Our team is relentless in its pursuit of designing and developing a platform to suit our partners’ ever-growing needs. We were very pleased with the overwhelmingly positive response to some of the newest additions to our platform that we unveiled at DSE2010. Some of the newest key additions to our products included:
• Global View, a feature providing a live snapshot of all your network’s displays
• EZ Board, an easy-to-use content creation tool
• GPS and audience measurement integration
• Touchscreen capability for interactive displays
• ViewEdge Digital Signage Server series
• World’s first interactive gas station pump top
We invite our guests from DSE2010 to experience the benefits of UCView Media first-hand. Visit our website at http://www.ucview.com and receive a free 30-day trial. We look forward to all of your feedback on our software, and we encourage you to share this risk-free offer with your customers and partners.
Thank you again for your interest in our innovative digital signage products. We will contact you soon to discuss how our solutions can cater to your specific needs.
UCView Media, Jan 20, 2010. UCView media’s digital signage software division, the leading developer of digital signage management software, released an innovative enhancement to the UCView Enterprise family. The inclusion of Mobile Access makes UCView one of first solutions to provide visibility into and live monitoring of digital signage networks in real time from mobile phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs).
“We believe in practical solutions, we design solutions to solve a problem and help you manage as opposed to creating a market. From the research we recently conducted today, UCView is the first or only digital signage management solution enabling proactive and live player snapshot and resolution of network issues over a mobile device’s without the need to install software”, announced Guy Avital President, UCView Media Inc. “UCView Software platform is already a comprehensive product with superior real time diagnostic and practical capabilities, but now UCView users can benefit from the flexibility of having a proven digital signage management solution in the palm of their hands.”
With innovative features such as snapshots of the entire network, restart devices, player info statistics EZLink notifications, UCView brings a whole new dimension of portability to digital signage management, providing a secure and transparent window to your digital signage network status and from anywhere, at anytime. For more information on UCView, to view a demo or to download a free trial, visit http://www.ucview.com/contact/request_demo/
Many large firms have been using UCView for over 3 years and it has proven an invaluable digital signage solution to run their growing digital signage network. “I always know about network status or outages instantly,” states Marcelo Teyer, Digital signage network owner. “The addition of mobile access saves precious time, as now I can immediately check player’s status from my smart phone.”
UCView mobile Access Features for digital signage monitoring:
Player status View with snapshot images.
EZLink Notifications for SMS and email alerts.
Maintenance player configuration.
Restart Players Remotely.
SSL support for mobile access sessions
About UCView Media Management
UCView media is the leading digital signage management software solution with thousands of players reliably managed worldwide. Built on a scalable architecture offering automated player discovery and network monitoring, real-time player monitoring, and versatile alerting, notification, and reporting functionality, UCView media delivers 360° visibility, manageable digital signage frame work.
UCView Media software scales from the small digital signage to the large digital signage deployments, and its functionality can be easily extended. UCView software monitor player’s performance and operation for precise measurement of poof of ads played to provide the quality of service (QoS) necessary for a growing digital signage network. To learn more about UCView software, request your free demo or to make a purchase visit http://www.ucview.com/contact/request_demo/
Just when you thought the View Media 100 couldn’t get any better, it just did! You get the same high-quality, reliable service that you would expect from UCView products, only now the View Media 100 is new and improved to enhance your digital signage experience. Check out the new features!
Now comes wireless-ready (no adaptor needed)
Digital audio full HDMI
RS 232 to remotely control your monitor
SPDIF optical out
The ViewMedia 100 digital signage player is a commercial grade media player platform, offering high computing performance and graphic performance, great flexibility and tolerance that supports all standard media formats. The ViewMedia 100 is designed with long-term operation and stability in mind. It is designed to minimize the down-time and reduce TCO (Total cost of ownership). The ViewMedia 100 is a small profile, all-in-one Windows XPE ready, digital signage player. The digital signage player is equipped with an Intel Core Duo processor that gives it the power for HDTV decoding and multiple media content processing. This compact, easy-to-implement digital signage player enables centralized control, scheduling and delivery of multimedia content through UCView digital signage solution. The player support options such as Wi-Fi and Cellular wireless connectivity. A TV-tuner option is also available for integrating the TV function into the signage application.
The View Media 100 is just another example of UCView’s continued commitment to new technology and quality product which makes us the true leader in the digital signage industry. Call us today.
Mister Pukka is a senior writer at UCView. Pukka can be emailed at pukka@UCView.com
Chatsworth, CA - UCView Media Inc., a leading digital signage provider, has released a new signage solution specifically tailored to the needs of restaurants. Utilizing the latest digital signage and screen-interaction technology, the Digital Signage Menu Board provides a one-stop communication solution for improving both customers’ dining experience and developing targeted in-store advertising. The system includes a UCView DIGIBoard Digital signage media server, UCView wireless media players and displays strategically placed throughout a restaurant for maximum impact and content exposure.
“UCView’s Digital Signage Menu Board offers many unique features,” says Guy Avital, president and CEO of UCView Media.“You can instantly change items, prices and specials on fast-food menu boards without the cost of printing new menu board sheets or change alpha-numeric character tiles.”In these establishments, menu boards are the main tool in educating and enticing customers to purchase product.Digital menu boards allow fast food restaurants to communicate this critical information more effectively and attractively than any other medium.
The advantages of digital signage in full service and fine dining restaurants are even greater.States Mr. Avital: “You can change the look of any one or all of your displays at any time, easily creating distinctive looks for theme nights, holidays and special occasions. Weekly, daily and even hourly specials can be scheduled in advance or on the fly, changing whenever a sudden opportunity reveals itself.”
Link a group of displays together to create a “video wall” that can display static or animated restaurant logos, video and Flash graphics.Featuring such a display matrix in a prominent area will create a cutting edge yet upscale motif that can be continued throughout every part of the restaurant.
Interactive touch-screen digital signage displays installed at each table will allow customers to send food orders to the kitchen, drink orders to the bar, or call the maitre d’ directly from the table. The lighted screens are easy to read in darker environments and menus can be changed immediately, eliminating the need to print dozens—or thousands—of menus.“Sold out items can be removed and new dishes can be added with only a few mouse clicks,” Avital continues.“You can even divide the screen into multiple sections and vary the content to include advertisements for food and drink specials and add elegant graphics to create just the right mood for your clientele.Best of all, any combination of content can be sent to any sign in the restaurant whenever it best suits the establishment’s purpose.The owner or manager is limited only by his/her imagination.”
Avital believes that the initial investment in a Digital Signage Menu Board system is offset not only by increased presence and satisfaction of patrons, but also the lower operating cost over an extended period of time. We are confident that within this period, the advantages and long-term savings over static, print media will allow any establishment to stay ahead of the competition in both image and revenue.”
UCView Elastic Compute Cloud Powered by Amazon and other computer clouds services is a digital signage web service that provides resizable digital signage compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make your digital signage solution scale from 1 to thousands of players.
UCView simple digital signage web portal interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your digital signage resources and lets you run on proven computing cloud environment. Amazon EC2 and other computer clouds services reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your digital signage network requirements change. Digital signage computer cloud changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for the traffic and capacity that your players actually use. UCView digital signage computing cloud provides network owners the tools to build failure resilient digital signage infrastructure and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.
UCView Digital signage computing cloud presents a true virtual digital signage environment, allowing you to use our web based portal and scale as your network grow, access permissions, and run your players using as many or few organization as you desire.
Elastic– UCView Digital Signage cloud enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of digital signage server instances simultaneously. Of course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.
Completely Controlled – You have complete control of your digital server instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine. Instances can be rebooted remotely using UCView web service APIs.
Reliable – UCView powered by computing cloud offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and predictably commissioned. The service runs within Amazon’s or other proven network infrastructure and datacenters. The Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.95% availability for each Region.
Features for Building Failure Resilient digital signage infrastructure – UCView provides users powerful features to build failure resilient applications including:
Features to build failure resilient digital signage infrastructure including:
Computing cloud Elastic Block Store –Elastic Block Store (EBS) offers persistent storage for computing cloud instances. EBS volumes provide off-instance storage that persists independently from the life of an instance. EBS volumes are highly available, highly reliable volumes that can be attached to a running computing cloud instance and are exposed as standard block devices. EBS volumes offer greatly improved durability over local computing cloud instance stores, as
EBS volumes are automatically replicated on the backend (in a single Availability Zone). For those wanting even more durability, EBS provides the ability to create point-in-time consistent snapshots of your volumes that are then stored in storage server, and automatically replicated across multiple Availability Zones. These snapshots can be used as the starting point for new EBS volumes, and can protect your data for long term durability.
Multiple Locations – computing cloud provides the ability to place instances in multiple locations. Computing cloud locations are composed of Regions and Availability Zones. Availability Zones are distinct locations that are engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones and provide inexpensive, low latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same Region. By launching instances in separate Availability Zones, you can protect your applications from failure of a single location. Regions consist of one or more Availability Zones, are geographically dispersed, and will be in separate geographic areas or countries. The computing cloud Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.95% availability for each Region. Computing cloud is currently available in two regions: one in the US and one in Europe.
Elastic IP Addresses – Elastic IP addresses are static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing. An Elastic IP address is associated with your account not a particular instance, and you control that address until you choose to explicitly release it. Unlike traditional static IP addresses, however, Elastic IP addresses allow you to mask instance or Availability Zone failures by programmatically remapping your public IP addresses to any instance in your account. Rather than waiting on a data technician to reconfigure or replace your host, or waiting for DNS to propagate to all of your customers, computing cloud enables you to engineer around problems with your instance or software by quickly remapping your Elastic IP address to a replacement instance.
Secure – UCView Computing cloud provides web service interfaces to configure firewall settings that control network access to and between groups of instances.
Inexpensive– UCView passes on to you the financial benefits of computing cloud’s scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume.
UCView NewsChatsworth, CA (February 1 2009) UCView Media a provider of digital signage
solution announced the release of 2nd generation digital signage solution.
The new version release provides the latest media technology and performance.
Some of the new features include:
• Network management options, expanded and enhanced Active Information.
• Dynamic content distribution, network management and security features.
• Addition content categories, including Financial News, Business Headlines…
• Most advanced scheduling by ad and by campaign, location and player.
• Advance layout management allows you to change layout while playing
• Group ads in sequential and random play order
• Advertising module to track ad ROI and Performance
• Schedule play event on specific time
• Background support Flash, Images, and overlay with transparency
• Enhance Media play to most existing media type.
• New interactive module that allows you to interact with the screen using your
cell phone or touch screen.
• SMS Messaging and Marketing Module
• Enhanced Live TV with sub-titles options
• Support for Steaming live content
• Various performance enhancements and fixes
• Application Program Interface (API): Allows end-user programs, applications to
interface with UCView
• Support Vista, XP, XP Embedded, CE, *Linux
• 24-hour e-mail support available globally
The UCView release “is just another step towards providing complete powerful
digital signage solution to support our rapidly growing digital signage market”
says Michele Cohen, Business Development at UCView Media
For more information about UCView Media solutions, please contact the company
directly by calling
UCView California — Leading digital signage provider UCView Media have developed digital imaging feature for their players to measure walking traffic in front of their displays at department stores.
The solution will connect to a local pinhole camera that will analyze the visual traffic in the display surrounding. The digital signage player than will be able to log viewer statistics
The UCView Display Brand Management will play scheduled regular digital signage content, but will measure audience count in front of the screens.
Digital signage market is expanding daily, and new feature including Live TV media combine with a spit screen become a request for many Bars and public location with live TV audience. If you’ve been trying to deploy digital signage screen integrated with live TV, but your current digital signage system has some issue and problem displaying live TV signal, there’s a relatively cheap solid solution using UCView to deliver high quality digital signage solution with live TV or live feed using most available TV tuner in the market. You can use all type of capture cards PCI base or USB TV tuner cards. Digital signage with live TV integration allow you to split the screen and play variety of content on different part of the screen include live TV or live video stream, flash, power point, pictures, web pages, rss feed and more.
You may be wondering why that digital display you installed has not delivered expected results. Well, here are some questions to ponder as you analyze your strategy. This blog is the first of a 4 part series that will feature each of these questions individually.
signage solution specifically tailored to the needs of restaurants. 
Amazon 
feature for their players to measure walking traffic in front of their displays at department stores.