Danny sent me this article, from AdAge:

Indeed, all web ads pale when stacked up to TV and print, which can claim twice the favorability among consumers, according to Dynamic Logic’s Ad Reactions 2009 study.

Among 2,000 consumers surveyed in August 2009, 22% expressed a positive attitude toward ads on social media, the same as online video ads, compared with more than 40% favorable to print and TV ads. Consumers expect and tolerate ads in offline media in a way that they don’t online.

And a bit later:

That said, attitudes about online advertising have held steady since 2007, while consumer’s view of TV and print ads have fallen. Most dramatically, favorability for newspapers ads fell from 56% two years ago to 42%, while TV has gone from 50% to 47% and magazines 53% to 45%.

So what does this mean for out-of-home advertising? Namely, ads on digital signs and billboards? According to the Ad Reactions study, from 2007 to 2009 the favorability of “outdoor” has gone from 48% to 39%. Not sure what their definition of outdoor is.

Regardless, as I’ve ranted about before, I think that the digital sign industry has to keep a careful eye on the favorability of its ads, lest it go the way of banner ads online or even (*gasp*) telemarketing, which has a 6% favorability (who those 6% of people are who like telemarketing are, I do not know).

At last, it’s happening. This is all over the Internet today, a message from Google to the world:

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ?as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Thank you, Internet God(s). Finally, we can all move beyond the giant obstacle to progress that is Internet Explorer 6.0 and build web apps that don’t have arcane code in that that tries to take a rocket engine and weld it onto a Radio Flyer. Cause it hurts so much to try to do that, and both the rocket engine and the Radio Flyer suffer in the process. (Note: I can’t believe I found a photo to fit my analogy)

Everyone’s been waiting to dump IE6 for a long time (I’d guess about 5 years) but hasn’t quite got the nerve to do it yet; thanks to Google’s lead, by the end of the summer I predict a giant leap forward in the speed, functionality and general usefulness of many web apps. Countless, countless development hours are now freed for actual, useful tasks.

We won’t see the next generation of web apps until HTML5 is fully supported across many browsers, which it currently is not (it’s not even fully released yet); however, Opera, Safari/Google Chrome (both WebKit-based) and Firefox 3 (Gecko-based) are leading the pack in supporting this new standard. Note that Internet Explorer is nowhere to be found on that list. Surprised?

From time to time in various fields, people proclaim the death of this or that because of technological change. The current favorites seem to be journalism and literacy/writing. Oh, woe is us. We are doomed, technology killed everything beautiful and wonderful in our lives.

My career revolves around technology: I love pondering the dangers and risks of new technologies and ideas. I’m a huge dystopian/post-apocalpytic-anything fan. I just finished watching the season finale of the FOX show Dollhouse, who’s whole premise is that technology corrupts and absolute technology corrupts absolutely.

But please. What happens is we see the process but don’t/can’t see the long term outcomes and we get those two confused. One example: 20 years ago, if someone were to tell you that DARPA was going to unleash a tidal wave of global societal change by allowing anyone anywhere anytime to access government, corporate and even private information, and, to top it off, to be able to share said information with the whole world in seconds, sending ideas and data flowing around the globe in a constant cacophony of never-ending, unstoppable ease, how would they have responded? They would have freaked out. But in reality, the long term outcomes of the Internet we’re just beginning to see and they’re not nearly as apocalypse-inducing as one would have thought 20 years ago.

What set off this little soap box session was the following post on the Britannica Blog about how text-messaging is killing writing (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan):

Our eager embrace of a brand new verb — to text — speaks volumes. We’re rapidly moving away from our old linear form of writing and reading, in which ideas and narratives wended their way across many pages, to a much more compressed, nonlinear form. What we’ve learned about digital media is that, even as they promote the transmission of writing, they shatter writing into little, utilitarian fragments. They turn stories into snippets. They transform prose and poetry into quick, scattered bursts of text.

Writing will survive, but it will survive in a debased form. It will lose its richness. We will no longer read and write words. We will merely process them, the way our computers do.

Texting helps overthrow dictatorships and get around governments trying to crack down on their people. It helps us find survivors under rumble in collapsed buildings in Haiti. It saves me 5-10 minutes a day, 60 hours a year, of having to check my voicemail. These are the good, long term outcomes of this new technology. And if anything, it’s increasing our desire for long-form storytelling. It’s adding to what we’re already doing, not taking away from.

Some examples: how many 3 part (or more), epic movies did we have 10 years ago (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter)? How many TV shows 15 years ago spanned 5 or more seasons, sometimes altogether forsaking the episodic approach to storytelling (The Wire, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, etc.)? Why do adult fiction book sales continue to go up? And finally, a this study that just came out shows that texting is actually improving primary school children’s reading and writing abilities:

It found that knowledge of “textisms” increased with age, with half of children in the last year of primary school using such language. Examples include shortenings such as bro for brother, contractions such as plz for please, omitted apostrophes such as wont for won’t, homophones such as 2moro for tomorrow, and acronyms such as WUU2 for what are you up to?

But Clare Wood, Reader in Developmental Psychology at the university, said that use of such text speak could be used to predict reading ability. Children familiar with texting had a high level of phonological awareness, an early developing skill that refers to the ability to detect, isolate and manipulate patterns of sound in speech, Dr Wood said: “We were surprised to learn that … textism use was actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children. Texting also appears to be a valuable form of contact with written English for many children, which enables them to practise reading and spelling on a daily basis.

So don’t proclaim the debasement of prose when really we’re witnessing it’s explosive growth. Just as, at the very moment that journalism is exploding globally, everyone keeps saying it’s dying. Things don’t die — they change, expand, and grow. And yes, they will be different. And some pieces, like newspaper business models built on car dealer full page ads and classifieds, will die. But isn’t it for the better?

It’s great to be afraid of what technology might do. After all, we do have the power at this point in our history to destroy ourselves and our planet pretty completely. So dwelling on that and being afraid of it helps us prevent it, right?

Ok, stepping off my soap box now.

According to this Nielsen study, yes, they do:

According to a new consumer survey by the Nielsen research firm on “Awareness and Effectiveness of Digital Display Screens Installed In Grocery Stores,” digital out-of-home Media (DOOH) increases sales at the point of sale (POS). Four out of five product brands experienced significant increases of up to 33 percent in additional sales through the use of DOOH media. At the same time, display screen advertising at the POS considerably increased brand awareness: While previous studies on the effectiveness of POS advertising media showed only a slight increase in brand awareness (unprompted), the in-store TV tested here yielded a remarkable increase in awareness and recall rates of up to 14 percent (unprompted) and 31 percent (prompted).

Of course, studies sponsored by organizations/companies looking for specific results can be suspect. But Nielsen is a trusted name and I don’t question these results (but do I not question them because I like them?).

Sign/Kit options changes are coming soon, with:

• more sizes: 22″, 32″, 37″, 42″ and 47″ (phew, so many!)
• 1080p in the 42″ and 47″ models (nice!)
• lower prices (yay!)
• built-in tuner and “invisible” speakers (handy!)

LG’s new line of pro-displays are lighter, brighter and Energy Star 3.0 and RoHS compliant (the old ones weren’t Energy Star anything).

but I love stats like this:

Here are some examples from U-Haul of its current one-way rental rates for a 26-foot truck:

From Dallas to San Francisco: $734
From San Francisco to Dallas: $2,116

From Houston to Los Angeles: $706
From Los Angeles to Houston: $2,051

In both cases, it’s almost three times more expensive to rent a truck to leave California (from San Francisco or Los Angeles) and move to Texas (Dallas or Houston) as it is to leave Texas and move into California, suggesting that there is a huge outmigration of trucks and people away from California to Texas. Given those conditions, U-Haul simply prices its one-way truck rentals to reflect the differences in the relative demand-high prices for the high demand to leave California for Texas, and low prices for the low demand to leave Texas for California.

By this measure, California’s hurting is just going to continue. More people leaving = lower home prices, lower tax base, less income tax etc etc.

Here are U-Haul rates for a 10′ truck from Elkhart, Ind.:

To Los Angeles: $1,746
From Los Angeles: $1,445

To Chicago: $161
From Chicago: $157

To Houston: $1,209
From Houston: $424

To New York City: $700
From New York City: $776

To Atlanta: $651
From Atlanta: $503

Seems like a lot of Elkhart people are moving to Houston…

This just out today on DigitalSignageToday:

In an article on triplepundit.com, writer Kathryn Siranosian looks at Laser Phosphor Display technology recently released by Prysm. The company’ CEO, Roger Hajjar says that the new LPD technology has the lowest cost of ownership and smallest carbon footprint of any large format display currently on the market. Furthermore, it is manufactured without toxic or regulated materials, can be end-of-life recycled without concern for toxic or regulated materials, runs cooler than other HD systems and consumes up to 75 percent less energy than other video wall or HDTV technology.

More great news about the technology. One translation of PR-speak:

• “lowest cost of ownership” translates to: it’ll cost more up front (probably a lot more) but last longer than 3 years like a typical LCD and not use near as much power

I’m still waiting on some idea of pricing on these things. Looks like a great technology though.

Today, Firefox 3.6 came out. And with it…functional full screen mode for the Mac! That means you can now run RedPost on a Mac Mini without having an annoying toolbar at the top of the screen like there’s been up until now. Sweet! No more second-class citizenship for DIY RedPost/Mac users. Isn’t equality grand?

We’ve updated our DIY page to reflect this exciting update.

And if you’re a total geek, here’s the Firefox bug that was the cause of the problem that is now solved.

As you’re probably aware, there was a major earthquake in Haiti. I was in the country for a couple days back in 2005, and walked around the square in front of the Presidential Palace (the triangular green area the top of the photo, photo from GeoEye):

So for me, one of the most shocking images, at least in so far as being familiar to me, is the following. I’m also guessing this will become one of the iconic images of this disaster:

While there, we stayed at Mennonite Central Committee’s house, which, if I remember correctly, is in the Saint-Georges neighborhood, although my memory could be completely off there. All of MCC’s staff are apparently safe.  MCC is a phenomenal organization that operates with one of the lowest overheads of any relief agency in the world. If you’re considering donating, consider giving to MCC:

Today, MCC committed $100,000 U.S. or $103,420 Cdn. for immediate needs. International Program Department Director Ron Flaming anticipates a response of at least $1 million U.S. or $1.03 Cdn. over multiple years. MCC is appealing for donations to fund these efforts.

MCC workers in Haiti include nine people from Colombia, the Netherlands and the United States; seven Haitian program staff members; and additional support staff. All program staff located in Port-au-Prince, the capital, are accounted for. Although the communications infrastructure in Haiti has been disrupted, staff members were able to send a message via the U.S. embassy. All MCC staff members who have been in touch report seeing bodies in the streets, according to Daryl Yoder-Bontrager, MCC Latin America and the Caribbean director. MCC is working to contact staff outside Port-au-Prince.

I lived for 3 months during college in the Dominican Republic, 6 weeks of which I was 6 miles from the border of Haiti in a small farming community of which about half the village was Haitian. Haiti’s suffered some of the worst that humanity has to offer, over and over again, but continues to survive. Right now, they need our help.

You can also text HAITI to 90999 to give $10 through your cell phone bill.

LCD technology has been the work horse of the digital sign industry. Reliable, vibrant and in mass quantities cheap. But it’s made of glass, prone to breaking, has to be square and flat, uses lots of power and is incredibly expensive in really large sizes (think $60k for a 100″ display) and die after about 50,000 hours of use.

Today, Prysm revealed themselves to the world (hat tip: DigitalSignageWeekly). So what’s the big deal? Their LPB, or Laser Phosphor Display technology. From their press release:

Prysm, Inc., today announced the public launch of its groundbreaking technology, Laser Phosphor Display (LPD). LPD is a new category of large format displays, with the lowest power consumption and environmental impact along with freeform flexibility, long-lasting performance and brilliant picture quality.

“Prysm’s technology addresses the key segment of large-area displays with the promise of low power operation and scalability,” said Paul Semenza, Senior Vice-President at DisplaySearch, the leading display market research firm.  “This type of technology could open up new markets in consumer and professional applications.”

Founded by Amit Jain and Roger Hajjar in 2005 under the name Spudnik, Prysm’s patented LPD technology is supported by over 100 employees and leading manufacturing and component supply partners worldwide.

“We have spent the last 4 years developing a truly disruptive technology with a team of the best technologists in the industry,” said Amit Jain, CEO of Prysm, Inc.  “LPD is generating excitement from prospective customers around the world.  Although we knew that image quality would appeal to customers everywhere, we have also found that the LPD energy efficiency to be very important in every geographic market. Prysm provides regulators a proof point that one can make energy efficient displays without compromising quality or cost.”

I wonder what they’ll cost?