The prototype code that was used to prove that the ‘Castrol Oilcam’ project would work is detailed below.

The ANPR (Automatic NumberPlate Recognition) camera output has been replaced with a text file called latest.lpr. Put a UK car number plate in this text file, in the same folder as the flash movie and the flash movie will read it.

The most progress I made in this version was realizing I can send an html request/query from Flash and then ingest/interrogate the resulting html page source code from the host web server.

If you haven’t done so before, please read the site disclaimer before downloading and/or commenting.

download the prototype code here

This is a great JCDecaux Transvision campaign which makes use of the train destination information from the railway station and targets an advert to the audience based on their journey end point. The campaign highlights the English hospital commenting and rating service at www.nhs.uk/feedback.

Kudos goes to JCDecaux, Grand Visual and the www.nhs.uk/syndication team. The campaign runs from the 20th December 2010 for two weeks in railway stations in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham UK.

So, like a man who has a couple of anorexic girlfriends, I thought this was a good ‘two birds one stone’ situation (that joke was pinched from Dave Gibson BTW).

I made use of the dynamic countdown code from the excellent flash programming site here.

You can download the .swf and actionscript2 .fla files from www.thisadvertneedsyou.com/samples/countdown.zip

If you haven’t done so before, please read the site disclaimer before downloading and/or commenting.

So thanks to blogs like thisadvertneedsyou.com you may think you’re ready to make your mark on the wonderful world of digital outdoor screens…

• Understand Screen Hardware? CHECK
• Understand Data Networks? CHECK
• Understand Content Creation? CHECK
• Understand the Digital Signage Industry? CHECK

But do you really understand the one thing that will make or break your DOOH business venture?

ADVERTISING

“When someone types Bahamas into the search engine and British Airways pops up at #4 in the page rankings, that’s technology. But what makes someone type Bahamas into the search engine in the first place? That’s ADVERTISING!”

I picked that up after spending a few hours with Ivan Clark earlier this week. You should speak to him too. You can find him here and here

There is a 9:16 Portrait Template and 16:9 Landscape Template available for you to download, modify and make use of.  Each zip file contains the source .fla, the .swf movie and a windows .exe version for use on any PC.

If you use this template for commercial gain you need to consider:

1. giving a donation to the guy who faithfully updates all the RSS feeds at http://www.rsslivescores.com/
2. changing the background and (hidden) mask graphics in the .fla, as I got the original graphic from Google images, which I then cleaned up.

If you haven’t done so before, please read the site disclaimer before downloading and/or commenting.

Have fun, I’m hoping I generate enough good karma here for England to go all the way and win it (preferably beating Germany/Portugal/Argentina/Brazil on the way too…. )

In October 2009, Titan Outdoor and MySpace ran a 4 week promotion whereby any MySpace account holder could enter picture and text onto a MySpace group page and the resulting image and message would play on the Titan Screen networks in New York, Chicago and London.

Digital signage software specialists from Dynamax, CoolSign and Litelogic collaborated with the MySpace coders to identify a common xml format which all platforms could recognize to display the pictures/text stored from MySpace form to the DOOH Screen networks on both sides of the Atlantic.

I have hosted a sample copy of this XML file here.

The prototype flash template I made (and have made available for download) steps though the available records in the titan.xml file from ‘most recent’ to ‘oldest’ at an interval of 5 seconds.

You will see that the user text comes from the xml file and the jpeg image is loaded from a location detailed in the xml data.

This a nice simple example of how to load text into a flash file from an xml source, load/size a picture and step through an xml data set. 

If you haven’t done so before, please read the site disclaimer before downloading and/or commenting. Download source files here

The nice thing about this file is that it allows any person with internet access to update a twitter news feed, with the updated text being instantly read by this flash twitter reader on screen.

The twitter feed text fades onto screen, holds for 10 seconds and then the next news story loads. This method is a lot better than the traditional ‘TV news tickers’ that scroll constantly from right to left. The right->left scroll method is OK for TV but not the right approach for digital signage which should never be confused with the broadcasting medium.

There is also some bonus Actionscript in the source files which shows how to get local PC date, month, year and time into a flash movie.

If you haven’t done so before, please read the site disclaimer before downloading and/or commenting.

download source files here

It describes how digital signage panels need to become environmentally aware to make the most of the medium e.g. how to integrate digital signage with sesory devices such as image recognition cameras, temperature sensors, microphones, smell sensors etc. to create a truly reactive communication platform.