Becalmed

Apple has not done a major new product intro for the better part of a year and these days, the Apple headlines are about how it avoids paying US Taxes. Sony, the Apple of its day, suggests that it might just be better off selling insurance rather than making electronics. PC sales are declining in favor of much cheaper tablets. Indeed the only excitement in consumer electronics these days seems to be Google Glasses; even there, there are significant questions about whether this may ever be a mainstream consumer product due to concerns about privacy, distracted driving, distracted walking, eyestrain, etc. Ahead, there is possibly an Apple watch, an Apple branded TV set, or some new consumer device from an unexpected source. There is also always the next generation of the iPhone. However, the digital-out-of-home market may be switching its emphasis from stand-alone consumer devices to a more interactive world where those devices are designed more to interact with each other and with public information displays…. digital signage.

Digital signage is one part of electronics that is certain to grow in volume and in scope of its social impact. Near Field Communications (NFC) and possibly other point to point or net linked communications services will offer new ways for retailers or service providers to interact with the public and for the public to interact with each other. With Apple opting out of NFC for its last version of the iPhone, the door is left open for someone with a business model more accommodating for the growth in digital signage, perhaps one of the other electronics companies, perhaps not an electronics company at all. Now is one of those times when someone with a completely new vision can change the direction of consumer electronics, much as Apple did when it jumped into the cell phone market.

Digital Signage Comes of Age

Wrigley Field is the second oldest ball park in the major leagues (Fenway is 2 years Older). The next closest in age is about 50 years its junior. Although the electric light was invented over 110 years earlier, Wrigley did not get lights, for the purpose of playing night games, until 1988. Wrigley still has its old scoreboard where the operator sits inside it with binoculars and has to physically change the numbers with each ball and strike.

This bastion of high technology early adoption is now contemplating adding a 6K square foot Jumbotron. The cost of not having one with its opportunities for advertising and crowd engagement is too pressing.

A Flat Panel Camera

A smartphone is more than just a phone. The platform has grown by accreting the functions of other platforms: watch, calculator, MP3 Player, PDA, and now even the laptop. This has been done in part by miniaturizing the components but also in large part by consolidating functions within components. Although display technology continues to produce visually better display one of the biggest advancements in display has been the consolidation of the keyboard and mouse function within the display. In looking to future development in display technology, much of the focus is rightly on better displays; visually better and flexible OLEDs. However, much is to be gained by considering further functional accretion into the display. Specifically, as touch technology moves to optical (non-touch) versions touch panels take on the capability of flatbed scanners. Perhaps they could also take on the role of camera.

Current cell phone cameras are limited by the size of their optics. Obviously this limits light input (low light capability) but it also means that they are diffraction limited in terms of resolution. Though phones may boast resolutions of 10 megapixels or more in their CMOS sensor, the optical resolution may be much smaller than this, as small as 2 megapixels. Flat panel cameras currently exist. They work by using folded optics to break up and compress the optical path. This is a workable but inelegant and is not a technique that could be integrated into the display. A solution involving synthetic aperture imaging could conceivably be integrated into the display and would give resolutions much higher than the human eye. Current tablets are much thinner than just the lid of laptops from not so long ago and have every bit of the functionality. Increasingly, the display is the device. Ultimately, this may be literally true.

"Minority Report" and the Hunt for the Boston Marathon Bomber

Clearchannel is, rightly, touting their role in dealing with the crisis. In the movie, "Minority Report" the entire town is looking for Tom Cruise using its ubiquitous digital signage. In banks, the screens showing the feed from the security cameras are not referred to or counted as digital signage. However combine the two and you may have start to finish video monitoring of the next race with both the contest and the crowd being widely shown up and down the rout. Image from "Digital Signage Today"

In addition to fixing the highway system so that it connects to the airport logically, the "Big Dig" left Boston with an all-new data infrastructure. It would be the ideal place to implement ubiquitous digital signage.