Dynamic Digital Signage For Humans
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
The folks over at s3mer (one assumes that this is pronounced ‘streamer’) are yet another entrant into the now-crowded free signage software market.
These folks distinguish themselves somewhat however by being pretty much a cross platform solution – as Mac fans we like their support for OSX and of course their ‘soon in Linux’ offering…
Our software works on Mac, Windows and soon in Linux. We can play FLV, MOV, M4V, MP4, h.264 video, display jpeg, png, gif images and flash SWF animations. We have built in RSS news feed support and video Podcast Support. In the next month we will release an API that is based on Flash and web technologies like, PHP, MySQL, XHTML, AJAX. This api will enable third party developers to integrate web services like google maps, flick and even facebook in their digital sigange applications.
All of the free software we have seen BUT NOT NECESSARILY PLAYED WITH (there doesn’t seem to have been any side by side reviews of all the free software on offer anywhere as yet) is free but ‘crippled’ in someway.
As such the software offering is in fact more akin to the standard / enterprise licensed software approach where you get a basic offering for free but if you want a fully featured version you have to pay.
It’s therefore not the GNU / Open source Linux approach at all (and at least the purveyors of these free offerings don’t try to weave web 2.0 marketing in there as well).
s3mer tell us that they plan to sell a subscription based version of the software with some extra features such as; live video input, an API, multiple shows with one player and 5GB of storage.
The free software version limits the user to 250MB of storage space and may / may not have a ‘powered by s3mer commercial’ in the playout.
The intended market here seems pretty much to be independent retail locations and small to medium sized offices.
May 28th, 2008 at 05:47 @283
The other “free” software is nothing more than a browser that you put into Windows Startup folder, I doubt this one is any better. That said, all these free offerings mention Flash SWF and FLV but I wonder if any actually pay the licensing fees…
May 31st, 2008 at 18:38 @818
Just to let everyone know that s3mer is not just another browser based digital signage thingy. s3mer is a full blown application just like the paid ones. Try it at http://www.s3mer.com