Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
A good trade show can be overwhelming with the sheer number of new products, upgrades and services that one can encounter but we felt that there was a distinct lack of innovation from exhibitors at #dse2012 last week.
There were however a few shapes (and other products) that caught our eye and (even though many of these have been seen before) here’s a quick run down…
- Casio of Dover, New Jersey, teamed up with interfusion, Vaughn (a suburb of Toronto), for an interesting display using Casio projectors (shown above) on a translucent screen from interfusion. The translucent screens can be of any size and shape – the one we saw was sort of cloud-shaped – and the projections can be rear or frontal.
- 4D Retail Technology, Toronto, – soon to be a Cisco partner, we’re told – showed a virtual mannequin (picture to the right) in glass that we discovered is now in use in front of a customized boutique within The Bay in Toronto. The display version we saw measured 8’ tall x 4’ wide but we’re told that such displays can run as high as 10’ and 20’ long.
- Black Box of Lawrence, Pennsylvania, showed off its new Wearable Signage, a 2.4” LCD player that’s great for use at events, trade shows and point-of-sale marketing. What’s neat is that the players support global content uploads and updates. We figure it’s a good way to engage customers with videos right on your jacket pocket.
- Rose Displays and Kokley of Wellesley, Mass., offered an interesting product using an iPad that’s great for retailers and restaurants. We liked a display where, by a customer answering four simple questions, the perfect running shoe could be brought to his attention without his wasting time searching through dozens on models on display (Adrian and Andrew took a detailed look at this at #gs12 the week before).
- NanoLumens screens always seem to be attractive and drawing crowds. The Norcross, Georgia-based company now offers four versions of its screens, two of which are flexible – eg. they can be wrapped around a post – The NanoLumens that was wrapped in a cylinder shape will seriously give DynaScan a run for its money, Ed. All are lightweight with fast and easy installation and we particularly liked seeing how easy it is to remove and replace any problem spots.
- Rhonda Software of Vladivostok, Russia, showed myAudience-Measure, that counts people within the camera field of view, detects their faces, recognizes attention, gender and age group. Privacy is protected; no personal images are captured; only statistical information is stored. It’s being promoted for use, eg., in a department store to measure the attention grabbed by a new product.
- AOpen’s Warm Touch 22 with Intel architecture includes an imbedded camera allowing you to get audience information metrics. Promotions change based on when the audience is watching. It involves a 22” multi-touch screen. We liked hearing that AOpen offers remote management and claims to be able to fix almost all failures remotely.
March 13th, 2012 at 11:15 @510
No mention of the transparent cooler displays on here….I thought that they were particularly good!
March 13th, 2012 at 13:16 @594
You thought the virtual mannequins and transparent, shaped glass were innovative? Really? in 2008, maybe …
And people have been walking around with little digital screens on their lapels for years.
Tom, ask Stratacache what they think of the innovation of cooler displays – which they’ve had on the market for more than a year. And maybe ask their patent lawyers.