July 8, 2011

By James Wood

It used to be that you could just paint your name and business information on a shingle and hang it out in front of your shop or office. The simple market method was enough to drive business so that the phrase became an idiom for starting a new venture. Especially in the American West, doctors and lawyers could show up in a new town and immediately have business.

As technology advanced the signs got a bit more complex with colors and designs. Logos and brand recognition became important marketing features. But most marketing was done through tools like the phone book, that’s why there are so many “AAA Locksmiths” around the country. The idea was that being first in the alphabetical phone book listings would drive more business (and it often did). The medium is slightly different, but the effect is nearly the same as hanging out a shingle.

Technology hasn’t paused so now we have amazing tools like the Clarity™ Matrix Display Wall that can show anything you can dream up. You can leverage the high definition, multi-panel display to offer advertising to your clients as well as showing off the features of your new building. But the move from hanging out a shingle to the type of technology available in a Clarity Matrix display is leaving the old paradigms behind. You can show stunning HD pictures of the billboards that your clients have designed. You can even play the commercial’s they’ve recorded for television. The number of advertisements that reach the eyes of people will drastically increase with the ability to change the display constantly and the efficiency built in to be able to run the Clarity Matrix 24/7 with minimal down-time.

Now let your imagination run wild. Consider an interactive display with a touch screen interface so that the people passing the wall-sized display can call up the information they want based on what they’re looking for. When the ads are served up, not by some random rotation, but by the specific request of the people they will be more effective since they meet the specific need of the customer at the time they have the need.

With the Extended Ruggedness and Optics technology, Planar’s Clarity Matrix can stand up to the rigors of being touched and handled thousands of times. The ERO glass is tough, resistant to scratching, bonded directly to the screens of the display wall and supports touch screen input. Planar has skilled partners like Mtek Kiosk who can integrate the Clarity Matrix displays into touch-based kiosks that connect people with content. We’ve moved a long way from hanging out a shingle, but the purpose is still the same as it’s always been. Let us handle the technology so you can handle your business.

June 27, 2011

By James Wood

Alton Brown, the host of Good Eats, Iron Chef America and Feasting on Asphalt on the Food Network often shares his prejudice against unitaskers. The only unitasker he allows in his kitchen is the fire extinguisher. If you’re not familiar, a unitasker is a tool that can only perform one function and kitchens are filled with them. Egg slicers, bread makers, pickle spears and lemon zesters are just a few of the offenders that make Alton cringe. There’s no space in the kitchen for these items that get so little use but take up so much space.

In a world that is becoming much more conscious about efficiency, the ethic of no unitaskers can apply far outside the kitchen. You could install billboards to display advertisements then install televisions to shows relevant to your clients and finally you can put in a signage system to show important information. Each unitasker has to be purchased, installed and maintained separately and they can’t do anything different in the future.

Multitaskers offer greater value since they can do more than just one job and that frees up time, space and resources for other things that are important. You could install a Clarity™ Matrix Display Wall that can replace billboards, televisions and information signage – all in one package. Using the Big Picture Plus video processing package (included with each Clarity Matrix installation) you can set some of the panels to show the financial news channel, other panels display the information necessary for your clients and still other panels cycle through ads. Each panel of a Clarity Matrix display configuration can show separate information or it could be incorporated with other panels to stretch data across them. The individual displays have built in sensors that determine where each display is within the wall so that you can easily assign the sections you want to the data you want. With the minuscule 5.7 millimeter gap (with the Clarity Matrix MX 55) between each panel, the Clarity Matrix wall blends into one large screen for when you want to show everything together, but each screen is full 1080p HD quality on its own.

Alton Brown would be proud of the amazing multitasking capabilities of the Clarity Matrix. No unitaskers here.