25 Feb. 2008 FREMONT, Calif. — Dynasign announced a partnership with BlueFire Digital, provider of mobile marketing technologies. The Dynasign screens integrated with BlueFire Digital’s SMS platform and Bluetooth technologies will enable personalized interaction with the audience for enhanced information dissemination, targeted marketing and response tracking.

“The integrated technologies will change the dynamics of digital signage networks by engaging the audiences with on-the-spot interactivities via the popular mobile text messaging and Bluetooth,” said Alex Wang, president of Dynasign.

Dyansign also announced that it has added Alex Richardson, managing director of Selling Machine Partners, as a member of the Dynasign Advisory Board.

“With over two decades of experience, Alex brings a wealth of innovative ideas to our organization,” Wang said. “His guidance and advice will be valuable as we build on our position as a leader in enterprise-level, digital signage content management software and solutions.”

Dynasign is showcasing the text messaging marketing application at the Digital Signage Expo 2008 in Vegas.

Dynasign will also be announcing the release of its Dynasign Desktop, a screensaver-based digital signage application, which will be available Mach 10, 2008. Dynasign Desktop transforms idling desktop computers into dynamic digital signage displays and enables businesses to deploy or expand the digital signage information displays to corporation offices, class rooms, libraries, hospitals and retail stores for unified communications or promotions.

Built on the foundation of Dynasign’s digital signage platform, Dynasign Desktop provides centralized content management for computer screensavers. Dynasign Desktop caries over many popular Dynasign Player features and supports most content formats, such as WMV, Flash and JPG, and Dynasign Templates including news, weather and RSS/XML feeds, text overlays, ticker display and more.

Distributor’s new Consumer Home and Office Solutions division targets digital convergence in the home and office markets.The new division covers consumer electronics, software, networking, digital signage and security products. It will be led by 15-year Ingram veteran, Jacqueline Bergin, and supported by a team of dedicated staff.

In a statement, the distributor said CHOS recognised increasing ties between IT and CE products, as well as growing demand for digital convergence. Ingram pointed to research from US-based Parks Associates which claims that nearly 145 million households would use a data networking solution by 2010.

The boom in digital signage and security had also created a need for a centralised division catering to resellers in that space, the company said.

“The launch of the CHOS division at Ingram Micro will provide a one-stop shop for resellers, for all their consumer electronics, software, networking, digital signage and security needs,” director of product marketing and management, Matt Sanderson, said.

As well as skilled staff and marketing assistance, the distributor has launched a new CHOS portal for resellers providing market information and specific product bundles for the home and office environment. Resellers and vendors would also be able to make use of Ingram’s national retail fulfilment capabilities to break into new channels, the company said in a statement.

Ingram took its first global steps into the consumer digital convergence market with the acquisition of US-based digital home integrator, Avad, for $US120 million in July 2005. At the time, the distributor’s global CEO, Greg Spierkel, told ARN he expected to launch a consumer electronics division in Australia within two years.

Late last year, Ingram also signalled its intention to create a dedicated digital signage division to address increased focus from its vendor partners on that space. The news followed the launch of a similar division in the US.

Canada’s Capital Networks Ltd has entered into a joint marketing agreement with CognoVision Solutions - a provider of real-time audience measurement and targeting solutions.

Capital’s ‘Audience’ software is sold to companies in Digital Signage, Cable TV, Education, Coroporate and Medical applications around the world. The agreement will give both company’s clients preferential access to each others products and services, and create a fully integrated signage and audience measure solution.

CognoVision’s Anonymous Impression Metric (AIM) platform utilizes advanced face-detection and tracking technology to determine audience viewership metrics. Integrating AIM with Audience™ will provide audience viewership metrics, and enable the Audience media content to be customized based on audience characteristics.