Content

Bars: Turning Screens into eSports for Casual Gamers

  • PDF

Bars and pubs can now retain customers, acquire new ones and boost revenue with what they already have in their bars: big-screen TVs, guests, and guest smartphones.

We caught up with Bostjan Troha, co-founder and president of Barthletix a startup that turns big-screen TVs in bars and restaurants  (even on slow nights) into revenue-boosting loyalty tools.

Bostjan Troha

What is Barthletix?

Let’s say your client has a bunch of TVs in your bar. These TVs don’t contribute much to the bar's revenue and customer retention when there’s nothing to watch.

Well, Barthletix utilizes these TVs even on slow nights and engages customers to play football, soccer, darts, roulette and more, using their phones. Every night becomes game night! The phones are just controllers: the content is on the TV,  for everybody to enjoy, just like a real game would be.

So you’re solving the problem of slow nights for bars/pubs?

Exactly, but also the engagement and loyalty problem, which translates to revenue. Game nights in bars are when the revenue skyrockets. But that’s only a couple of nights per week if that. Barthletix lets bar owners utilize their TVs on slow nights to create game atmosphere every evening. Barthletix is a digital sports bar where everyone can be an athlete. Hence the name -- Barthletix is short for "bar athletics."

What does a bar owner need to do to join in?

All they need to do is get the Barthletix box, plug it into the TV and connect it to wifi. That’s it. The TV shows the regularly scheduled programming, but it includes a QR code and a link. Anyone in the bar can scan the code or type the link in their phone’s browser and they can start playing games on the TV. Then the entire screen displays the game people are playing.

And how does the bar earn revenue?

The games are based on the freemium business model. You need currency to play games: Silver, which you earn as you play plus each time you order a drink, and Gold, which you buy at the bar.

Let’s say you ran out of Silver while playing soccer with your friends against the table next to yours. You either order another beer and get Silver or buy Gold from the waiter — you most certainly won’t stop playing, your buddies will not let that happen.

And the best thing is, when you’re in a bar, you’re in the spending mood. You went to the bar to spend money, among other things, of course.

So the bar earns revenue by either selling more beer or selling Gold to customers. Gold is printed coupons with a QR code in them. The customer simply scans the code and Gold is transferred to their account.

Is there any other difference between these two currencies?

Yes, in order to participate in or create leagues and championships customers must buy Gold. With each sale of Gold, the bar generates revenue, of course.

It’s easy for a bar to set up their own league or organize a championship of neighboring bars. There are lots of opportunities for bars to take advantage of the platform.

What kind of games can we play?

We have a bunch of skill-based games as well as chance-based games. So, even if you’re… well, tired and emotional and your skills are impaired, you can still enjoy playing.

And anyone can participate. If you don’t want to play, you can bet on outcomes for rounds of beer, the virtual currency or prizes the bar or their partner offers.

Is this esports for casual gamers?

Spot on! We’re building an esports platform for casual and popcorn gamers. Not everyone understands Dota2 or LOL, but everyone understands Soccer and Football!

We see a lot of benefits being generated for bars and restaurants, especially with complex and demanding target audiences, such as the Millenials.

Go Barthletix

Wallin ONE Digital Signage Platform Stresses Content Creation

  • PDF

Wallin

Wallin will be exhibiting for the first time at ISE.

Their Wallin ONE is designed to eliminate one of the biggest challenges facing small to medium companies planning to deploy digital signage – the challenge of creating and enriching content.

A cloud-based media platform, Wallin ONE removes the need to generate or acquire content to get started – because it’s all there within the platform. An app market, included within the Wallin ecosystem, enables the user to quickly and easily choose the content (such as social media, news and so on) to appear on-screen to create or enrich engaging, interactive consumer experiences.

With Wallin ONE, users can implement social remarketing campaigns, strengthening online campaigns with output in the offline world such as promoting specific hashtags on the web and, at the same time, in the physical store. This social capability complements and enhances Wallin ONE’s ability to leverage native and third party apps, video, images and so on, giving users a range of highly available content options not available with other platforms.

Wallin ONE enables proximity marketing by supporting sensors for such as infrared, ultrasonic, physical switches or NFC, allowing the user to trigger an action on screen or on a mobile device when the presence of a consumer is detected.

The company explains its HTML5 cloud-based media platform provides ease of use and affordability for small- to medium-sized businesses who want to take advantage of the many benefits of digital signage, but do not have the resources typically required.

Wallin Cloud

No special hardware platform is required, making it very affordable, with prices starting at only €20/month. It can be managed from any internet-connected device via the Wallin ONE Web Dashboard. Wallin ONE is also scalable as a business’s needs grow.

“We believe that, for too long, digital signage has been just too hard - too hard to buy, too hard to use, too hard to manage, and too hard to get right. So, to make all those things easy, we created Wallin ONE,” says Alessandro Messineo, Wallin CEO. “Now, there is an affordable, easy-to-use digital signage solution that delivers everything a user will need to get started – right out of the box. Wallin ONE can quickly deliver a return on investment even for a user with only a single screen. But: just because it’s affordable and easy to use doesn’t mean we have compromised on its features, such as support for proximity marketing and integration with social media. Even a small user can create and easily manage truly compelling digital signage experiences.”

Customisable, enabling users to reflect their own brand identities, Wallin ONE is also available as a white label/OEM solution. And can be integrated with any external media source.

Also on show on the company’s ISE stand is WallSign, a cloud-based CMS that allows users to manage thousands of different digital signage platforms from any internet-connected device. This CMS enables the import of dynamic content from social media – such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram - as well as images, video, RSS feeds, live news, calendars and so on. It is digital signage player-agnostic--large, heterogeneous, multi-manufacturer networks can be integrated into a single solution via a simple cloud-based interface.

Wallin customers include Italian telecommunications company TIM, United Nations agency IFAD, Harley Davidson, and lifestyle magazine MarieClaire. Wallin partners extensively with Microsoft, Philips and Samsung.

Go Wallin SRL

Facebook Shares Open 3D-360 Video Capture System

  • PDF

Facebook 3D-360 camera

Facebook designed and built a durable, high-quality 3D-360 video capture system—and they are sharing it.

Why? Facebook wants to create a pro end-to-end system to capture, edit, and render high-quality 3D-360 video. They expect this contributes to the emerging 3D-360 camera landscape by enabling more VR content producers and artists to produce 3D-360 video.

Because VR is all about content.

The open-source system includes a design for camera hardware and the accompanying stitching code-- and both are available on GitHub this summer. Developers can leverage the Facebook designs and code-- and content creators can use the camera in their productions.

As expected with Facebook, the product is distinguished by its algorithms. Building on top of an optical flow algorithm is a mathematically rigorous approach that Facebook uses to produce “superior results.” Their code uses optical flow to compute left-right eye stereo disparity, leveraging this ability to generate seamless stereoscopic 360 panoramas, with little to no hand intervention. The stitching code drastically reduces post-production time. What is usually done by hand can now be done by algorithm, taking the stitching time from weeks to overnight.

The system exports 4K, 6K, and 8K video for each eye. The 8K videos double industry standard output and can be played on Gear VR with Facebook's custom Dynamic Streaming technology.

Facebook says, “When we started this project, all the existing 3D-360 video cameras we saw were either proprietary (so the community could not access those designs), available only by special request, or fundamentally unreliable as an end-to-end system in a production environment. In most cases, the cameras in these systems would overheat, the rigs weren't sturdy enough to mount to production gear, and the stitching would take a prohibitively long time because it had to be done by hand.”

“So we set out to design and build a 3D-360 video camera that did what you'd expect an everyday camera to do — capture, edit, and render reliably every time. That sounds obvious and almost silly, but it turned out to be a technically daunting challenge for 3D-360 video.”

Watch A Short Film on Facebook’s 3D 360 VideoCapture System

Go An Open 3D-360 Video Capture System that Facebook Wants to Share with You

Sell Your IntuiFace Experiences in The Marketplace

  • PDF

IntuiFace Marketplace

The IntuiFace Marketplace contains fully functional interactive experiences that can be downloaded, run and reused for free. These experiences are listed on the Marketplace tab of the Experiences panel in IntuiFace Player or Composer.

Marketplace samples can be used as inspiration or as a starting point for building your own projects. They are fully customizable, illustrating various application domains and multiple ways of using IntuiFace features.

The IntuiFace Marketplace enables content creators to either sell or give away for free their content to the IntuiFace community.

As a seller, you choose the price and earn 70% each time an experience is sold.

IntuiFace users come from all over the world (more than 120 countries), and you can reach new potential customers by promoting your IntuiFace Marketplace experiences and winning new contracts.

Whether to use the free(mium) model to attract more users or to sell to earn revenue - that's up to you…

To list your IntuiFace experiences on the Marketplace, you must be logged into your IntuiFace account and a paid IntuiFace customer.

Go IntuiFace Marketplace

Google Goes Where Street Views Has Never Gone Before

  • PDF

Street View Trekker

One of my first encounters with the power of digital signage came in Las Vegas.

No, it wasn't the fancy casinos with 30 foot tall LED displays or the outdoor signs promising 99% payouts. Sure, those are impressive displays and make Las Vegas a capital city of digital signage (even without the annual Digital Signage Expo).

It was in a diner.

But it wasn't just any diner. It's more like one of the best diners to experience the authentic Americana of such establishments.

The Peppermill is on the Strip, at the top of Convention Center Drive. And because I am always in Vegas at convention time, the diner usually has a line of waiting customers for breakfast.

I had been visiting the Peppermill for years and the waiting line was always a frustration. Then (years ago now) they put in giant hi-res display screens and showed amazing travel videos. Long before you had Retina screens on your MacBook, these large displays were the shock-and-awe of displays. You practically fell into the content, into hi res videos taken while flying over amazing landscapes.

You saw powerful, large moving images that caught not only your attention but your emotions as well. It transformed the boring and frustrating wait in line for your breakfast into an I-lost-track-of-the-time moment. How hard is that to pull off.

And that leads me to the latest newest technology at Google Street Views: the Street View Trekker.

The Trekker enables Street View to feature more places around the world-- places no car, trike, trolley or snowmobile can access. This wearable backpack is outfitted with a camera system on top, and its portability enables the wearer to gather images while maneuvering through tight, narrow spaces or locations only accessible by foot.

The first collection using this camera technology was taken along the rough, rocky terrain of Arizona's Grand Canyon. And you can see the results in the link below.

These striking images, from places you can only walk, might be just the content you need for certain digital signage moments: like waiting in line somewhere.

But more than that: you can be the next Trekker, helping to capture panoramic images from all types of locations using Google’s Street View Trekker.

Their loan program enables third parties to borrow Trekker equipment and take it to amazing places around the world that they know, love and want to share via Google Maps.

But you (or your client) need to represent an organization such as a tourism board, non-profit, government agency, university or research group that would like to take photos with the Trekker for future inclusion on Google Maps.

This program is currently available for a limited set of countries (much of Europe is included) but they are working to expand eligibility to additional countries in the future.

Go Take a Look at Street Views Trekker Results

Go The Google Street View Trekker Loaner Program