New stadium kicks-off with Mitsubishi Electric screens

Barcelona’s RCD Espanyol football club hosted the first game in its new, purpose-built stadium in Cornellà-El Prat on August 2nd. Two 7.6 x 4.3 metre Diamond Vision screens and more than 90 Mitsubishi Electric LCD displays help maximise enjoyment for visitors to Spain’s most modern sporting venue.

LED and LCD displays supplied by Mitsubishi Electric are a central feature of the stunning new facility, rated as a four-star venue by UEFA. Two Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision screens overlook the 40,000 seat stadium, while a network of over 90 large screen LCDs installed throughout the complex ensure visitors are kept entertained and informed wherever they happen to be.

Installed in opposite corners of the ground, the Diamond Vision ODQ15 screens are 7.68 m wide x 4.32 m high with 15 mm dot pitch / 30 mm pixel pitch. Mitsubishi’s quad LED structure ensures a genuine 21 mm Dynamic Pixel Pitch as each LED is re-used to form adjacent pixels. The Diamond Vision’s 5,000 cd/m² light output and wide viewing angles ensure fans get a clear view of the action wherever they are sitting, with true colours and clean whites – essential for both sports teams and advertisers.

Both screens are controlled using Mitsubishi’s XDC-4000 processor which manages all the screen content. The processor accepts DVI, SD-SDI and HD-SDI inputs and has a built-in “picture-in-picture” facility enabling the screens to show more than one video signal simultaneously. XDC-4000 was specifically designed to cover the display requirements of sports venues and features state-of-the-art image processing for the highest possible clarity.

As well as being one of the finest football arenas in Europe, Cornellà-El Prat is also one of the most innovative. Solar cells built into the roof can deliver up to 500 kW of pollution-free power and the whole stadium has been designed for maximum energy efficiency. Mitsubishi Electric LED screens automatically adjust their power output to suit the prevailing light conditions, and sophisticated internal monitoring ensures optimum operating efficiency is maintained. Extremely high build-quality help ensure Mitsubishi LED screens achieve a long operating life, reducing cost of ownership and the need for premature refurbishment.

Mitsubishi Electric also supplied the LCD screens used throughout the stadium’s retail and hospitality areas as well as corporate facilities and a museum. A total of 70 Mitsubishi Electric 32" LDT322V displays and 20 42" LDT421V2 units were installed in private boxes, VIP suites and meeting rooms, with additional displays used in the public areas and entrance foyers. The Mitsubishi displays add extra flexibility to the meeting room facilities, allowing them to be used for conferences or presentations on non-match days. Remote management of the displays allows different content to be routed to different areas of the stadium, or multiple inputs to be displayed on individual monitors via their built-in picture-in-picture feature.

Diamond Vision is perhaps the best-known big-screen technology in the world; its global customer list includes many of the world’s most prestigious sporting venues, most notably the recently-opened New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys landmark stadiums. Along with its world-class Diamond Vision family of LED displays, Mitsubishi Electric offers a range of professional-grade LCDs from 32” to 65” designed to meet the needs of applications such as digital signage that demand reliability, performance and low cost of ownership.

ISE Exhibitors: Don’t Fall for This Trick

Written by Bob Snyder and published originally on rAVe Europe

Monday, 10 November 2008

You remember this one from the days of telex directories. It comes in the mail, looking very official. It seems to be your official listing in the ISE catalogue as it mentions ISE and headlines "Exhibitors Directory in the Expo-Guide." The letter (with your name and address pilfered from a previous ISE catalogue or a web site) says “The update of your pre-registered listing in our exhibitors directory is essential…” So fill in any changes in your details and send it back. Right….

Expo-Guide is not an official ISE publication. It may not even be a publication. The company behind this sleight-of-hand marketing seems to be from Mexico, but who knows? The campaign is so similar to a notorious German company and the bank named is in Spain.

You need to read the letter (not the form which people tend to grab first) before you see it is NOT affiliated with ISE. You also have to read it carefully to understand if you fill in and send back the form in the envelope provided (how kind), you will get a bill. It cautions you in the letter that the only FREE update is on-line. Except there’s no link provided and if you Google search “Expo-Guide,” you get links to other industries and other shows all complaining about these folks.

Exhibitors: Watch for an orange "EXPO GUIDE" logo. Read any form very carefully before signing. What can you do if you already filled this in, thinking it was official? Ah, thanks to the internet it is now easier for consumers to defend themselves from evil, misleading tactics.

Go STOP ECG.org

http://ftp-sgpartners.net/proAV/administrator/ – ISE Exhibitors: Don’t Fall for This Trick

3 reasons why you shouldn’t use numbers in headlines

As avid LinkedIn followers, we read a lot of posts from various groups and individuals from around the business world. Like any social media service, postings in the various groups to which we belong are very much writing “in the raw” -  an un-edited stream of collective consciousness that is often rewarding and informative, but just occasionally a little annoying. One of our top bugbears is what appears to be (or maybe we just noticed it!) a growing tendency to use meaningless numbers in headlines to try and grab attention.

There is a well established school of thought in marketing that holds that numbers, and particularly odd numbers, used in headlines in some way adds credibility to the message that follows. Personally, I don’t agree. There may be cases where it is appropriate, but the more I see “5 great ways to..” or “7 reasons why…” the more it irritates me.  It’s not often I get to exercise irony in a professional capacity, so I thought it might be fun to examine why I find it irritating and thereby establish a case for not using numbers in headlines. So here goes: My 3 reasons why you shouldn’t use numbers in headlines…

1) It’s patronising. Good business writing does not dictate to its audience, it engages with them. By numbering your points in some arbitrary way, you are lecturing rather than engaging; you are implying that your reader is so dumb that they can’t perceive your points for themselves or that they have the attention span of a goldfish. Either way, it’s not a good way to win friends and influence people.

2) It’s lazy. A good headline is vital to success; you have perhaps a fraction of a second to grab a reader’s eye as it scans the page. Crafting an effective headline takes time, thought and skill – just ask any newspaper subeditor. A formulaic “5 good reasons…” headline demonstrates none of these qualities. The reader could reasonably surmise that the article that follows will be similarly vacuous and skip it.

3) It’s oh-so contrived. Business writing is not numerology; you should not split or conjoin your arguments in order to meet some arbitrary number of bullet points just because some “marketing guru” said so. Make each point clearly and well, and you’ll have no need to number them to get your arguments across. Your readers will respond much better if you treat them like intelligent people.

AJ – Find me on LinkedIn here

Instore Media and Digital Signage, POPAI Japan

From DailyDOOH

POPAI Japan are holding an ‘Instore Media and Digital Signage’ event on July 31st

The seminar will feature interesting speakers making inroads into Japan’s instore market. Sony, B2B Solutions Department will lead off the event with a speech about their Mirutokuchannel service. The service targets supermarkets and provides value added content such as sale information, recipes, news and advertising.

The second speaker is from supermarket operator Summit and will introduce Summit Vision, their instore media channel. Summit uses a combination of screen, projector and LED technology to deliver instore content to shoppers.

Lastly, advertising agency powerhouse Asatsu DK, will deliver a presentation on Promotional Media development. ADK will cover instore purchase decision making and their vision of the future of instore media.

The half day event comes with a Japanese price tag as well, USD 250 per attendee.

DailyDOOH » Blog Archive » Instore Media and Digital Signage, POPAI Japan

LED pioneer honoured

When the history of technological development in the late 20th Century is written, the name of Dr. Isamu Akasaki is sure to figure prominently. Everyone who relies on modern communication technology owes a great debt of gratitude to this elderly Japanese professor, and yet publically, he remains a little-known. But hopefully, that may be about to change thanks to an award honouring Dr. Akasaki’s achievements.

What was Dr. Akasaki’s contribution to our modern world? Simply, he was the man that made the blue LED possible. Thanks in large part to his work, we now have high-speed internet communications, high-density data storage (hence the trade name “Blu-Ray”), and a cornucopia of other technological marvels – not to mention today’s full-colour LED screens.

The Inamori Foundation has announced that Dr. Isamu Akasaki will be awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for 2009. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the annual Kyoto Prize is an international award honouring “significant contributions to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind.” The award is presented on November 10 each year in three categories.

Dr. Akasaki, 80, will receive the award for his pioneering work that led to the development of the blue LED. A semiconductor scientist, Dr. Akasaki serves both as a university professor at Nagoya University and professor at Meijo University in Japan.

The story of the development of the blue LED is the real stuff of legend: Once generally regarded as impossible, Dr. Akasaki persisted in his research for decades – long after others had given-up, and was eventually rewarded with success; his GaN-based positive-negative (p-n) junctions, making the blue LED practically possible for the first time. This achievement stimulated research on blue LEDs worldwide, and served as the first step toward their eventual commercialisation in the 1990s.

According to the Kyoto Prize press release, Dr. Akasaki’s pioneering research has not only led to numerous and diverse new applications in electronic equipment, but also offers great promise for protecting the global environment as blue LEDs are adopted for general-purpose lighting with superior energy-conserving qualities.

LEDs Magazine – Isamu Akasaki awarded Kyoto Prize for LED work

Habitat apologises for ‘hashtag spam’

Today’s Daily Telegraph carries an interesting story illustrating just how badly wrong an ill-conceived Social Media marketing campaign can go. Up-market furniture store Habitat has apparently been caught adding inappropriate keywords – called hashtags –to its corporate Twitter feeds.

Tagging marketing messages with keywords like #Iranelection and#iPhone, the firm tried to ensure its messages achieved a much higher ranking in users’ searches than should have been the case. But, it appears the stunt has backfired badly, and the well-known chain has apparently been forced to issue an apology.

The Telegraph reports: 

Twitter users reacted with anger to the publicity stunt: “Just read about your hashtag abuses,” wrote Caramboo. “You utter scumbags, I’ll never visit your shop again”, while another user, Brownbare, tweeted: “Naughty, money-grabbing furniture outlet. Bad bad bad. Now I’m glad I can’t afford your overpriced Ikea replicas”.

What is very interesting is just how powerful the inherent democracy of social networks is, and how quickly it can bring the errant marketeer to heel once a breach of “Netiquette” (remember that term?) is collectively perceived. The sanction of this electronic plebiscite is swift and decisive. However Netiquette evolves to encompass Social Media, one thing is for sure; Habitat’s ham-fisted, spammy attempts at manipulation will be long-cited as how not to do it.

Habitat apologises for Twitter ‘hashtag spam’ – Telegraph

Hesitant signs of recovery for Japanese economy

According to some commentators, the Japanese economy is showing signs of turning the corner of recession. The Nikkei 225 stock index recently broke the 10,000 barrier for the first time in eight months, with steelmakers and financial stocks leading the trading.

News of the Nikkei breaching the “ichiman” mark comes after further news reports appear to show signs of recovery beginning. Earlier this month, the country revised its GDP forecast from a 4 per cent contraction to 3.8 per cent. Corporate capital spending in the first quarter fell by a smaller-than-expected 25.3 per cent while bankruptcies dropped last month for the first time in a year.

Data released earlier indicated that Japanese industrial production rose 5.2 per cent in April from the previous month, the fastest rise in more than half a century. The drop in exports also eased in April, falling 40.6 per cent year-on-year compared with a 46.5 per cent decline in March.

But despite the encouraging signs, trading remains difficult. Japanese machinery orders – a key indicator of manufacturing confidence – are still fluctuating, falling unexpectedly in April as manufacturers delay expansion plans because of continuing tough trading outside of Japan. News from China last week showed a larger-than-expected drop in May imports and exports.

The signs are positive, and while the economy still has a very long way to go, there is very real optimism that we are at least on the road to recovery. New technologies – and in particular, “Green” technologies – are looking to become very important contributors to the “new” Japanese economy and we are already seeing Japanese companies like Mitsubishi Electric achieving considerable international success in this field.

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Further information can be found here

FT.com / Markets / Asia-Pacific – Nikkei breaches 10,000 level

Shot in the foot by Cupid’s arrow – a cautionary tale of Social Media marketing

It seems that the topic of Social Media is never far from the headlines of the business press. From Twitter to YouTube, debate rages back and forth amongst communications professionals as to the worth – or otherwise – of these sites as valid business communication channels.

Some of the more Ludditic (if there’s such a word) persuasion dismiss it all as a passing fad; others claim with equally unbridled passion that Twitter et al represents a new era of engagement and hyper-responsive communications.

Now – interestingly – a new dynamic has entered the debate in the shape of one Trent Reznor, singer with legendary industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor, formerly an enthusiastic Tweeter and Internet music pioneer, has reportedly closed his Twitter account after his candid, heart-warming posts prompted negative reactions from some of his 600,000 followers.

Writing on Japan Inc, Michael Condon suggests this is an event of far greater significance than it may first appear.

Reznor’s departure from Twitter is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, Reznor is one of the more Web-savvy, forward thinking members of the music industry out there. It should be noted that Reznor was one of the first major artists to take advantage of changing distribution and promotional systems with the Nine Inch Nails release of "Ghosts I IV."  Reznor himself has been a prolific "tweeter" with, as mentioned before, over 600,000
followers.

Michael’s second, and most interesting conjecture is that even for die-hard fans of blogging and Social Media, there is a point where “engagement” and interaction becomes a bit too real. Specifically, when the candid reality of Tweeting starts to diverge from the perceived reality of the “brand”, it can only lead to trouble, as Reznor has apparently discovered to his cost.

It seems, among other things, a big problem was that Reznor was, well, in love. HERE are some of the tweets that infuriated angsty fans:
Reznor: "Now that I’m in love and gone all soft on you, can anyone recommend any romantic comedies? Got a weird urge."

And

Reznor: "I am missing someone. Boo hoo."

And

Reznor: "Wait – I’m in love and getting married! I’d give you all free tickets if I could. (hugs)"

All sweet and innocent, until you remember that these utterances come from the creator of albums such as "Pretty Hate Machine", "Broken" and "The Downward Spiral." And it seems this romantic epiphany has not gone down well with the band’s more moribund fans.

There were proclamations of "selling out," "going soft" and worlds being turned "upside down."
And so, in the end, Reznor got sick of it all and pulled the plug on his Twitter feed.

For some celebrities – and increasing numbers of corporate marketeers – Twitter is regarded merely as a marketing tool. Yet it was never intended as such. It was always supposed to be much more personal than that. Ironically, in using it as it was originally intended, Reznor appears to have unwittingly undone the marketing work of many years and many record company dollars – at least in the eyes of some fans.

And therein lies a sobering lesson for those considering Social Media as part of their marketing mix. Twitter feeds and Facebook pages might be fine in some circumstances, but not all, and they need to managed with particular care: Social Media is far from being the silver bullet of marketing; and it’s all too easy to get hit by those ricochets. 

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You can read the original post on Creative Deconstruction here

China economic figures show further signs of recovery

By Myra P. Saefong & Chris Oliver, MarketWatch

TOKYO (MarketWatch) — Chinese economic data released Friday reinforced the growing perception of an economy picking up steam, with retail sales and industrial production for the month of May coming in stronger than expected, while new bank lending continued at a torrid clip.

Friday’s data capped a week of relatively robust news that dispelled some of the scepticism surrounding China’s recovery, with the world’s third-largest economy now on track to meet its growth targets this year, analysts said.

"Most likely industrial production growth will trend upward, supporting our 8% gross domestic product growth call for 2009," wrote Merrill Lynch economist Ting Lu in a research note Friday.

In March, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also said the country would expand its economy 8% this year, although it’s not clear that a formal growth target has been set.

Industry reviving

Industrial output climbed 8.9% in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday. The result was above expectations for a 7.8% rise, as reported by Dow Jones Newswires, but it matched exactly forecasts by the 21st Century Business Herald and Ming Pao newspapers, whose projections Merrill Lynch said appeared to be "whispered" leaks of the data. See full story on so-called ‘whispered numbers.’

The more upbeat figures follow a fall of 26.4% in China’s exports in May from a year earlier and an import decline of 25.2%, according to Statistics Bureau data released Thursday. Both figures marked their seventh-straight on-year decline. See story on Chinese trade.

"While improving this month, China’s industrial production growth data has been in contrast with expansion in the Purchasing Managers Index," said J.P. Morgan’s China equities chief, Jing Ulrich.

"China’s May PMI of 53.1 represented a third-successive month of expansion in the manufacturing sector, suggesting that managers are cautiously optimistic in their outlook," he said.

The Statistics Bureau also reported Friday that retail sales were up 15.2% in May, compared to a 14.8% rise in April.

Bank lending up

Separately, data from the People’s Bank of China reported that new yuan-denominated bank lending in China totalled 664.5 billion yuan ($97.2 billion) in May compared to 591.8 billion yuan in April.

Money supply, as measured by M2, climbed 25.74% at the end of May from a year earlier, roughly in line with a 25.9% rise anticipated by analysts as reported by Dow Jones Newswires.

"The stabilization in money supply is as expected, considering the record rate of growth at the beginning of the year," said Ulrich. "The rapid pace of credit creation in recent months has had a stirring impact on China’s corporate sector, housing and stock markets."

Myra P. Saefong is MarketWatch’s assistant global markets editor, based in Tokyo. Chris Oliver is MarketWatch’s Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong

China data show further signs of recovery – MarketWatch

Intel helps shape Japan’s WiMax future

From Businessweek

A Japanese company is planning to launch the world’s fastest wireless broadband services using WiMax technology. On June 7, Intel Capital said it plans to invest $43 million in Tokyo-based UQ Communications, which also has financial backing from Japan’s second-largest wireless operator, KDDI.

In recent months, UQ Communications has been building a network of WiMax transmitters in Tokyo and neighbouring cities of Kawasaki and Yokohama and aims to reach 90% of Japan’s population by 2012. Today, UQ and KDDI formally announced plans to start offering WiMax services to businesses from July 1.

The promise of WiMax isn’t that it offers another phone network for voice calls. Rather the network is expected make wireless e-mail and Internet-surfing available from more places. WiMax resembles Wi-Fi but WiMax can reach up to 30 miles compared to Wi-Fi’s far more limited range of a few hundred of feet. That means anyone with a laptop computer or other portable gizmo that comes with WiMax technology can tap into the Net wirelessly over a zippy wireless network without a Wi-Fi router or a cable connection. (Calls made over online telephony outfits such as Skype are possible but it’s still unclear whether UQ and other WiMax service providers will try to steer users to their own packaged services.)

UQ enters Japan’s market for wireless data-transmission services as manufacturers unleash an array of wireless gizmos: everything from touch-screen mobile phones resembling Apple’s iPhone to netbooks which are smaller than laptops but can tap cellular networks to do e-mail and Web searches. UQ Communications applied 18 months ago for a license to offer WiMax services.

The company won’t have the WiMax sector all to itself. Japan’s number one wireless carrier, NTT DoCoMo, will begin offering similar services—albeit at much slower speeds than UQ’s–in the coming months. UQ will also have to compete against a crop of other companies known as mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs, that lease the major cellular networks to offer tailored data and voice services targeting specific kinds of users.

The first WiMax-enabled gizmos will be laptops. Three manufacturers–Toshiba, Panasonic and Onkyo—showed off laptops today that will run on Intel chips with WiMax capability when UQ’s services start. WiMax download speeds in Japan will be as fast as 40 Mbps, comparable to Wi-Fi connections already in use and faster than broadband Internet connections over a land-based line in most other countries. (Upload speeds are slower at 10 Mbps.)

Besides Intel and KDDI, other big-name supporters are behind UQ: Kyocera, railway operator JR East, Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank and Daiwa Securities. That should help in landing deals with businesses and perhaps even give UQ a chance to test new services in conjunction with JR East, which runs commuter and bullet trains from Tokyo to major Japanese cities.

Intel Helps Shape Japan’s WiMax Future – BusinessWeek