4G Applications

Our HumanKiosk wins 1st place at CTIA Wireless

Thursday, March 25, 2010 by Chuck Gose

Amazed. Thrilled. Ecstatic. Proud.

Just a few words to describe our response to the HumanKiosk winning the first place award for emerging technology in the enterprise mobile marketing and advertising category at the International CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas.

The HumanKiosk is more than just digital signage. We truly believe it will revolutionize the relationship between brands and customers. 4G cellular technology can deliver a live two-way conversation, helping customers get questions answered immediately and resolving many pain points for brands. The HumanKiosk can directly and immediately improve communication between customers and brands. It takes content for digital signage and make it LIVE.

For those who aren't familiar (I wasn't), the CTIA Emerging Technology (E-Tech) Awards program celebrates and promotes the most innovative wireless products and services in the areas of consumer, enterprise and network technology.

Each year, nearly 300 applications are submitted and reviewed by a panel of recognized members of the media, industry analysts and executives. Products are judged on innovation, functionality, technological importance, implementation and overall “wow” factor.

So considering all of this, you can imagine our enthusiasm over the recognition.

4G and partnering with Alcatel-Lucent's ng Connect program

Saturday, October 10, 2009 by Leah Kane

We at MediaTile are PSYCHED to announce the first "HumanKiosk" prototype. This is an interactive, two-way video conferencing mechanism, enabling consumers and retailers (among others) to communicate directly with one another, in-store- no middle man.

Imagine the possibilities - you're in the store, comparison shopping, you have a question but the store staff doesn't know anything more about the product you're holding than the info which appears on its packaging. No problem- connect to a product expert and have a face-to-face conversation via HumanKiosk.

The excitement surrounding the HumanKiosk release is that it is based on ng Connect's 4G/LTE technology. (LTE = Long Term Evolution). If you're unfamiliar with ng Connect, it is a program "conceived and founded by Alcatel-Lucent, bring[ing] together infrastructure, device, application and content companies to create an end-to-end ecosystem with all the resources and expertise required to rapidly deliver next generation services and applications to service providers, enterprises and consumers. " (quoted from the ng Connect website...)

4G essentially is 3G on steroids. It has the bandwidth to support live and streaming video uploads/downloads - and to support the increasingly interactive nature of successful digital signage deployments.

Every retailer and brand manager hopes to improve communication with its consumer- traditional advertising is limited in this regard. HumanKiosk takes digital signage to another level of relevancy- it provides a purely interactive experience and accomplishes what pre-recorded content, whatever the medium, cannot hope to achieve.

Check it out- we can't wait to hear your feedback!

Will 4G make Digital Signage or will Digital Signage make 4G?

Sunday, September 20, 2009 by Simon Wilson

MediaTile is the world’s first provider of cellular digital signage. Having graduated from 1X and EVDO we have been providing 3G-based networked digital signage since 2005. Naturally we are continuing to push the envelope by working with variants of 4G. The promise that significantly increased bandwidth will create major new market opportunities and applications for network operators is a driver of innovation for the whole industry - in turn providing for improved interactive and relevant content on screen.

As with any new technology however, there are different schools. In the case of 4G, LTE (Long Term Evolution) and WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) are taking center-stage in the race for hearts, minds, regional roll-outs, and partnerships. However, the technology that wins out will not be the big story of tomorrow. The real story is how ubiquitous broadband wireless access will change the lives of consumers, traveling professionals, and small business owners, not to mention how it will facilitate a huge swathe of new or extended business applications as they are unshackled from fixed networks.

4G will add a whole new level of experiential and contextual-based content including on-demand videos to Cellular Digital Signage. 4G is therefore certainly an exciting business prospect for network operators – enhancing their ROI by delivering greater content impact with far less on site infrastructure. Certainly Houston Spencer, Alcatel-Lucent’s VP of Solutions and Marketing seems to agree following their LTE Focus Conference in Amsterdam last week.   But is 4G Digital Signage the Killer App to get 4G across the chasm? Or is our industry a supporting player to other products and applications from other industries that may instead catapult 4G wireless broadband to widespread deployment? In other words 'will 4G make Digital Signage or will Digital Signage make 4G?