Digital Signage Solutions

Simply put, RSS has changed the way I read news and receive updates from the Web. I just started playing around with it a few years ago and am amazed at how much it has changed my Internet behavior.

For those who aren't familiar with what RSS is, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, a Web site's RSS feed (often symbolized by the graphic to the right) will deliver information to you instead of you having to hunt for it. RSS feeds keep you up to date on the things that interest you. And all of the feeds you subscribe to can be read via a free RSS reader (I use Google Reader). If you haven't experimented with RSS, click on the orange RSS icon to subscribe to this blog's feed.

At the bottom of the post, I've embedded a great video called "RSS in Plain English" by Common Craft. It provides a great intro and and visual explanation into RSS.

And being an admitted Web junkie, this has saved me countless hours of searching and sorting through various sites (some important, some not) that interest me.

So RSS has changed the way people are reading the news on the Web. And it's now changing the way content can be delivered to digital signage. You can use RSS feeds to provide ticker updates to your digital signs or even have the content appear in full screen format through dynamic flash.

Back when I was the Internal Communications Manager at Rolls-Royce, I used various RSS feeds to provide stock price updates, exchange rate news, and also used the Rolls-Royce PR page's RSS feed. This way I knew that as soon as a release was put on the site, the same release would be announced on my digital signage. This is an ideal application for those responsible for keeping employee communications up to date.

So for digital signage, keeping content up to date is vital to a network's success and RSS feeds can do this automatically for you.

Roll that beautiful RSS footage...