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Posts Tagged ‘High’

Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

The unexpectedly heavy snow and freezing temperatures, which disrupted transport networks and brought much of Europe and the UK to a halt in December (2010), will also have affected the busy pre-Christmas shopping season.

This was hardly good news for high street retailers at a traditionally busy time of year. When the figures come in after the festive season it will be interesting to see what has happened to the balance between high street and online shopping especially as more and more people have in any case been shifting to shopping online.

It will not be too long, however, before affordable technology moves on another stage and makes even online shopping seem a little old-fashioned. It may sound like science fiction, but already the technology exists to allow people to design and make objects using 3-D printers.

3-D printers have been used to some degree since about 2003 in a range of industries including jewellery-making, footwear manufacture, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), as well as in the automotive, aerospace, dental and medical industries.

But imagine being able to sit down at a home computer and create your own clothes to your unique design or replace your child’s school shoes at the touch of a button or keyboard as they grow and be sure it all fits perfectly because the computer has already measured the size in 3-D.

There would no longer be a wait for goods bought online to be delivered and the experience of looking at, touching, trying on and choosing products that comes with high street shopping would be possible without moving outside the house.

It would all depend, of course, on making the printing machine easy for non-technologists to use and small and affordable enough for home use, both of which are already beginning to happen.

3-D printing works by building up successive layers to create an object.

The printer takes a 3D computer file makes a series of cross-sectional slices. Each slice is printed on top of the previous one to create the object.

The materials used are either a powder or a liquid polymer and the printing method ranges from melting or softening material to produce the layers or laying liquid materials that are cured with different technologies.

Once the object is no longer required the materials from which it has been made can also be shredded and re-used, which would also have the environmentally friendly advantage of cutting down on waste.

Already manufacturers are producing desk-top 3-D printers based on an ink-jet system and there is another technique, called Digital Light Processing, in which a vat of liquid polymer is exposed to light from a projector. The polymer exposed to light hardens, building up in layers to make the object and the remaining liquid polymer is then drained off to leave the finished 3-D object.

Christmas shopping may no longer be a choice between online shopping or hiking to the high street whatever the weather once the 3-D printing technology becomes affordable. It will be possible to create unique gifts tailored to the person receiving them without actually leaving home!

Or more likely, perhaps, it could lead to the development of small-scale, local industries where you could perhaps describe what you want, provide the sizes and colour choices and work with the maker to produce exactly what you want, whether it is clothing, artefacts for the home, or gifts for a loved one.

Mobiles have become an integral part of our daily lives. They have brought in a new era in the arena of mobile set technology. Mobiles are today no more a luxury item. They have become almost mandatory for everybody. As against earlier times, when mobiles were highly expensive and could be afforded by only a few, now they are possessed by almost everybody. They play an utmost important role in spheres of our lives.

They are a must for everybody, be it the professional, the businessman, the or anybody else. Cheap mobile phones are a mode of communication that get anybody globally connected. They provide the ways and means for the user to stay in touch with his or her loved ones anywhere in the world from anywhere. The most important aspect of mobiles has been their portability. They can be carried anywhere and everywhere because of their light weight and small size.

There are cheap phones that can be availed by all. This wireless features of these sets coupled with Internet access makes them one of the most enthralling gizmos in the present times. With technologies such as video calling, these cheap mobile phones make user feel as if we are near to the person we are interacting with. These sets also come with awesome audio qualities that produce high quality sound. The music, songs from these sets are highly soothing to the ears with surround sound. This gives an enthralling experience to the music junkies. There are MP3, MP4 player formats that enable the music buffs to have a gala time while listening to them. Furthermore, there are high resolution cameras with high mega pixels that provide advanced features to photography.

To enhance the value of these sets further, there are lucrative offers from the leading mobile networking vendors. These network service providers are fame giants such as Vodafone, Virgin, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Three and Talk Mobile. There are fascinating deals from these dealers that come with a host of freebies. These freebies include free gifts and incentives. The free gifts include laptops, Nintendo Wiis, Microsoft’s Xbox, home theatre systems, LCD TVs, blue tooth devices, DVDs and a lot more. There are free or limited period line rentals, half line rentals and reduced line rentals with these deals.

Obviously, the media – traditional as well as new media – function differently and have differing needs; however, a savvy marketer knows this and uses it to his advantage, particularly when applied to high tech public relations.

In planning a high tech public relations program understand that the mainstream media likes to report first-hand news about a product with insight from the technology’s developers. The mainstream media is in fact the best at disseminating content. In other words, major news agencies are effective in creating that “initial buzz” and therefore should not be ignored when it comes to high tech PR. However personal blogs, even more so than mainstream media and professional blogs, have greater success sustaining a technology’s reputation.

It is the responsibility of high tech PR practitioner to look for ways to integrate his client’s product into both.

There is no question that social media and news sites are important when it comes to all types of public relations, including high tech public relations. In particular, for high tech public relations, all types of media are relevant: from business news to social media to professional blogs. However in particular, personal blogs seem to have the most sustainable effect on high tech public relations for the long term.

Of interest to high tech public relations strategists is how news spreads online.

For example, blogger influence may be lower at the time that a new technology is introduced, but their influence seems to have a longer lasting effect. This may be the case because blogs represent the public’s response to a technology and the true merit of the innovation.

Those undertaking high tech public relations programs should recognize the importance of personal blogs and the long-term effect that they can have on the reputation for a product or company in the tech sector. It is necessary to integrate both personal blogs and traditional media into the efforts of high tech public relations programs. Specific strategies for targeting personal bloggers can include adding them to media lists, or reaching out to them via social media outlets like Twitter. The possibilities are endless when it comes to high tech public relations and should be strongly considered when it comes to building and sustaining a favorable reputation for a client.

Digital signage in retail is one of the best contemporary methods for marketing your products. This is a great tool for retail industry where the major portion of the profit is directly linked to the mode of advertisement. Marketing is the means through which you can reach out to people and it indeed needs to be attractive for people to take notice of your company or brand. How much ever great the technology you use in your products be, unless you market them, your products serve no better purpose than decorating your showroom.

Numerous companies offer excellent marketing solutions for retail business and a wide variety of other concerns. Their main products and services constitute digital signage. Marketing campaign using digital signage in retail involves a detailed step-by-step modus operandi. First of all, you need to have clear content.

Then you must have a creative and interesting channel to convey it to your customer base. You must choose a proper, compatible technology for displaying the developed content. The system must be installed and configured properly for your specific usage. It also needs to be maintained properly for constant use.

Being a business person, you may have only the comprehensive knowledge of your product. Getting creative and technical is something that is definitely not easy for you. Above all, managing advertising and business single handed is a very challenging task. And that is why digital signage companies are there to lend a supporting hand for you. By taking care of all the processes involved in advertising/marketing as mentioned above, these companies offer you comprehensive solutions for your advertising needs.

These companies usually have a team of AV designers, IT programmers who sit and discuss the retail marketing needs with you.

They throw feasible digital signage in retail ideas at you and take note of your responses. With your co-operation, they can design excellent content for your retail products and upon your agreement, will employ an appealing digital signage design. They install the software and configure the set up for you and any of the update issues and technical problems in the future will be addressed by skilled professionals.

Usually there are three sets of system solutions out of which the technicians and consultants can help you choose a system that addresses your needs comprehensively. One of the basic services provided by them is the entry level system. If all that you want is a simple layout capable of displaying digital messages for a particular number of times, this system is suitable for you. They provide you with a very user-friendly interface using which you can easily display messages using display systems like LCD, plasma screen, etc.

If you are looking for a slightly more advanced system, they have got the Enterprise system for you. If the same basic content has to be shown in a more attractive way, this system works best for you. The digital signage in retail is enriched with quality graphics to make the display look all the more appealing.

The advertising system is the third kind of solution system. This is the most sophisticated system of all which offers selective display in monitors. Everything is controlled using remote systems providing a greatly flexible digital signage in retail advertising solution.

Computers and the considerable technological benefits they offer have become an essential part of our lives. We have one computer at home and one in the office; we check our inbox first thing in the morning; we are always online on our phones, wherever we are; we send our friends photos of the cake we had for breakfast or the dress we want to purchase; and the same second a question occurs in our heads we start to surf the internet to find the answer. This is our modern world. It impacts on work – it’s almost impossible to find a job that doesn’t work with computers in some way – and even my elderly grandpa uses the internet to search for recipes for my grandma to cook him for dinner. Technology and computers have become an essential part of our lives – and naturally, artists are no exception. The result of the new technology, for artists, is to give them the ability to create artworks they would not have been able to dream of making earlier.

Digital art has increased the available variety of artworks and artistic possibilities: starting with simple digital photography, moving through images which react to the physical presence of a viewer and finally reaching virtual reality, like the CAVE.

It is interesting that art came to the world of computers and not vice versa. Perhaps this is because almost all the pioneers of Digital art are primarily scientists, who dared to make science fiction real.

Benjamin Laposky, an American mathematician and artist, is widely considered the founder of Digital art. He first created a graphic image using an analog computer. In 1953 he presented his works “Oscillons” (or “Electronic Abstractions”), which were a real breakthrough in the middle of previous century. Herbert W. Franke, an Austrian scientist and science fiction writer, besides drawing images with an oscillogram, wrote the first art book about computer graphics – “Computer Graphics – Computer Art”. Emeritus professor and ex-Presidential Science Advisor A. Michael Noll was interested in aesthetic value of digital artworks; his work “Computer-Generated Ballet” was the first animation made on a digital computer.

Benjamin Laposky, Herbert W. Franke, Michael Noll and Charles Csuri, together with Manfred Mohr, Robert John Lansdown, and Frieder Nake, wiped away the borderline between science and art, widening the borders of our world.

But some people continue to say that digital art is not a real art form, and we can’t compare Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, for example, with Maurice Benayoun’s interactive installation ‘World Skin.’ Of course we cannot compare these artworks, but don’t you think that if Leonardo were alive in the 21st century he wouldn’t try at least Photoshop? And that Mozart would have a go at writing music in Abelton? What we don’t know is what impact that would have had on their masterpieces – but there’s no reason to believe it would have constrained them. On the contrary, there would have been greater options available – as there are to us today.