Signage24

Introduction

Signage24 is a hosting service through which you can distribute your presentations as digital signage worldwide -- almost like an automated billboard. This is a huge thing -- and this sort of service can change the way digital signage is pushed to multiple output streams. More importantly, Signage24 allows anyone to do this -- imagine someone working out of a garage or a multinational conglomerate office has the same options to publish their digital signage!

I asked Kurt Dupont of Signage24 about how this works -- read his interview here.

Figure 1: Signage24 Workflow

About Signage24

Signage24 is an online service from PresentationPoint, a Belgium based company. My contact at PresentationPoint for this review was Kurt Dupont - thank you, Kurt.

You can learn more about Signage24 from their site.

Register

To use Signage24, you first need to register as a user:

1. Browse to the Signage24 site, as shown in Figure 2.
2. 
   Figure 2: Signage24 homepage
2. Click the Register hyperlink -- this opens the Register form shown in Figure 3. Fill up the form and you'll receive a confirmation email in your inbox.
3. 
   Figure 3: Register
3. Confirm your registration so you can use the service hereafter.

Using Signage24

Once you join Signage24, you'll discover that there are various subscription levels. The basic subscription level is free, and we'll use that in the rest of this article. Remember -- other subscription levels offer far more options. Follow these steps to use Signage24:

1. Browse to the Signage24 site, and login to your account.
2. Click the File Management button, and upload one or few PowerPoint presentations (PPT file format only). The free account limits your uploads to 1 mb only, but that's enough to get a feel of this web service.
3. Next you need to create playlist (see Figure 4), and add any of the uploaded presentations to the playlist (see Figure 5).
4. 
   Figure 4: Create a Playlist
5. 
   Figure 5: Add files to Playlist
4. Now, add a client computer as a player. To do that you need to first identify the name of the client computer. Windows users can choose Control Panel | System | Computer Name to find the computer name. One of the client computers we wanted to use with Signage24 was named EMERALD -- so we added this name within Signage24 using the Players option (see Figure 6).
5. 
   Figure 6: Players Properties
5. Now download the player software (see Figure 7), install it, and run the configuration tool (see Figure 8).
6. 
   Figure 7: Download Player
7. 
   Figure 8: Configuration
6. Click both the Test Connection, and Test PowerPoint buttons within the configuration dialog box -- both should report as successful.
7. Now is a good time to log in again to your Signage24 account, and check again for playlists and players -- also some presentations may have a date limit -- edit those dates as required. All these options can be accessed within the Assignments section within your Signage24 account.
8. Now, access your screen saver options within the client computer -- usually this is through Control Panel | Display | Screen Saver. Set the S24PPTSS as your active screen saver, and click Apply (see Figure 9).
Note: You don't have to set the screen saver manually for the current (logged on) user. During installation the screen saver is installed for the default user.
9. 
   Figure 9: Screen Saver
9. Click the Preview button to test your Signage24 screen saver. See Figure 10.
10. 

Pricing and Support

Various pricing options are available depending upon the number of presentations, members, and traffic. Depending upon the options you choose, you could be paying anything from $37 to $58 per player. And the free accounts work well too -- although you'll soon run into limitations.

Support is through an online FAQ, and you can also get in touch with support through phone and email.

Conclusion

Signage24 is a great service, but I found that their documentation was not too friendly. The price performance ratio is great -- and if they provide a more detailed help document, this is a fantastic product. I also like the fact that this works as a screen saver, thus if the computer is unattended for a while, the presentation starts on its own.