From Customer Retail Technology:

From Ken Burruso, at Digital Signage Today:

"Owners of restaurants, retail stores, medical centers and bankers are sitting on a goldmine of dynamic messaging opportunities to brand their identity, and incite decision making and spending. These owners have the power to provide their own content and their own commercial advertisements to their own guests and employees in real time. They can buy local news and weather content or produce their own and use the screen time to sell direct product placement advertisements and sales to their own merchandisers. They can use the network to manage waiting lists, take orders, make a special announcement and present menu items. They can broadcast employee communications messages for education and training initiatives and town hall meetings for large gatherings of employees."

To read the complete article, click here.

Part 2

Part 3

Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk website is a great source for retail technology reviews. So when he recently offered up his take on "Giftag" - a retailer-neutral gift registry from Best Buy - we listened.

Here's how Giftag works:

According to Schuman: "The application...requires a small applet to be downloaded and then integrated into either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox browsers. Once installed, users can theoretically visit any E-Commerce site, find something they want and then click on an icon to select it. The application also allows users to select specific elements of the retailer's page to visually highlight it for a friend or relative."

In other words, Best Buy is hoping that desktops, laptops and plasma TVs will soon join blenders, waffle irons and microwaves on the wedding registry.