Just this week, we officially announced the release of Wiffiti 4.0 with all it’s fabulous new features. If you used Wiffiti way back in the day, you’ll barely recognize the platform! Jayne scrounged through her extensive photo collection and found this one of our very first Wiffiti from way back in January, 2006 at Someday Cafe, Somerville Mass:

Compare that to this from today:

Looks different, doesn’t it! Check out our Flickr photo stream to see the evolution of Wiffiti over the years (and events).

Here are some of the highlights of Wiffiti 4.0:

- Incorporation of real time messages from the web, Twitter & Flickr
- Data tracking - after all isn’t that the best part of social media
- Embeddable in any digital signage network supporting Flash
- Auto-filtering, as well as a professional moderation options
- Random name generator - instead of numbers, you now get randomly assigned ColorAnimal or AdjectiveAnimal names. They’re quite fun - I’m SangriaPorcupine!

Wiffiti is also now available as a free standard version or as a professional version offering a more customizable feature set. Here’s a snapshot of what Wiffiti.com/DemiLovato looks like:

For more information about Wiffiti 4.0, read our press release

Wiffiti’s touring the country along with Disney star Demi Lovato this summer! Here’s some photos and a LIVE video from the Demi Lovato and David Archuleta concert at the Agganis Arena, Boston, June 2009. Look at how much the kids in the video love the interactivity :) Thousands of txts and photos were sent to the screen - they’re prolific, these tweens!

Don’t those projected screens look amazing?

Imagine seeing a photo of yourself at your favorite concert. Exhilarating.

Check out the size of the venue! It’s HUGE.

Wiffiti at the photo stage, giving fans something to do while they wait in line.

A group of influential CTOs, heads of research & development and innovation managers got together last night at the Newseum in Washington D.C. for the State of Innovation Summit. Organized by The Council on Competitiveness and Seed Magazine, the one-day summit examined how science, business and technology can be used to spark innovation.

It seems only fitting that they used our Wiffiti platform to share ideas and spark conversations. Thanks for sharing the photo on Twitpic so we could find you!

Photo credit: @soulellis

Texting is on the rise. We’ve embraced that fact. We know texting is here to stay. It’s shaping the way we communicate, pay bills, reach target audiences, and, well, simply live. The speed at which it entered our lives is pretty fascinating.

Just this week, we read headlines about the 13 year old who racked up 14,528 text messages in one month (that’s 484 messages a day!), and now it seems that LG’s US National Texting Championships may be the next national spelling bee!

The championship finals were held this week in New York and the winning prize was $50,000. 15 year Kate Moore walked away with the trophy and the prize money this year, after competing against 20 other finalists in New York these last few days. The competition required them to text a modified chorus from Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah while doing crazy tasks like jumping obstacles on a treadmill and while blindfolded. The championship started out as a PR campaign for LG in 2007, and this is its third year in action.

It would’ve been spectacular to have the contestants text Wiffiti and have a screen that displayed the results in the studio. That way everybody would get to see how fast and accurate the contestants really were. Maybe next year. :)

(via WSJ)

This last couple of weeks has seen quite a lot of Jumbli love. First we get verified on Facebook and the number of Jumbli users leaps to insane levels. Then, just yesterday, Jumbli saw its millionth word play… we cheered! And now, Jumbli is available as an iPhone app!

We’re truly achieving our goal of integrating the web (Facebook & Jumbli.tv) with the great outdoors (Times Square) and the world of mobile (SMS and now the iPhone). Ladies and gentleman, you’re witnessing the convergence of the online and offline worlds. Take a minute to prepare yourself. And go download the Jumbli iPhone app!

Read our press release.

PHOTO CREDIT: @HighHolburn our awesome creative genuis/flash whiz/ artist-in-residence

Our Webby Award for use of Wiffiti in the Obama Minute campaign just came in this week. Ain’t she a beauty?

Let’s take a walk down Webby history. The first Webbys were awarded back in 1994, and since 1996 have been awarded by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Every year, awards are given out to honor excellence on the internet. Previous winners include Craigslist, Google, Skype, MySpace, You Tube and Twitter — to name a few. See a pattern here?

We’re going to re-shape the way the world communicates. Just saying :)

In the two weeks since Jumbli became a verified game on Facebook, we’ve seen the number of players nearly triple, and the number of plays jump off the charts.

In the last two weeks alone, we recorded 294,807 plays. Compare that to the 300,000 we recorded in all of December. Jumbli sure is becoming popular!

That means there are 5.8 plays a second. I’m not even counting number of mobile plays and plays at Jumbli.tv! When you’re up against that much competition, it sure feels nice to score a word before anyone else does. Especially when it’s live in Times Square!

(Play via Facebook or Jumbli.tv)

Tell your friends.
And start playing!
No Facebook? No prob.

Look like the social media trend is catching on in the UK! Kings Place in London has teamed up with Network Rail to host a ‘mobile poetry contest‘ using twitter and digital signage. Travelers can participate by tweeting Haiku-style poems to @kingsplace using their mobile phones. Tweets go to the largest digital screen at King’s Cross station where they’re viewed by 110,000 people every day.

What’s the incentive? Apart from seeing their poetry displayed live, submissions go to judges Yoko Ono and UK-poet Jackie Kay MBE, and the winner gets free entrance for two at Kings Place’s Words on Monday events for an entire year.

Now this is the kind of promotion we’re talking about! Seriously, we’ve been talking about the New Media Triad for years now, and have Wiffiti to prove it. :)

Digital Signage Universe recently wrote a great piece on the growing use of digital signage on campuses.

Some highlights of the article:

Universities are embracing digital signage because it provides a cost-efficient and highly effective method for distributing information that solves the issues of speed, readiness, and reduction of paper… “If a campus spends even a few thousand dollars on printed materials, such as posters or fliers, they would see an immediate return on investment with this technology.”
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