VeriFone’s Digital Network (VNET) in London’s black cabs is to show Sky News to passengers in an effort to focus attention on its in-taxi screens.

The news content runs on a 14-minute loop to match the average duration of a London cab journey, mixed with advertising. Updated six to eight times daily, it is available as soon as the meter is activated, and controllable by passengers via a remote.

“Advertising on VNET between Sky programming is a compelling and cost-effective way to extend video brand campaigns,” said VeriFone’s vice chairman Bud Waller. “We create a powerful platform for marketers seeking innovative, dynamic campaigns that resonate with an increasingly on-the-go urban consumer. Targeted promotions and information can reach affluent business professionals and consumers inside the London black cab when they are at their most receptive and least distracted.”

Britain’s Inurface Media is giving away a digital signage package worth more than £2500 ($4000) to mark its debut at Screenmedia Expo in London next week.

Visitors to the firm’s stand can enter a draw to win a prize which includes its IUF Media Manager software, a media player from Advantech, a 26-inch Iiyama display, Peerless mounting, and a year’s worth of support and training.

Inurface, whose client roster includes Subway (pictured) and Stena Line, is using Expo to launch IUF Media Manager, its new content management system, as well as its Virtual Changing Room.

Four Winds Interactive looks set to strengthen its presence in the casino digital signage market after signing a deal with JCM Global that will make Four Winds products available to JCM’s customers.

JCM is one of the leading providers of cash handling systems and printers to casinos worldwide, and also supplies digital displays.

“Customers across North America and around the world have come to rely on JCM for our wide range of display solutions to attract and entertain customers. Now with this partnership with Four Winds Interactive, we can further help customers reach their target audiences in the most dynamic, visually dazzling way possible,” said JCM business development manager Jeff Gray.

Interactivity will be the major theme of digital signage software supplier Scala’s large presence at Screenmedia Expo in London next week.

Among the promised highlights are demonstrations of screen connectivity with devices such as smartphones and iPads using QR codes, and of Scala’s Fling technology, which allows tablet users to share content on other screens.

The firm will also demonstrate integration of its platform with Twitter, and for users of retail digital signage it will show how on-screen information can be  triggered by a consumer’s handling of a product in-store.

The use of mobile devices for control of larger screens will be further demonstrated on the Christie stand, where a video wall built from 35 MicroTiles will run on Scala software, while another Scala partner, U-Touch, will also be showing a 93-inch interactive video wall with multitouch capability.

Forget the GUI, make way for the NUI – the natural user experience that will allow much more instinctive ways to interact with digital out-of-home media than today’s graphical user interfaces.

That’s the theory expounded by Tim Huckaby, founder and chairman of InterKnowlogy and Actus Interactive Software, who will present on the theme at Screenmedia Expo in London this month.

“A reinvigorated focus on user experience with usable and enticing software has created even greater opportunities for the creation of awesome interactive screens and active digital signage solutions,” says Huckaby.

“When you couple that with the advent of multitouch-capable hardware at consumer prices and the high-level software APIs to leverage multitouch capabilities, we have the start of the new age of software focused on the natural user experience, because we can get cutting-edge systems to market more quickly and inexpensively.”

Are deployers of digital signage turning to larger LCD displays? Anecdotal evidence has long suggested so, and the latest figures from NPD DisplaySearch appear to back it up.

In the last quarter of 2011, according to the researcher, global shipments of LCD public displays sized between 26 and 39 inches dropped by a startling 38 percent compared with the previous quarter, while the 40-to-43-inch category also fell four percent.

Those were the first quarter-on-quarter sequential drops in the LCD public display market recorded by the firm in three years, though there have been declines in shipments of plasma-based screens, now largely out of favour for public applications.

By contrast, the 45-to-47-inch category grew by 15 percent and is now bigger than 26-to-39. Shipments of 50-to-65-inch displays grew by 47 percent and this category is now catching up with 45-to-47. Meanwhile, 70-to-99 grew by 237 percent, but from a much smaller base.