Toms Tech

Normally when I think of home safes, I think of small, square and very heavy metal safes for securing away your valuable with a combination lock. But today, in such a fast paced and evolving world, we are not limited by such narrow guidelines. Home safes today come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, different types of locking mechanisms and are designed to hold different types of items.

There are closet vault home safes that are designed to be installed in between the wall studs, with the door and frame of the safe protruding 2” to provide extra internal depths. These safes are great hidden in a closet or concealed behind a door. Great for small household valuables and firearms without taking up floor space.

You can also get compact home safes that are a top opening security case with a classic slim design. These small safes are only about 9” wide, 7” deep and 2” high. Many have a hole in the back to allow a cable or pad lock to be used to secure the case to most surfaces, enabling the safe to be transportable. Perfect for small items and papers.

Similar to compact safes in size and shape, are desk home safes that are designed to be mounted under a surface. They have a front opening and often include a quick release mounting bracket. Some even have a slide out drawer for easy access to its contents.

Security chests are the most popular forms of home safes. Small and compact, normally take a key lock and easily transported. It is an inexpensive way to protect your families important documents.

A type of home safes that was not needed until recently, are data protection chests. You place your own data storage device (external hard drive, flash drive etc.) inside. The chest has a USB port so that you can hook up your computer directly to the device without removing it from the chest, making it easy to back up you digital files. A special safe for digital media is important because digital media is damaged at lower temperatures than paper media. Besides hard drives, these are perfect for storing memory cards, iPods, CD’s and DVD’s, and digital camera’s.

Of course, after data protection chests, the next logical step was an all-in-one unit, a hard drive that is itself fire resistant and water proof. These devices became a reality just last year.

Not only is there a variety of different home safes, but they come with different types of locking mechanisms. Naturally, there is the old fashioned combination locks that you turn left-right-left, and can consist of a multiple amount of numbers. A variation of turning the knob, is the modern electronic combination safes. You still have to memorize the combination, but you gain access by a push of the buttons. Many smaller home safes, such as the chests, have key locks. These are great for quick access, but don’t lose the key, and it does no good to keep the spare in the safe!

Now, if you are terrible and remembering numbers and afraid of losing the key, then new technology is available for you. As seen in movies and modern, high tech buildings, you can get a small safe (BioVault) that permits access using fingerprint technology. These home safes are easily programmable and can store up to 50 authorized fingerprints in its memory. This is almost a must have just because of its cool factor!

But regardless of what you decide, home safes are necessary for every home, to help protect important documents and valuables. But shop around, and you will be pleased with the variety of sizes and functions of home safes available, and choose the locking mechanism that works best for you!

Changing consumer habits, particularly among younger demographics (the teens and young adults that drive retail sales), and improved technology have reached a point where it can be said that digital signage as an advertising medium has truly “come of age” as a marketing vehicle. “The digital signage market has finally reached a stage where all the enabling technologies – both on the hardware and software sides – are firmly in place,” writes Sanju Khatari in Digital Signage Magazine.

Digital signs driven by sophisticated, highly responsive and measurable digital advertising software have become a fixed part of the advertising and marketing landscape as audiences, particularly younger audiences, have been drifting away from traditional print, radio and TV media in favour of digital media. While much of the demise of traditional media marketing is attributable to the rise of the Internet and the growing importance of online advertising, at a more basic level consumers are not spending as much time at home in front of the television or reading the daily papers. There has been a shift to out-of-home advertising, and the digital sign industry is leading that shift.

“The advertising industry is going through a phase of uncertainty,” Ms. Khatari notes. “Consumers, particularly those in the younger demographics, have completely changed the way they receive their information and interact socially. In addition to spending considerably less time on traditional media, namely TV and print media, end users are often completely avoiding TV advertisements and infomercials using TiVOs and DVRs.” These technologies allow users to skip through advertisements entirely.

This has prompted many companies marketing their products to focus on TV and print media for corporate-level branding, while shifting specific product promotion onto in-store or other out-of-home media options – such as the narrowcasting networks that are ubiquitous in doctor’s offices, office lobbies and public transportation. Moreover, in-store narrowcasting networks provide further opportunities for product advertisements right at the point where consumers are making their purchase decisions.

Changing consumer habits have come at a time when the digital signage industry emerged from its infancy. The digital advertising software that drives the digital signs and narrowcasting networks we encounter everywhere from fast-food outlets to Times Square has been increasingly refined to allow advertisers to hone the content and messages shown to the targeted audience, while the metrics that define the effectiveness of the marketing message have been developing apace. Most importantly, the costs of providing the large screen high definition and LCD monitors has been dropping, making digital signs affordable in locations with smaller target audiences that were uneconomical before the prices of monitors began to drop.

Perhaps the biggest challenge that companies and marketers face in responding to the drop in traditional media share is how best to quantify the effectiveness of digital signs. “In order for advertisers to invest in digital signage they need measurement of the audience and a system that is clear, reliable, actionable and comparable with other media and their metrics,” notes Ms. Khatari.

The best digital advertising software provides the metrics that allows users to quantify the results of in-store digital signs with their inventory software and sales tracking software. Narrowcasting networks, such as those seen on gas pumps, in airlines or in office lobbies, are increasingly working with market research companies such as A.C. Nielsen to improve their metrics and to monitor and improve the effectiveness of their marketing reach.

Properly deployed, digital signage provides companies with a unique and essential marketing tool that has come of age to reach their target audience as they shift away from traditional media.