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Ian Fogg of Jupiter Research has posted an excellent analysis of how internet service providers are not always up front with their service plan practices. While I've mostly taken Comcast to task for limiting heavy users' bandwidth, it looks like VirginMedia has a similar strategy. Despite promises of "unlimited broadband" and "no download limits," a mere 12 minutes of downloading under some plans triggers a cutback, reducing speed from 10 megabits per second to 2.5. That means legitimate traffic like Playstation 3 demos and paid movie downloads will slow their downloads to a crawl. Not everyone loves online video, it seems.

Digital Signage Today has published a new how-to guide for those planning for a digital signage network deployment. The guide is titled "Digital Signage Project Planning" and is immediately available for download. Sponsored by Diversified Media Group, this guide tackles the digital signage deployment process from concept development to rollout.

According to a study by Abritron and Zoom Media & Marketing, 80 percent of people exposed to a bar's digital advertising screen remembered at least one of the four ads that played in rotation. This is impressive because: a) 80 percent is a very big number; b) the coveted youth demographic is well-represented; and c) bar patrons are often hard-pressed to recall much of anything.

RMS Networks launched a free digital signage software offering on Wednesday that helps operators sell advertising faster and fill unsold slots on their networks. rVue, which RMS said has already been field tested by many businesses, is designed to streamline how ads are placed on digital signage networks and generate performance reports detailing how successful those ads are in playback -- including click through-rates by the outlets and revenue paid by the advertisers for those clicks.

People have discussed ad applications for RFID tags for some time, and they may be getting closer. Consider a YouTube clip titled "RFID in Mirror." RFID stands for radio frequency identification, small electronic tags manufacturers and retailers attach to products. The mirror in this case is being used for a party, but imagine it reading tags from a clothing store. You could program the signage to advertise related accessories. How relevant is that? And there's no better time to make a pitch than at the point of the sale (POS to you acronym lovers).

In case you're wondering if you can go anywhere these days without your every move being recorded, you might want to avoid digital signage. TruMedia is solving its metrics quandary with an iCapture Mini camera that basically records face views of the people who look at its signs. Fancy computing algorithms will measure not only face time, but also the viewers' gender and age.

Meetup.com is a social networking site that helps like-minded people find each other in the virtual world and arrange theme-centered gatherings in the real world. Seeing the consumer-centric promise, Kimberly Clark is partnering with Meetup so Huggies and Pullups can sponsor groups for young mothers. By handling the logistics and paying the site fees, the brand may define a new Web 2.0 way to do well by doing good.

The Adspace Mall Networks' "Today's Top Ten" program now boasts more than 450 participating retailers, which represents doubled growth from participating retailers in 2006. Adspace anticipates that number to continue to grow as the network rollout continues.