InfoComm: More than just the seven words you can't say on TV

"What we're doing goes way beyond the seven dirty words," insteo CEO Jim Nista said yesterday at InfoComm, talking about his company's insteo Display software solution for filtering user-generated content (UGC) on digital signs.

At InfoComm 2010 the Long Beach, Calif.-based insteo showcased its new software product that not only filters for inappropriate content but for boring content as well.

Insteo Display, the company says, "is the only software to safely show Twitter and Facebook in public settings."

The software collects and filters content from online social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and even photo sharing sites like Flickr, Nista says. It filters for curse words — like the late comedian George Carlin's famous "seven words you can't say on TV" — but it also scores messages to pick the most interesting and appropriate content for the venue and sign.

"In a public setting, sometimes people tend to get a little off-color," Nista said, but his company's software protects venue owners and signage operators from exposing their customers/viewers to off-color content.

But Display doesn't just filter for obvious curse words, Nista says. It identifies phonetic matches, intentionally misspelled swear words, text and hacker abbreviations for curse words and poorly written content to compare it against a huge database of potentially offensive content.

"This looks for literally tens of thousands of words and phrases," he said.

The software also has a quality scoring feature that in high-traffic feeds, filters out ultra-simple or uninteresting content, like tweets, in favor of more interesting or complex ones.

Display's screen display also can be sectored off to allow for advertising alongside the UGC feed or for multiple social media feeds.

And the software has been tested out in real-world conditions and came through swimmingly, Nista says.

In a sports bar with Display-enabled screens, for example, people can engage the screens, trying to get their texts up on the screen, he says. Or at actual sports venues, the software has been used on displays and scoreboards during live sporting events, getting people to text or tweet to the screen or take photos with their smart phones and try to get them up on the screen. And it allows deployers to do that safely without a human content monitor.

"The screen becomes an interactive form of entertainment in a live venue," Nista said. "It's very interactive with user-generated content."