Render @ Lab 50. Folio products created on the APM can now be sent to Lab 50 in an un-rendered format, allowing the rendering to happen during production. This not only cuts the time a customer is held waiting for their order to submit on the kiosk by up to 90%, but also enables the full range of fulfillment processing options in Lab 50 – manual photo edits, built-in auto photo enhancement, full 3rd-party color correction via ColorFlow, text edits, typo corrections and more. The “Render Mode” setting can be enabled in the Setup Wizard > APM Add-On Components > Folio.
Crash Recovery. The new crash recovery feature in APM 8.0 automatically recovers a customer’s in-progress order in the event of a software failure. Once the kiosk software is re-launched, the customer is prompted to either recover the order or to ignore the recovered order and begin a new order. The crash recovery system takes a snapshot of a user’s progress every 20 seconds – capturing everything in their shopping cart, all photo edits and manipulation, all selected order options and upsells, and even folio projects which the customer has begun designing but not yet added to the cart.
EQ Gifting 8.0. Lucidiom has partnered with a new gifting fulfillment center for 2012. Our new EQ Gifting lab had a 98.5% on-time delivery record over the course of the last fiscal year and offers a number great features including a money-saving bulk-shipping program, real-time order tracking and live support chat. The EQ Gifting program now includes not only gifting merchandise, but a full slate of print, enlargement and folio products as well. Anything you cannot produce in-house – posters, books, folded cards, calendars, canvases and more – can be a new revenue stream simply by enabling it via EQ Gifting.
EQ Gifting Configuration
- Along with the new EQ Gifting program comes a long-awaited configuration tool available in the Setup Wizard > EQ Gifting. The EQ Gifting Product Configuration screen shows all products which are available for fulfillment through EQ Gifting – prints, folio and gifting. Adding an outsourced product to your kiosk is as easy as clicking the “EQ” checkmark. For each product the wholesale cost and suggested retail price are displayed, and the operator can directly edit their actual price and S&H charges all from this one screen. The product type and product names filters make it easy to hone in on a specific product from the almost 400 offered through the program. For stores that fulfill some gifting product in-house, simply checking the “In-Store” checkbox for a product is all that it takes to switch it to local fulfillment; the configuration screen handles all the details behind the scenes.
Athentech. The APM now features Perfectly Clear, the latest, state-of-the-art image enhancement technology from Athentech Imaging. Perfectly Clear is the world’s most advanced automatic image correction solution. Powered by 10 patented corrections and 10 years of scientific research, it delivers robust automatic correction that produces accurate and beautiful results. For operators who love to tweak, full control over the Perfectly Clear parameters is available in the Setup Wizard > Kiosk Settings > Photo IQ Settings.
Facebook Connect. The APM’s most popular add-on has a trio of updates. The APM now offers customers a “photos of me” album that consists of photos from personal and friends’ albums in which the user is tagged. Facebook Connect has also been updated with improved support and compatibility with Facebook’s latest login and authentication models. Finally, a new auto-update mechanism will automatically check and download the latest version of the Facebook Connect module from Lucidiom’s servers every day – ensuring that your kiosk is updated any time Facebook rolls out new changes.
APM Widescreen Placement
Wide-Screen Monitor Placement. APM software-only solutions running on wide-screen monitors now give operators control over where the kiosk software is displayed – left, right or centered. Additionally, operators can choose an image to be displayed in the unused margin(s) – a great way to personalize the kiosk with store branding, call out special offers, or provide customer service information like order fulfillment times. Find these settings in Setup Wizard > Kiosk Settings > Monitor Settings.
Online Sync for Intro Movie JPEGs. The feature which allows an operator to incorporate static banner JPEGs into the kiosk’s intro movie (aka “attract loop”), now allows those images to be dynamically pulled from an online URL that the operator provides. The kiosk will automatically download the latest banners once a day. This makes it much easier to rotate these graphics on a weekly, monthly or seasonal basis, removing the burden of having to manually touch every kiosk in the fleet to push out the changes. This feature can be configured in the Setup Wizard > Kiosk Settings > Intro Movie.
Set the Display Order for Print Products. By popular demand, operators can now easily re-order the positions of their print products by simply dragging & dropping them within the Setup Wizard’s Products section.
Real Keyboard Support. Physical keyboard support for all customer-facing screens (including the address screen!) that have an on-screen keyboard, including support for the tab key to switch between input fields.
Updated Localizations. Fully updated French & Spanish translations.
Hardware Attendant. Improvements to Hardware Attendant’s functionality to reboot nightly, enabling it to force a reboot if applications have hung.
Photo Downloading from Large Albums. Customers who attempt to download photos from a Photo Finale or Facebook album that contains more photos that the maximum number allowed per batch will now get an error message explaining the issue, but will be allowed to continue and download as many photos as are allowed.
Product Sorting. Products in subgroups on the Product Select screens are now sorted alphabetically, unless explicitly overridden by the content.
- Fixed an issue that would cause the last page (the back) of 5×7 Folded Cards to be flipped when printed on the Noritsu D502 and D1005 printers.
- Importing from an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch is no longer limited to 1000 photos.
- Membership plan pricing will now be displayed with the correct currency symbol, rather than always using a $ symbol.
- Fixed the problem that prevented operators from being able to disable the Facebook Connect feature from the Setup Wizard.
- When a customer orders a DVD Cinema and Facebook Upload in the same order, the photos selected for the DVD Cinema are no longer overwriting the user’s selections for Facebook.
- Fixes to prevent photos from an iPhone Connect session getting stuck in the cache and displayed to the next customer after an error occurred that prevented normal photo cleanup.
- Fixed crash that could occur on Windows 7 64-bit machines on screens in the Folio workflow.
