Hasta La Gadget!

With the rise in the popularity of mobile phones, the lowly payphone has been completely pushed aside as being only useful for homeless patrons to privately relieve themselves. Stumbling onto a payphone will probably result in an empty housing where an actual payphone once sat, but New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is looking to change that as he’s looking to upgrade the city’s 11,000 payphones.

Bloomberg issued a challenge a few months ago with the Reinvent Payphones Initiative to crowdsource ways to upgrade New York City’s payphones. The results of the challenge have produced five final prototypes that range from a complete reinvention of the traditional phone booth, to a kiosk that can record changes in the environment.

Unfortunately, the prototypes that are being shown won’t replace any of New York City’s payphones, but instead be used in order to inspire what the final decision becomes. Considering any of these five final prototypes would drastically change how people would use payphones in New York City, we can’t fully understand the reasoning behind asking for prototypes, to only turn them down to build their own payphones that are inspired by said prototypes.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: WADI Affordable Water Filtering Technology Powered By Solar Energy , Griffin Intros New Kiosk Retail And POS Solutions For Businesses,

Seriously, after seeing ILM work its magic in all of its movie, I basically trust ILM with anything. If the next movie ILM works on doesn’t involve real actors or real sets or even a real script, I don’t care, I’m in. If ILM told me it could make a world better than real life, I’d totally sign up. Anything ILM does is gold. The visual effects wizards can even magically, er, digitally recreate New York City. Watch. More »

We heard last week HTC was planning to launch its HTC M7 at a dedicated media event on February 19 and not during MWC, and wouldn’t you know it, an invite to an HTC event taking place in New York City made its way to our inbox. And you guys wouldn’t believe the date of the event. February. Nine. Teen.

Yes – it looks as though previous reports of HTC launching its HTC M7 outside of MWC may turn out to be true. We’ll just have to sit back and wait a few more weeks until we can attend HTC’s event. In the meantime, if the M7 is planned to be launched at the event, we expect it to feature a 4.7-inch 1080p HD display, quad-core Qualcomm processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

HTC will also be holding an additional event in London on the same day and time, factoring in the time difference, of course. So we’re sure whatever HTC has up its sleeve, it’ll be big enough to warrant simultaneous launch events in two different countries.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iPhone Tank Charger, Starfish Technologies To Unveil Smartwatch At Macworld,

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

Continue reading The Daily Roundup for 01.16.2013

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New York City’s SmartScreen payphone refits may be revitalizing a handful of its 11,000 public kiosks, but the information scrubbing touchscreens lack a key communication feature: a telephone. With its existing payphone vender agreements due to expire in 2014, the city sees an opportunity to revitalize its communication infrastructure, and is asking the public to help them build the payphone of tomorrow. There’s room for hardware innovation — the city says most payphone locations can be augmented with fiber connections, opening the potential to expand functionality beyond basic voice calls.

Designers are challenged to propose solutions that enhance local aesthetics, utilize sustainable power sources, combat vandalism, account for emergency scenarios, ensure accessibility to disabled persons and, of course, generate at least as much revenue for the City of New York as contemporary payphones. Entrants have until February 18th to submit their prototypes and designs, and 15 semi-finalists will have to face down a panel of judges in March. Want to get started? Check out the project’s home page at the adjacent source link, and dig in — the city is offering resources on payphone locations, WiFi service metrics and a Collabfinder page to help prospective designers find a team.

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Source: Reinvent Payphones