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.
Replacing those unused telephones that still dot the streets of NYC with high-tech kiosks is just the start. Control Group, one of the companies looking to Reinvent Payphones, has been hired by the MTA to bring its touchscreen and app-driven vision to the New York City Subway system. All told, 90 of 47-inch panels will be installed in stops from Grand Central to Bedford primarily near booths, but also on the platforms themselves. At least initially the rugged displays will primarily be used to feed information about delays and outages and, of course, serve up ads. Eventually, the stainless steel-encased kiosk will be able to run apps approved by the MTA, but the star of the show will be the navigation system that offers a mastery of New York public transportation that Google could only dream of. Sadly there’s no concrete timeline for the rollout, we’ll just have to keep an eye on the platform. There’s one more image waiting after the break for the truly curious.
Filed under: Misc
Source: Fast Company, Control Group
New York’s MTA has hired Control Group to install 90 touchscreen kiosks which will include a number of helpful apps in NYC subways. At first 90 of these kiosks will be installed at major subway routes such as Grand Central Station. They’ll cater to over 2 million commuters daily, which include a handsome number of tourists. These kiosks will display important information such as train times, delays, outages, as well as advertising. They’ll also map out the fastest route to any given station and will advise the user of any transfers that need to be made enroute to their destination.
The touchscreen kiosks are essentially 47-inch displays protected by rugged stainless steel. They’re equipped with video cameras and have an operational temperature of 200 degrees. These kiosks will be installed at train platforms, stations and on mezzanines mostly in pairs. The kiosks will also be able to run third party apps that the MTA approves. This is a good step on the MTA’s part. Not only will it bring additional revenue from advertising, it’ll also be of enormous help to people who’re new to the subways in New York. If the kiosks work out well, hopefully we can see other cities jumping on this bandwagon.
[photo credit: fastcodesign]
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This will be awesome and also deeply unsanitary. New York City has hired a company called Control Group to install 90 47-inch touchscreen subway maps around the city. It looks like real life world-of-tomorrow type stuff. More »
Although six designs were awarded in New York City’s Reinvent Payphones competition, it remained to be seen which of the six would be the people’s favorite. After about a week’s worth of voting on NYC’s Facebook page, the people have made their choice: NYFi will serve is their favorite concept for street-side payphone overhauls. It’s not hard to see why, as the proposal would theoretically solve several urban hassles at once. Each NYFi hub would dish out free WiFi, taking the load off of the cellular network. It would also use open, smartphone-like software and easily adaptable touchscreen hardware to consolidate many of the boxes that clutter the sidewalks, such as ticket machines and bike sharing stations. We’ll admit that most of the concepts sound a little optimistic to us — we wouldn’t be surprised if any finished city project fell short of the ideas. Even if we don’t get a WiFi hotspot on every corner, though, the reinvented payphone will likely be a welcome replacement for landline phones that have mostly collected dust in recent years.
Update: We’ve adjusted the post to clarify that NYfi is not, per se, the overall winner. During the initial demo event five awards were up for grabs from the city, and a sixth award, Popular Choice, was to be chosen by the public. Whether NYC ends up using one of these designs as a direct inspiration will remain to be seen. The awards are more or less a way for the city to see what the public would propose and potentially use those ideas when it comes time to request for designs within a mandated set of specifications. Check out our post about the event for more details.
Filed under: Misc, Networking
Via: The Next Web
Source: NYC (Tumblr)
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.
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The payphone. Despite how connected our world has gotten in the last decade or so, the majority of the 11,000 payphones in NYC stem from a 1999 contract. Due to expire and renew in October 2014, the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has been actively figuring out how and what type of modern solution it wants to replace roughly all 11,000 of them with. You’ve heard about a small number being retrofitted with WiFi hotspots and SmartScreen information portals, but those have essentially been tests.
Last night at Quirky’s offices, the city picked out finalists for five categories that could possibly help “Reinvent Payphones” here in the Big Apple: “connectivity, creativity, visual design, functionality and community impact.” Well over 120 entries were submitted since this design challenge kicked off last December at the NY Tech Meetup, with a total of 11 semifinalists having gotten the chance to present their ideas last night for judging. As it turns out, there was a tie for community impact, leaving six finalists overall. Better yet, out of those six, the public can take to Facebook from now until March 14th to select a “popular vote” winner. Curious for more insight? We got to chat with the city’s Director of External Affairs at the Department of Information, Nicholas Sbordone, about the project and he talked about how it went down and what it means for the future of payphones in NYC.
Filed under: Misc
Source: Reinvent Payphones (Facebook Popular Vote), Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge, NYC Digital
The Big Apple already has a candy coating of free WiFi, between permanent providers, transient offers, and the million coffee shops (et al) with a router inside. If there were any dead zones left in the city, GOWEX probably has them covered, with its 1,953 free WiFi hotspots now live throughout Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Repeat: this isn’t a plan, the network is up and running right now. Each connection gets 1Mb of bandwidth, and you can jump on access points with GOWEX’s app (also free) for iOS and Android, which also hosts content like a hotspot map and other city-specific info not related to WiFi. The company has other major cities in the US on its to-do list, and expects to bring free internets to two additional locales during 2013. Not that it matters to users, but GOWEX ain’t doing this for fun — it’ll be profiting from advertising, its “Smart City services,” and charging carriers for lightening traffic on their data networks. Who needs a data plan, anyway? It’ll soon be impossible to find anywhere in NYC without a free WiFi hotspot, or seven.
Filed under: Wireless, Internet
Source: GOMEX
I’ve always wanted to steal a street sign but they’re always bigger than you think. Where would I put it? How annoying is it for the city to fix? Wait, how are street signs even made? This video shows the street sign magic factory of New York City and reveals the true anatomy and process of those signs. If you’re a fiend for cutting metal and silkscreening and anything in a manufacturing process, this video shows it all. More »
Most electric vehicle news as of late has been focused on the Telsa Motors vs the New York Times situation, but lest we forgot it’s not all about Model S sedans and Superchargers. Giving his State of the City 2013 address for New York, Mayor Bloomberg let loose some exciting prospects for the EV faithful. As SlashGear notes, the city aims to expand beyond its 220 charging points (100 of which are public) to a whopping 10,000 (including 30 more for the city government) by 2019, while hoping to have landlords make 20-percent of all parking friendly to EVs. Beyond that, the city will test the viability of two quick-chargers that would allow some vehicles to juice up in about 30 minutes. Whether the city ultimately approves the lofty plans it their current form will remain to be seen, but, at the very least, we’ll be glad to have more in place for decreasing range anxiety near the Big Apple. You can watch the full recording of the address by heading past the break.
Filed under: Transportation
Via: SlashGear, New York Times (City Room Blog)
Source: mayorbloomberg (YouTube)
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