Friday, March 19, 2010

[ivxenweg] Wireless kiosks

One of the biggest problems with public kiosk computers is the damage they incur at their user interface: keyboard, trackball, etc. The problem is "moving parts", and it suffers a tragedy of the commons because the public user refuses to treat it kindly.

However, these days, with everyone carrying about a phone, create a kiosk with which the user interacts with it by punching buttons on their (smart) phone, wirelessly communicating with the kiosk. Bluetooth is probably good. Obviously a lot of standardization of protocols and UI experience is needed.

The kiosk probably includes just a display, or whatever the kiosk "thing" is, maybe a robot?, a fancy vending machine?, though it is possible that there is no display at all, the kiosk is virtually just a location that you take your Bluetooth enabled input device to.

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