News

Digital kiosks to provide electronic message boards in New Jersey

October 21, 2016

A 10-foot-tall, glass-and-chrome digital kiosk will soon be erected at Prudential Drive and Broad Street and could enhance the lives of residents, workers and visitors to Newark, New Jersey, according to nj.com. It will be the first of 50 such structures throughout Newark, serving as electronic message boards, public internet browsers and, eventually, data collection stations for traffic, weather, security threats and other information, according to city officials.

Jeff Knapp, CEO of SmartConnect, a technology firm working on data collection censors for the kiosks, called the kiosks the next generation’s pay phone.

Knapp was among dozens of city officials, tech company executives and academics present for the unveiling of the kiosk prototype at New Jersey Institute of Technology this week.

At first, the kiosks will act as digital message boards, streaming information on large video screens about local concerts, art shows, rallies or other public events, as well as commercial advertising with a local bent, said Seth Wainer, the city's chief information officer.

The kiosk, designed by Ali Faraji of the Manhattan web development firm Aptinet, will also serve as a free, Android-driven internet browser, letting members of the public use a touch screen to log onto and surf the city's home page, Google, or any other site.  

Additional space is available inside the towering kiosk to allow the addition of new technology, which officials said could include everything from scene or facial recognition to detect terror threats or criminal suspects, to wind direction and traffic data to calculate neighborhood air quality. They could also adopt technologies that may not exist just yet.

The kiosks will be one of the first, and perhaps most visible projects of Brand Newark, a local program launched by Mayor Ras Baraka under President Obama's Smart Cities initiative.

Wainer, who went to work for Newark after serving in the Obama Administration, said at least 20 of the kiosks and as many as 50 of them would be erected in all areas of the city by the end of 2017. Wainer said the cost of the kiosk project was not available.