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Inhabitat's Week in Green: Chicago's high-flying cable cars
When it comes to transportation, no vehicle is more futuristic than the hoverboard -- and it's getting a lot closer to reality. This week a French inventor broke a Guinness World Record by flying 7,388 feet on a hovering device. Meanwhile, Chicago is considering building a line of high-flying crystalline cable cars throughout the city. Chrysler and Google teamed up to create a self-driving minivan, while Lyft announced plans to launch self-driving electric taxis within a year. We also interviewed Lucas Toledo, who created the Gi FlyBike, a futuristic electric bicycle that folds in half in a single second.
SmartScreens begin rollout to NYC payphones, City24/7 and Cisco eying expansion to additional cities
Slowly but surely, payphones around New York City are losing their innocence. As planned, City24/7 has started to convert seldom-used booths into LCD-equipped information kiosks, with so-called SmartScreens broadcasting "neighborhood news, current events and entertainment listings, local deals and specials." We're told that multiple mobile apps are being made available via the 32-inch multitouch panels, though as of now, only ten installations have gone live. Over the next several months, the number of installations will increase to up to 250 participating phone booths throughout the five boroughs, and once it's reached saturation in the Big Apple, City24/7 and Cisco are planning to expand into over a dozen other foreign and domestic cities. The SmartScreens are designed to use real-time, location-based services, tied in to the network throughout the city, and moreover, each booth is equipped with gratis WiFi, NFC and Bluetooth capabilities. In other words, they're fit to live in.
NYC phone booths to get second lives as slate stalls
Believe it or not, but there are still hundreds, nay, thousands of phone booths out there on the streets of New York City. Obviously, in the age of the ubiquitous smartphone, most of them go untouched -- though, usually that has more to do with some mysterious substance covering the handset. The city is preparing to update this urban staple by replacing the touch tone quarter eaters with 32-inch touchscreens. The giant slates will offer a quick connection to 311 for requesting info and filing complaints, as well as interactive guides to the neighborhood. Instead of being a place to prank call 1-800 numbers, the phone booth will now become your one stop shop for restaurant suggestions and local landmark locations. 250 of the devices are being provided free of charge by City24x7 for a pilot program and, if all goes well, the company and the city will split revenue generate from ad sales following an expanded roll out. You can bet we'll be some of the first people on the street to put these through their paces when they make their expected debut in May.
Telekom Austria to turn phone booths into EV recharging stations, stave off obsolescence
For most Engadget readers, telephone booths rank somewhere up there with smoke signals in the annals of communication devices -- old, primitive, and bypassed by newer and better technology. Ah, but wait, what if we used all those cables we have wired into those boxes for something actually helpful? Telekom Austria's trying to do just that with its newly unveiled plan to roll out 30 electric vehicle recharging stations over the rest of this year. Attached to what are admittedly rather swish phone boxes, these stations will juice up one of the 3,782 currently registered electric or hybrid transporters in Austria at remarkably low prices. The testing phase will allow free recharging, and even after that it'd be a single-digit Euro cost to boost your battery back up. Ironically, the fastest way to pay will be via your mobile phone, but let's just get this project off the ground first, then we can worry about how to save the precious talker boxes from extinction.
