phonebooths
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Recommended Reading: Twitter's identity crisis
What Everyone's Got Wrong About Twitter (Including Twitter) Ian Schafer, Recode Twitter's earnings dropped this week, followed by a number of theories on the future of the company. Deep Focus founder and chairman Ian Schafer posted an op-ed on the matter to discuss the social network's identity crisis. Is it a media company? Is it a data company? Schafer makes the case that Twitter needs to decide soon, for it's own good.
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.
