Public Access WiFi MESH

Launched from the street Umbrella's via the low power antenna at the top.

Again this service follows our concept that cities should provide access for their citizens and visitors and tourists for FREE. The WiFi service is modified; following our concept of tailored and relevant content, resulting in the services provided by the Umbrella WiFi MESH having unique characteristics, in fact they are 'managed' for navigation, mobile screen size and usability, furthermore the content is 'tailored' to meet the needs of the location.

VOIP Telephony is also available.


A Few associated links on the subject of Digital Access:-

USA Community Internet

http://www.publicinternetproject.org/press/pip_press.html

Self Service Kiosk Org.

USA

UK JobPoints

Access Lounges ! Paying for access

BT Ditch public kiosk plans

Aberdeen Umbrella's official launch

Councillor Kate Dean and Members of The Royal Signals Regiment

Umbrellas At Night

Soon after the launch of the kiosks, our automatic statistics showed a high level of usage.

In fact the usage is higher than any other published public access statistics.With only four umbrella street kiosks so far deployed: a hundred thousand hits per month is being achieved.

The significant fact of kiosk usage is that the service is of value and being used by visitors and citizens.
This might look an obvious statement, however it compares favorably with access on the city website, does the website reach the people in the same effective way?

Umbrella's for every city?

The concept of digital service provision for citizens and city visitors, probably needs to be funded as a FREE public service, as most if not all commercial ventures to achieve it have so far failed.
BT introduced street kiosks in the belief that people would pay to use them to locate Internet and services. With hindsight this was naive wishful thinking. The fact that the Internet is difficult to use for many people, that it was built as a desktop PC user interface, and that often searches are less than specific, all become factors for a poor user experience, a fact compounded by the need to insert more pounds!

see: BT Ditch public kiosk plans

The Umbrella kiosks are not only FREE to use, most importantly they have systems built into the user interface to assist the user to more easily operate and connect to Internet based services.

The twin approach of Free usage and tailored usability features are the key to providing a really useful public service

Architecturally designed the umbrella kiosks fit into most street locations and add value with their appearance and the services they provide. In Aberdeen planning permission to locate them was made simple due to these facts. The kiosks are outside listed buildings and far from detracting value they add something and even something more at night.

Building and Delivering

The first Umbrella kiosks were built at our factory.


The ground works were simultaneously finalised in the streets of Aberdeen.

The Ahab crane+truck collects and delivers the completed Umbrellas.




The Lord Provost said: ‘It’s fitting that one of the initial four iKiosks located in the City is being placed outside the Art Gallery because they are such a stylish, eye-catching design. But it is their practical use as information tools, for locals and tourist alike, which I find most exciting.'


The Lord Provost of Aberdeen welcomes the kiosks and Grampian TV News cover their arrival.

Installed into their final locations, the kiosks are hooked up to power and telephone lines.

Building & Depolying Aberdeen Umbrella's.

Aberdeen was the second major city to adopt the Public DataWeb service and the first in Scotland.

The Umbrella concept was only in outline design drawing stage and had to be 'speeded up' to meet the cities criteria for an operational service to be fully delivered in four months, from outline design to street operation.

First draft artists impressions

The design was already on the drawing board, and was granted official 'Design' status by the Design's & Patents Office.




The design was fabricated into a stainless steel prototype, followed rapidly by the production models.



Special effect LED lighting was integrated into the design.

Why we choose this design:-
Street 'furniture' with a service focus.
Completely new concept in kiosk design, and 24 hour outdoor operation
Moving away from the 'box' concept
Attraction: an interesting looking object
360 visibility
Functionality: twin screen operation; with wheelchair access

On board services provided:
Public access Internet - FREE
Public access VOIP technology
Transaction capability: card reader/printer onboard
Architectural lighting
Security/ vandal safe features
Large 20" touch screen and VDU display

The Umbrella provides public services of value and its an
attractive piece of 'street art' that every city should want!

Umbrellas in production

The Umbrella iKiosk

The Umbrella is a new concept in public utility street furniture, it is designed to be both attractive and functional. It has a 360 degree presence, can be clearly seen, lights up at night, provides shelter and importantly it gives FREE Internet access via its twin touch screens and the broadband low power WiFi access aerial mounted above its canopy.
The unit is made in stainless steel with a central pole mounted into a base in the street. (Power & telephone connections are channelled from under street conduits.)

The top unit is an umbrella made from stainless steel struts holding 8 segments of clear plastic (1/2” thick vandal proofed ‘Macrolon’) forming and octagonal umbrella.

This provide shelter for the users of the digital utility services which are presented on twin screens below.

The screens access the Internet utilising touch screen technology.

The opposed screens provide simultaneous dual access

The lower unit accommodates wheelchair users.

The Internet services are FREE with the plus factor of usability criteria being built into the navigation interface. This is achieved in several stages:-
Pre-handled 'deep link' connections to services
XML/Webservices - UK EGIF compliance resulting in content re purposing.
Internet access is fully available however due to the service being provided by a city then some sights are disconnected.

The Digital Trade Roots

Our bias has been to develop and deploy a service for all. We believe that cities should fund effective digital access for their citizens. Its common sense as privately financed systems follow strictly commercial objectives, and do not have a mandatory requirement to include everyone, those that have less computer skills, the old, the disabled and the poor, they are the digital divide. But deploying a digital service that includes these people has to address usability equations that in reality benefit everyone; making the service ubiquitous, simple and with universal access.

Public DataWeb evolved from the EC funded ‘Telematics’ project called 'Public DataWeb'

It was predicted in 1995 that the Internet would become the common carrier for digital services

Therefore the ‘projects’ vision was to provide a ‘utility, service for all.

The Internet in its early days was elitist, and today in 2006 it still is.

The danger inherent within this is that populations and nations that are not involved with the communications network adopted by the planet will miss out. History shows that those nations and peoples not involved with the commerce and trading roots of the past were marginalised. The international trade routes of the the clipper ships, the internal roads, railways and electrification of nations, clearly shows how communication mainlines evolved and flourished, historical fact shows those distant and unconnected were marginalised.

The Internet overcomes 'distance' and sets a level playing field for nations and more importantly individuals and businesses to benefit.
We wanted to investigate and provide methods that enable everyone to become connected if they choose so, and for this to be irrespective of a financial or skills requirement.

We set about building public access methods, others did the same but from a commercial aspect aimed at people paying for use.

We built public kiosks, with touch screen user interfaces, and began to put simplification templates over some of the complexity of the web.

Others introduced pay for use options, without modification of the services that were primarily built for desktop PC operation.

Over the years kiosks came; kiosks went, our systems evolved.

Our approach was at variance to the commercial methods providing revenue to service 'gatekeepers'. To fully accomplish our aims we needed to deploy our systems, and for that we had to find city authorities with a similar vision, it had been possible in the past.

Utility services were placed in the public domain in the Victorian age by city Fathers and other public spirited benefactors, libraries, schools, water, roads, railways and in Europe the telephone, were all introduced with public subsidy.

Sheffield was the first city to embrace our concepts, and over five years we worked with the city to generate and test public access methods. This experience has given us a great insight into the real day to day issues that arise when developing and evolving a digital public service.

Some issues encountered: Vandalism, remote system monitoring, weather proofing, durability, 24x7 maintenance, glare wash out, touch screen navigation of the Internet and so much more.

In 2006 we had evolved our techniques and learned from five years operational experience to emerge with a street and indoor kiosk service that also provides a unique WiFi Mesh system, with the backbone street units being totally re-designed.
The parasol or Umbrella kiosk was born.