defrog: (dok sleepless)
defrog ([personal profile] defrog) wrote2009-05-22 11:50 pm

BUS STOPS OF THE FUTURE

ITEM: The Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed The EyeStop, a high-tech touch-screen bus shelter that monitors environmental conditions and real-time bus movement and also provides information and communication tools that can interact with your cell phone.

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The EyeStop, which has touch sensitive e-Ink screens as well as LEDs, features a bus map plotting locations in real-time, e-mail and Web access, tools for planning a best route and getting directions, a community bulletin board, and, of course, a place for silent video advertisements. It will also use sensors to monitor and display local air quality.

Florence, Italy will be the first city to install them.

I’ve actually seen precursors of this in my line of work – Singapore has SMS-enabled bus stops where you send a message to a short code and you get a message back telling you how long before the next bus arrives.

In New Zealand, Vodafone is installing  hypertagged ads in bus shelters that push free content to yr mobile phone (if you want it).

The EyeStop is definitely uptown, though. I wonder how long it’d take for teenage hoodlums to destroy it. (To be fair, Carlo Ratti, the head of the design team, says they have thought of that and are looking at ways to make it graffiti-resistant.)

BONUS MATERIAL: See also this fine collection of artistically enhanced bus stops from around the world.

This one in London is my favorite.

Kiss me on the bus,

This is dF