One of the first public Internet kiosks in the State has been installed in the departure lounge of Shannon Airport by a local company.
Called Pink Net (Public INternet Kiosk) and standing more or less waist high, the kiosk is indeed coloured deep pink. It takes Irish pounds and fifty pence pieces - one pound gives seven minutes usage. "We thought it was a good idea to start with coins, because people departing on planes will always have coinage they want to get rid of, but we are also currently developing software for a smart card interface," said Mr Simon Jege, director of Intelligent Solutions, the company behind the project.
Mr Jege, who has a masters degree in engineering from the University of Limerick, founded the company in October 1990 with his wife and fellow director Dolores. It provides business solutions in areas including resource management, quality assurance, personnel attendance and job costing.
The new kiosk provides a means for travellers to check and send email and browse the Internet. Email can be downloaded using your own email address, or you can sign up to the free Hotmail service.
There is no mouse on the system, because it was felt it would easily get broken by being used in a public place. Instead, choices are made by touching a screen-based menu.
On the other hand, a real keyboard is used for tasks such as signing up to Hotmail, inputting your email address or giving a Web address. Intelligent Solutions tried out a touch screen virtual keyboard, but concluded people would generally find a real keyboard easier to use.
The software used is partly bought in, partly developed by Intelligent Solutions. The Windows-based system uses Internet Explorer, with a Netshift Public Browser interface on top of it. This interface software was bought from a company of that name in Wiltshire, England. Monitoring of usage of the kiosk is done remotely by an email connection to the Intelligent Business office in Shannon town, using software developed by themselves. Internet access is provided by Telecom Eireann's TInet.
The system runs on a Pentium II computer, built into the kiosk. The assembly of the casing, computer, screen and so on is subcontracted to a company, WindowKiosk, also based in Wiltshire.
As well as working on a smart card interface, Mr Jege is planning to add voice email. He is also proposing to put Pink Net into shopping malls, and can already offer local advertising. "People wanting to know where to buy clothes, for example, will be able to browse sites for local shops, instead of browsing the Web in the normal way, which would give them thousands of addresses," said Mr Jege. "These local sites will also come up more quickly than with normal browsing."
He would also, of course, like to see more airports using his kiosk, as these venues provide large numbers of people who have time to kill - along with those jingling coins in their pockets.
