Openmoko/Internet Kiosk

This project started as an idea out of a discussion with wikicast on doing things for Wikimania.

General Idea

Wikimania is like many conferences, big. And lots of participants are from out of town, which means they may be disoriented, and the conference itself is quite big. How do you get information to people?

Kiosks. But most kiosks are single purpose. They derive data from a static information store, and can't handle arbitrary queries. Or, they are Internet terminals, but they are then anchored to a specific spot.

The concept here is to have a multi-purpose kiosk, deployable anywhere, at any time, which can do multiple things.

For Wikimania 2007

Ideally, we would like to have maps and schedules of all of the talks available.

E-mail and internet browsing (limited?).

Ability to be "interviewed" or "leave a message/comment on Wikimania", and have it displayed in near real time.

Possibility to allow people to register for the conference through these terminals.

The needs analysis and initial funding for the project would need to be done quickly, to ensure delivery of the solution in time for this year's event.

Needs

Development

For development, we need some openmoko units, to see what is doable. Number of units would vary depending on the number of developers, but let's say a maximum of 3 right now.

Testing

It would be good if we could have the final setup ready in a deployable configuration. We'll need one computer, one openmoko unit and some kind of a box. It would be nice if the monitor was a touchscreen, but we have to work with what we have.

Deployment

We need to know how many units need to be deployed. Ideally we could have one on each floor, or one near each entrance. To determine this we need a floormap. I would like to have at least one fully independent "movable" unit, with others to be determined by the Wikimania organizers.

Problems/Solutions

Should we be supporting International languages? Should it be fully i18n, or should we focus on some subset?

We should focus on English first, with an eye to making translations easy.

We have a limited timescale. What are the highest priorities?

Co-ordinate with Wikimania organizers on this.

Groups to collaborate with

Inform

inform the wikinews-l

comproj AT lists.wikimedia.org