Years ago I did a video about "Link NYC" I was mostly concerned about the possibility of surveillance through the cameras.
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@futurebird here in the UK we have phone boxes. I guess you'd call them phone booths?
Not nearly as many as there used to be, but they're still a thing.
Municipal info boards are not a standard thing. I don't think we have any in my city. There are lots of ad screens.
I don't think I've ever seen a phone charging point on the street. They're common on busses and trains, but not just out and about.there are some kinds of combined ad screen / local information board / telephone in my town (Ipswich, UK), I think they are operated by British Telecom. I think you can plug in a USB to charge phones with them (its also allowed to charge devices in the library, although that depends on their opening hours)
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird Toronto still has payphones, but mostly in the subways, where they have a special button to call the police but can be used for regular calls as well. So I said "none of these," because it's technically not on the street but on subway platforms.
There are also screens in the subway as well and the show time to next train, plus news and ads. Otherwise, publicly sanctioned ads (to pay the company that does trash and recycling pickup) are static, but may be PSAs.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird i'm in portland (oregon) and i don't think we really have any of these? you might be able to go into a library and charge your phone there but i don't think that counts as "on the street"
we also have a free volunteer-run public telephone network called Futel, which is really awesome and allows anyone to anonymously make calls but it's a bit limited in scope - there are around 15 outdoor phones and all but one are in east portland (i.e. not downtown) -
Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird there was a pedal powered phone charger in cambridge MA for a hot sec but it barely counts. there's no formal way to charge phones I know of. there are lots of ad screens in boston and sometimes they have maps on/near them but usually they don't. there are MBTA ads. it's less useful than linkNYC and someone is probably still tracking bluetooth+wifi mac addresses in some more subtle way??
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
there are payphones, but not many, and a lot of the ones that are outside are not maintained. they're often broken and filthy.
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@futurebird there was a pedal powered phone charger in cambridge MA for a hot sec but it barely counts. there's no formal way to charge phones I know of. there are lots of ad screens in boston and sometimes they have maps on/near them but usually they don't. there are MBTA ads. it's less useful than linkNYC and someone is probably still tracking bluetooth+wifi mac addresses in some more subtle way??
I'm about 90 percent confident they aren't doing the tracking stuff at this point since in seven years it's never been used for anything and, due to this video, but also protests and articles they say the cameras are "turned off."
Also their only income is ads, not data.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird @mayintoronto I carry a loaded battery pack to recharge with. Or do you mean something else?
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@futurebird @mayintoronto I carry a loaded battery pack to recharge with. Or do you mean something else?
I mean public charging stations.
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@futurebird london has these (https://global.com/outdoor/roadside/street-hub-advertising/, https://business.bt.com/public-sector/street-hubs/street-hubs-for-the-public/) which seem useful but I've never had to use, apparently they're also in other uk cities
Looks like a very similar design. I wonder what London does with those cameras?
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I mean public charging stations.
@futurebird @deborahh Toronto has all of these things on transit, but not on the street. Every now and then you might come across a payphone still, but they're rare now.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
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@futurebird I am aware of one (1) payphone on a major street corner in my town. Does that count?
Depends on how big the town is? Is one phone enough?
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Depends on how big the town is? Is one phone enough?
@futurebird It's long enough that it would take a healthy person an inordinate amount of time to walk from one end to the other to actually use the phone, so I'm gonna go with no.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird in #Albuquerque one of our bus lines has screens that give local civic information but also run ads and are routinely broken. No charging or public calls though
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@futurebird @deborahh Toronto has all of these things on transit, but not on the street. Every now and then you might come across a payphone still, but they're rare now.
@mayintoronto @futurebird I've never noticed!
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird Suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. All three.
But given that wireless charging is a feature reserved for high end phones, not sure how useful that is. Local government clearly isn't going to put 240V power on a socket in the street, so their choices are limited. Of course the free local library has power outlets for phone charging.
The info screens are really for beach conditions. We do have other alerting systems run by state (app and road signs) and federal government (SMS). No government is going to push out bushfire information to info screens, they want information direct to people on a phone where people can see a map and extended advice. Even when the radio reads a bushfire notice (twice) the full notice can take several minutes for a big fire.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird the public transport has accessible information straight on the street, but nothing else. i haven’t seen a pay phone in years and there aren’t really any outside places where people are welcome or encouraged to stay long
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@futurebird in Oakland, we have the Ike digital signage. https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Streets/Interactive-Digital-Kiosks. It doesn't allow for charging.
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@futurebird london has these (https://global.com/outdoor/roadside/street-hub-advertising/, https://business.bt.com/public-sector/street-hubs/street-hubs-for-the-public/) which seem useful but I've never had to use, apparently they're also in other uk cities
@futurebird apparently the company that manufacture them are uk based and have a delightfully shitty website https://trueform.com/news/
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Hmm. I think the backlash to this kind of system being a way to collect data made it not spread to other cities as much.
Because the data is what's really worth the most with this system. The ads are fine, you can raise enough to keep it running and have staff and that's great... but that's not what some of the early supporters were hoping for.
And so they moved on to those wicked traffic cameras and other schemes.
North Little Rock, AR. Nothing on the street. But phone and charging available in the library (when open), and all the bars/cafés have charging with no questions asked.
City information is a large gentleman named Beaufort, who is officially a cop, but whose title is Ambassador. He and his crew also provide golf cart rides to people who need to get around downtown if they're mobility impaired or if the weather is bad.
