A Couple of New Tweaks for LinkNYC’s Tablets

In terms of features, not much new material or apps have appeared this year on CityBridge’s LinkNYC kiosks. On January 1st a switch from Weather Underground to Dark Sky as the data provider for the kiosks’ weather content represented a change that likely caught the attention of absolutely nobody. More recently the Shoutable App made a few waves by offering the ability to post personal messages to the big ad screens for $4.95 a pop, creating the only other possible revenue stream for the kiosks besides the advertising panels.

The New Years Day switch to Dark Sky for weather content included an unannounced new feature for the tablet that I only discovered last week. If you tap the weather snapshot tile on the tablet’s home screen you get sent to Dark Sky’s full-featured weather website. No such feature existed last year, and I remember commenting somewhere in my ramblings about LinkNYC that including something like this made too much sense not to implement.

Tap the weather tile on the tablet home screen to access Dark Sky Weather

Dark Sky Weather Web Site on LinkNYC — Access to weather content like this was not available for the first 2 years of LinkNYC

The LinkKiosk web browser prompts you to install the Dark Sky app. You can't do that. — The LinkKiosk web browser prompts you to install the Dark Sky app. You can’t do that.

Archived weather snapshots and long-term future weather forecasts are now available curbside thanks to LinkNYC.

No Access to Some Dark Sky Content From LinkNYC

Access to the Dark Sky weather suite has limitations. Since this does not appear to be a co-branded website (like linknyc.auntbertha.com) CityBridge cannot manipulate or customize the website’s templates. So CityBridge must simply block access to content it doesn’t want you to get to. For some reason that includes links to a page where one could register for access to the Dark Sky API, as well as maps.darksky.net.

Blocking access to the maps link is a drag, since that stuff is pretty cool to mess around with. Maybe the Smart City deemed it too cool, and blocked access as a preëmptive means to prevent derelicts from pulling up easy chairs and geeking out with weather maps all day long.

Access to Dark Sky also prompts the user to download the Dark Sky app from the Google Play store. That, of course, is impossible to do (for any regular person, at least) from any LinkNYC kiosk, but you can’t expect me to not try.

Another small tweak to the tablets has a couple of new bites of content injected into the screen saver. These must-have nuggets of information include the time of day and the current temperature. But as this video demonstrates they pass by so fast I think the only people who will derive any edification from this will be those who stand and stare at the tablets for long periods of time, as I have seen people do.

It seems a bit frantic to me, the rapid-fire delivery of these screens. I also have issue when one of these screens claims the “Find Your Way” feature is “Powered by LinkNYC”. Sorry, Charlie, the mapping function on these kiosks is 100% Google, and I find the omission/error a little conspicuous. I can’t recall now if a previous iteration of the screensaver made the same claim.