NYC Announces 'Reinvent Payphones' Design Challenge Winners

The finalists for New York City's Reinvent Payphones design challenge -- a city-backed effort to inject new life into the 11,000 payphones located throughout the city -- were announced Wednesday, March 6. The six finalists are:

1. Beacon: a communication and information hub with integrated technology (LED matrix screens, sensors, speakers, lighting and solar cells) that is controlled by the user's voice and gestures.
2. NYC I/O: an update featuring sensors and displays that creates a foundational input/output system for an open, urban-scale computing platform.
3. Windchimes: a distributed sensor network that provides a real-time and hyper-local record of the city’s rain levels, pollution and other environmental conditions, with the goal of empowering the city with never-before-seen data.
4. NYC LOOP: serves as an access point to the latest technology while simultaneously supporting the public spaces that make NYC unique.
5. Smart Sidewalks: communication, sustainability and wayfinding are squeezed into a 6-inch-wide interactive strip that folds up from the sidewalk.
6. NYFi: an interactive portal to public information, goods and services; a hub for free wireless Internet access; and an open infrastructure for future applications.