Greetings all -- I'm a new subscriber here. I spent a bit of time perusing the archives (fun topics) but didn't specifically find this query addressed, so I tought I'd bring it up.
We are in the final stages of fabricating free-standing exhibit kiosks. All total there will be five separate kiosks (on per each time period of the exhibit). Each kiosk will house artifacts, interactives, and exhibit text, and a computer/media-player element. My question is about this media-player.... Initially I envisioned using a free-standing computer. I'm a Mac person so I was considering a Mac Mini or a iMac, (perhaps with a touch-screen), and using a web browser operating in a kiosk-mode. My exhibit fabricator is strongly suggesting we use a self contained, compact flash media-player (he's recommending one of the "Medeawiz" all-in-one players). He's arguing that a media player is easier to program, less maintenance, and less expensive than a free-standing computer. The proposed content on the player would primarily be video (visitors would select one of four or six videos) but it would be nice to have the flexibility to have vistors select/view additional exhibit text, photographs, perhaps some accessions data, etc.... The web-browser scheme gives me the ultimate in flexibility, I'd present the content as "web-pages" but then I do see the advantages of a CF player. Questions - 1. Has anyone played with the Medeawiz players? Can it handle non-video content such as text pages or photographs? I'm downloaded the user manual (fairly spartan) and I see it has a 600x800 pixel touch-screen and can handle multiple "tracks." If I wanted to display five or ten photos (and have visitors click though them one-at-a-time) would I load each photo as a different track? Is there a means to have visitors "scroll" though photos/text, (using a scroll-bar or perhaps pages with arrows, hyper-links, whatever) or would the photos/text/slide-show need to be converted to a video file? 2. I noticed the thread in the MCN-L archive about the Brooklyn Museum having a Firefox kiosk browser -- does that work on a Mac, (I fear not!?) Anyone have a Mac web-browser with a good (easy to use) "kiosk mode?" A year or two ago I stumbled upon iCab (www.icab.de) and it looked like it'd do the trick -- has anyone played with it? 3. As it stands now, for each kiosk we're specing a small (all-in-one) player/touch screen, and then adding a second larger "slave" monitor for other visitors (family groups) to view the content. Anyone have any thoughts about that? Would one (mid-sized) touch screen be better than one small input device and a second larger slave monitor? 4. I haven't dealt much with touch-screens, is there much maintenance/re-calibration that needs to be done to the Medeawiz player screens? Assuming we go with the free-standing computer option, are touch screens fairly easy to connect and program to a Mac? Is Elo Touch the brand that everyone would recommend? And if going with the free-standing computer option, should we dump the touch-screen concept all together and go think about a trackball? Any suggestions will be gleefuly accepted. Looking forward to participating on the list! - David - David Lewis, curator Aurora Regional Fire Museum www.AuroraRegionalFireMuseum.org ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
