Press #1 to eject: Touch screen Internet kiosks are a national joke

WHEN will Singapore finally wake up to the fact that the touch screen Internet kiosks that line its main shopping thoroughfares are useless, and get rid of them? The longer they are there, the more the republic embarrasses itself (kids itself?) with the notion that it's a Wired Island forging a future in the New Economy.

The booths, numbering around 200 or so and put up by K.K Fong's I-One.Net group, probably seemed like a good idea at the time to Singaporean bureaucrats reading about dotcom moguls spawning across the Pacific. But a year later, they've become a national joke. I reckon I've seen no more than a dozen people ever using them. And the term "using" is a moot point.

Despite the millions he claims to have spent on the back end--and the many millions more in blue-sky money he's pulled from the stock market--Fong and I-One seem to have a serious issue with network management. Most times I've strolled past a group of kiosks, at least one is out of action, displaying an error message on-screen that's impossible to clear. And it's like that the next day, and often the next week.

The expansive Fong likes to tell anyone who asks--and many more who don't--that he's a pioneer, and that he's taking them around the world, starting with Hong Kong. I say don't bother, and it would seem four million Singaporeans and double that number of tourists agree. His booths are slow, and clunky with content that rarely seems to be renewed--basically slow old Compaq desktops stuck inside a TV-type console. The only sensible use for them are as shelters when Singapore gets one of its tropical downpours.

The best thing that could happen to them is for them to be torn down. Clearly, they've become an embarrassment for authorities. Ask a bureaucrat at the government's Infocomm Development Authority about them and they quickly deny all knowledge. But they got there somehow, and moreover occupying some of the most expensive and desirable turf in Asia. It's a good idea badly executed, but there is hope out there in touch-screen-land--even in Singapore.

On show this week at Comdex Asia is some hardware made in Singapore by a company called Touch Media, in conjunction with the online retailer Discvault.com. The theory behind this box is that the Internet is quickly turning products into commodities. Take the humble CD. When we buy a compact disc, we are basically buying 10-12 tracks. If you are like me, only 3-4 of the tracks are any good, so I'm buying eight tracks I don't really want. So why buy the surplus eight?

With the Touch Media/Discvault digital jukebox you don't have to. You can quickly download, say, Moby's newest single for a $1 and store it on your portable music player, be it MP3-enabled, or its heirs. And you pay a bit like buying a ticket for the subway: with a swipe card, coins or notes. The elegantly designed unit is about the size of a laptop computer screen and sits on a stalk. But it could be anywhere. It's the sort of thing that might be found near--or perhaps embedded in--the counter of a Seven-Eleven, or a McDonald's, or by an airport gate, or on a train platform for loading up your music before a long journey.

It should be good news all round. For recording companies and music stores--still to release their fierce grip on their artists and libraries for fear they'll be swamped by the Net--it theoretically diversifies their outlets to sell their wares. Touch Media's Scott Alexander can eventually see one at home, becoming an electronic library of your music to replace the CDs you've always got lying around. At its best, it should make music quality better because listeners will no longer be burdened by the rubbish that makes up three-quarters of your average CD. I think it's a winner for other more cosmetic reasons; the hope that it will torpedo I-One Net's ridiculous kiosks.