Kiwi firm benefits from US park market

By Coran Lill

Friday 30th July 2004

Local touchscreen company NextWindow is continuing its push into the US market signing a multiple-screen deal with a Dallas business park the third such contract in eight months.

The three deals are worth about $200,000 to the four-year-old company.

The Dallas deal in the Lincoln Centre was signed at the end of last year and deployed from April.

The park, the Dallas Lincoln Centre which has 140,000sq m of office space, now has six double-sided screens that feature the NextWindow technology.

The other US deals are for 10 screens in an Oklahoma business park and in a research technology park, also in Oklahoma.

The screens assist business and technology park visitors to find their way around providing maps and searchable tenant directories.

These can be updated a significant advantage over traditional business park signs where signs quickly become outdated because of changing tenancies, chief executive Al Monro said.

Another advantage over "static" signage was that while park visitors are waiting for lifts, they can watch CNN, MSNBC or ESPN news on one-quarter of the 40-inch screens.

NextWindow's technology uses tiny cameras at the edge of the screen to locate the position of a finger, whereas most touchscreens work by sensing the pressure of a finger placed against a screen.

Monro said there was growing demand in New Zealand for the technology, which was being used in Telecom and Vodafone retail stores, although it had not yet appeared in any New Zealand business parks.

Auckland's Sky Tower uses the technology on the observation deck, as does the Shiseido museum in Japan.

At the Sky Tower, visitors can zoom in on areas in Auckland.

The technology has recently been used in Hong Kong theatres, where the technology is being used to promote the movie Spiderman 2.

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