1stKIOSK, a company that develops touch screen kiosks and dynamic digital signs, has released k-BUILDER, a native Mac OS X, interactive application development tool specifically written for kiosk projects. It lets you create simple or sophisticated interactive kiosks and can also manage the scheduling of images and video for dynamic digital signs, according to Mitch Krayton, president of 1stKIOSK.
k-BUILDER supports up to 15 languages per project. Text on screens can be read aloud, which permits a project to comply with the requirements of the ADA and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
k-BUILDER takes full advantage of OS X’s protected, stable UNIX foundation, Krayton said. It’s fully compliant with QuickTime, ColorSync and TrueType. It also uses AppleScript as its own scripting language. k-BUILDER’s QuickTime support lets it automatically import hundreds of data types, as well. The kiosk tool works with any USB keyboard device, but also includes on-screen keyboards for touch screen projects where physical keyboards aren’t required.
Mac OS X support for laser, inkjet or thermal receipt printers is included. Support for USB input devices such as bar code scanners, magnetic and smart card readers, RFID transponders, bill and coin acceptors is under development.
To manage your project, k-BUILDER includes k-MANAGER, which utilizes FileMaker Pro databases for kiosk configuration, data management, dynamic loading of kiosk content and maintaining logs of all user activity. These logs can be formatted into standardized reports that are vital for market research, to confirm kiosk utilization and provide real metrics for “return on investment” calculations.
k-MANAGER supports an optional FileMaker Server configuration that lets networked kiosks share the same databases. To keep your networked kiosks up-to-date, you simply keep your databases up-to-date on the central server.
Since the Mac OS natively supports high-speed Ethernet networking, k-BUILDER also lets you create wireless kiosk networks in locations where a wired connection is not practical, Krayton said. Its kiosks can be deployed individually or in clusters.
k-BUILDER works with any Power Mac G3/500MHz with 256MB RAM and Mac OS X. A properly configured iMac is the ideal kiosk platform, Krayton said. At this time, k-BUILDER is exclusively available from 1stKIOSK for custom projects only. Standalone versions of k-BUILDER and k-BUILDER Pro are planned for release later this year.