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Webpad ApplicationsLas Vegas' Aureole Restaurant uses SONICblue ProGear webpad
Current-vintage wine is stored in the "wine tower," a 42-foot-tall,
glass-enclosed Plexiglas structure in the restaurant (sort of a reverse wine
cellar). When a patron orders wine, a "wine angel" retrieves it. What's a "wine
angel," you ask? Keep in mind we're talking about Las Vegas here! A "wine angel"
is a wine steward in the form of an attractive young woman, dressed in a black
cat suit, who rappels up and down the tower using a modified climbing rig. Most
of the wine angels are professional dancers, rock climbers or acrobats. It takes
a wine angel (equipped with a printer, an intercom and a wine bottle holster)
about ten seconds to go from the ground to the top of the wine tower.
The brainstorm and driving force to automate the winelist came from Andrew
Vadjinia, the wine director at Aureole. He's a self-described "tech geek with a
wireless iPAQ." Actually he's a world-class wine expert, able to describe and
differentiate hundreds of wines from any region of the world at a moment's
notice. Andrew personally wrote the specification for the application, selected
the hardware supplier (frontpath, Inc., in Santa Clara, www.frontpath.com),
selected the software developer (REDoctober Industrie in Seattle,
www.redoctober.com), and managed every phase of the implementation.
Andrew surveyed all of the webpad manufacturers that he could find, as well as
manufacturers of full-PC pen tablets such as Fujitsu and of e-books such as
Gemstar. He settled on frontpath because of the ProGear's "size, weight
distribution, minimal user controls, solid feel, screen readability, screen
resolution, sensitive touchscreen, ease of wireless integration, and (last but
definitely not least) price." Andrew's requirement for "minimal user controls" is
typical of many vertical applications where the user is not expected to be
computer literate. The fewer controls there are, the less opportunity the user
has to do something wrong. Frontpath's approach to user controls (e.g., screen
brightness) is to provide a "system taskbar" that pops up across the bottom of
the screen when the scroll button is depressed. The application software disables
the scroll button and the taskbar completely, since (a) the application is
entirely page-based with no scrolling, and (b) the user can't change anything on
the system, not even the screen brightness (which is left at maximum all the
time). Andrew also felt that non-computer literate users would find the scroll
button "scary and uncomfortable to use."
Although the ProGear has a touchscreen, guests are asked to use a stylus because
their hands may be greasy. The "hotspots" on the application screens are
typically larger than their surrounding graphic boxes, to make it easy to touch
the right place. So far, Andrew has not observed anyone having problems with palm
rejection. The application does not include handwriting recognition or data entry
of any kind, eliminating the user's need to rest the edge of his palm on the
screen while holding the stylus.
The webpad uses the optional (6-cell) battery rather than the standard battery.
Andrew found that the optional battery was required to provide sufficient battery
life for the ProGear to last through the five-hour evening shift with just a
little recharging. He also found that the optional battery's slight bulge and
rubber covering actually makes holding the ProGear device more comfortable.
Running continuously with the backlight at full intensity, Andrew has observed
typical battery life of 3 to 3.5 hours (versus a spec of six hours, probably
based on less demanding conditions). The restaurant has acquired two gang battery
chargers, each of which holds16 webpads. Between uses, the webpads stay in the
battery chargers.
During use, the webpad is initially laid on the "base plate"-that empty,
seemingly useless plate that's already on the table in a good restaurant when you
first sit down. Some guests use the webpad lying flat on the base plate, some
hold it at an angle against the edge of the table, and some hold it fully in
their lap. No customer has dropped one of the webpads yet, in the six weeks that
the application has been in operation. Andrew compares the situation to handing a
camera to someone and asking him or her to take a picture-the person you hand the
camera to almost never drops it.
The application initially pops up a full-screen window that masks any evidence of
Netscape. Some items are hard to mask consistently, such as the Netscape title
bar. REDoctober is tinkering with "Java workarounds" for these problems, but
they're finding that doing this under Linux is "pretty hairy."
The application includes some simple canned video clips. REDoctober tried using
the RealPlayer plug-in to display the video clips, but found that the quality
wasn't good enough (it's optimized for streaming video online). Since
QuickTime-the desired solution-wasn't available under Linux, REDoctober simulated
video by using a sequence of images at 30 fps in Flash. Andi Rusu, the founder
and art director at REDoctober, said that "if Windows had been available on the
frontpath, we would have used Internet Explorer with the Flash 5 plug-in and the
QuickTime plug-in, which would have made the application easier to develop."
What if Aureole wants to move to a Windows CE device in the future, for some
reason? A Flash plug-in for IE is under development by Macromedia, so once it's
available, the application can be moved onto the new platform with zero porting
effort. That's one of the basic advantages of a webpad-it's just a browser
platform. Any hardware that supports a browser with the appropriate plug-ins can
be used.
If all this sounds like a batch application, you're right. To reduce risk in the
first phase of the project, Andrew decided to limit the wireless interaction
between the webpads and the FTP server to boot-time only. But there's no reason
why the wireless interaction couldn't take place on a timer basis in the client
or on a push basis from the server. In fact, Andrew plans to take the system
"totally wireless" in about four months.
Why have any data resident in the webpad instead of getting it off the server as
needed? The primary reason is protection against power brownouts or hardware
failure in the network. If the webpads always have a copy of the XML data files
locally, then the system is foolproof. Another advantage is that the webpad can
be taken out of the restaurant and still be useable.
In most vertical applications, the initial installation is a pilot test, and
Aureole's electronic winelist is no exception. When the system is fully developed
in about six months, Andrew expects to roll it out to other Charlie Palmer
restaurants.
So is the paper winelist gone forever? No, it's still in existence. Andrew
believes that Aureole will always need 5-8 copies of the paper winelist, updated
every couple of weeks, for people who simply refuse to use the webpad. After all,
the customer is king-you can't force a customer to do something he doesn't want
to do.
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