Info*Travel* to the Kiosk!

Following up the consumer distributed "Bell Atlantic Info-Active Electronic Directory", a kindly dev named Jefferson Ogata brought to light another rare gem(!) in the Interactive Dreams Facebook group - a Bell Atlantic-branded kiosk demo centered around the Washington DC area - titled "Bell Atlantic InfoTravel: Washington, D.C.".


Take a good look CD-i collectors! You'll never see this one again :)

Much like the Info-Active Electronic Directory, the kiosk disc is a thorough, well-laid-out-flow of information that's a breeze to navigate. InfoTravel's multimedia (videos and voice-over commercials with hip-bouncin' stock music) capture the point-in-time with all it's nostalgia... well see for yourself. Kicking things off with an intro from Bell spokesperson James Earl Jones:

A few neat things in the video:

At 15:05, I spy Kramer hanging up on the wall!




At 15:28, here a disinterested Euro who sounds high on heroin promo Bardo bar!



At 22:40, calling the White House, I got a complaint or two to make!



At 25:30, The Philips Collection art museum.


I lost track of time while browsing through this multimedia disc, in the process recording almost 40mins of video. I'd say that's a good sign of a well-put together product. You'll also see in the video an event-based calendar which is an interesting thought, and presumably would have resulted in regularly-updated discs being sent out.


A few interesting interactions... You may notice this disc has options to:

  • Make number based selections from a remote.
  • Initiate a phone call(!).
  • Print!
The later two functions are the first time I've seen these thoughts demo'd and were a neat addition.


Another shoutout to our hero Jefferson Ogata for making this disc come to light and sharing it with us. Developers are the make-or-break for these obscure items to either be preserved forever, or shut away forever.

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