News Release

Kiosks.Org Best of Show KioskCom Retail 2000

By far the best business model we found at the show was FamilyMeds by Netkey. Plus the terminals are state-of-the-art design and are attractive. Frank Mayer Associates did a wonderful job and deserve particular recognition. - Craig Keefner, Manager, Kiosks.Org More Information: http://www.familymeds.com/familymeds/ Netkey, based in San Francisco, CA and Branford, CT, created a new kiosk channel for FamilyMeds.com (formerly Arrow Pharmacy) of Farmington, CT, one of the nation's leading pharmacists and operator of 125 practices throughout the US. Netkey's Solution included strategy, business modeling, design, kiosk fabrication, deployment and on-going monitoring and on-site service. "We create all Netkey kiosk channels to be as reliable as dial tone," commented Marvin Elbaum, Netkey team leader. Netkey created the integrated hardware solution with Frank Mayer Associates and Netkey's Kiosk Enterprise Division, the group responsible for procuring best-of-breed hardware and network solutions. Netkey's Network Center monitors the system 24/7. Netkey will deploy and operate over 2,500 familymed Netkey kiosks in leading medical clinics, physician practicies and hospitals.

In Hardware: MEI and their booth, information, products and people won me over. MEI provides anything you need in the Bill and Coin Acceptor products and with the recent concerns over privacy, its worth remembering that the majority of transactions in the self-service market are cash/coin, not credit cards. For More Information visit MEI. Sharing in the award is Kiosk Information Systems (KIS) -- The units we saw and talked about with Pete Snyder demonstrated some of the smartest engineering and manufacturing processes. KIS has always had the reputation as making some of the finest enclosures in the world, and it is well-deserved. Contact sales for more information.

In Software: We thought this might happen and wondered what we would do if it did, now we now. At KioskCom Retail two companies previously awarded Best Of Show in separate shows happened this time to be at the same show. Apunix Computer Services with their Java Kiosk, and TouchPoint with Kudos were both there and I am awarding both of them Best of Show in Software. And they become our first two-time award winners. The Java Kiosk runs on Solaris, NT and now Linux and as someone who works with databases, the authoring almost reminds me of NextObjects with its drag-and-drop. KUDOS runs on NT and is very object oriented and it was simple to incorporate all types of multimedia, advanced functions and properties. On the back-end, global or selective application changes are done in template fashion which not only is elegant in execution, it works perfectly!

Website information:

Netkey: www.netkey.com
Frank Mayer: www.frankmayer.com
MEI: www.meiglobal.com
KIS: www.kis-kiosk.com
Kudos: www.touchpointit.com
Apunix: www.apunix.com
KioskCom: www.kioskcom.com

Special thanks to Lawrence of KioskCom 2000 Retail and the very nice conference that it was. Coming up September 25-27 is Kioskcom Internet Kiosk Conference which will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona.