(Photo: City 24x7)

A few months ago, City 24x7 teamed up with the city of New York to create touchscreen neighborhood directories in phone booths across the city. Today, in partnership with Cisco, the company announced that it's rolling out the high tech public communications systems to 250 more phone booths across the New York area.

Each phone booth is outfitted with a 32-inch touchscreen device that offers directory information, city news and alerts, transportation schedules, restaurants and maps. City 24x7 has partnered with a host of companies to bring up-to-the minute info to each booth.

"You can get your real time train alerts, best New York restaurants through Zagat, green market information through Grow NYC, theater tickets through Theater Mania," said Tom Touchet, City 24x7's CEO. City 24x7 has also partnered with CityMaps for hyperlocal maps for each booth, and will provide services for those who are disabled and have difficulty using a standard pay phone.

The new touchscreen platforms will serve as an alternative vehicle to deliver city announcements and information. It will host some ads, primarily for local mom and pop shops, which will help pay for the device's upkeep.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, when cell phone networks were experiencing major outages and power was out across swaths of the city making it difficult to charge cell phones, suddenly high tech city dwellers had a use for payphones. Many were seen lining up to make phone calls from a technology that until then had seemed obsolete.

With backup battery power, the touchscreens could effectively keep running in the event of a power outage, providing important city alerts to residents in the event of a similar crisis. "They come equipped with backup battery power, which will keep them running for hours but not weeks," Mr. Touchet said. "That said, we are working on a green roof to augment and extend the battery life."

City 24x7 is already looking for more places to deploy the touchscreens. "There are a lot of other places that we’re talking about deploying," Mr. Touchet explained. "Any place that a city wants to impact urban flow in a positive way: bus stations, subway stations, campuses. It’s designed to align with the city and to get their info out in a way that helps people."

A city phone booth gets a makeover (youtube.com)

Unless your cell phone died or you're dialing up your drug dealer from some wanton, low-lit intersection, you probably haven't stepped inside a phone booth since before the new millennium. But that could change with the planned technological revamp of city phone booths.

Each selected phone booth will receive its own 32-inch touchscreen that will serve as a neighborhood directory.  The directory can show you local restaurants, shops, directions and safety alerts (should you not have a smartphone to already do all those things for you.)

In order to make this project work, New York has teamed up with City 24x7, a provider of up-to-the-minute public communication systems for cities. According to Mashable, "City24x7 will be responsible of the maintenance and repair of the screens. The pilot program will cost the city nothing, according to Sbordone. In the future, the program will display ads, covering the installation and upkeep of the touch-screen directories. The city will also post reminders ads about tax refunds, bike sharing services and park events."

Considering most city phone booths are used for graffiti art and public urination, this makeover is definitely a welcome one. It also provides services for citizens who can't afford a smartphone with an expensive data plan. And with potential Skype integration, the futuristic advent of city-wide video-chat payphones could be just around the corner.