Fill 'er up with content: Would like some fries with your unleaded gas?

Forget Web appliances or super-cheap PCs. The best way to access Web-based digital content is through devices that everyone already uses.

While dozens of vendors try to provide phone-based Web content, Ten Square is using point-of-sale (POS) terminals, including ATM machines and gas pumps.

The idea is to take digital content to common public areas, said Tony Shah, vice president of product marketing for Ten Square. But it has to be useful information, he said.

"If you're going to have any application, you really have to aggregate a large enough audience to make it worthwhile," he said. "If you look at content solutions in a point-to-point architecture, they just haven't been able to aggregate a large enough audience."

In one example of the Ten Square concept, anyone filling a gas tank could be entertained or given directions to the nearest McDonald's. While at the pump, the customer can place an order, which will be ready at that McDonald's.

"The concept that we're going after is [that] if you have a given physical area, you, as a promoter or merchant, are interested in driving more customer traffic into your site. They're moving up the impulse buying process," Shah said. "We've created a network that has a front-end tool that lets the advertiser choose that gas station based on its location and send digital content."

Working with a division of Marconi Communications, which created the first pay-at-the-pump systems, Ten Square envisions using its software to turn all types of POS terminals into what it calls "touch points."

"It could be displayed on any device that has a screen or even a cash register receipt," Shah said. "The petroleum sector just happens to be one of the most innovative in terms of convenience."

Ten Square also is working with lottery machine vendors, cash station developers and GPT, which manufactures screen-based pay phones. In the case of cash stations, Ten Square envisions users that can perform normal banking transactions and order items such as movie tickets.

"We have a philosophy of democracy of access," said Scott Slinker, founder, president and CEO of Ten Square. The company sees its application as a way to expand customer loyalty programs, he added.

Key is a proxy that translates digital content into a format the devices - gas pumps, cash stations and other items - can read.

Part of the problem is the time constraint of the user. Users at a POS terminal are there for a specific purpose and won't stay for a long time. Most POS terminals also lack a keyboard, which is required for most applications.

"You can't just take a standard Web application and convert it," Shah said. "In some ways, you have to have a new breed of applications."

Ten Square is using that new application to attract ISPs. The company is working with MindSpring but anticipates using other ISPs as channels. Ten Square also has created its system so transactions are managed as a batch process, allowing ISPs to use bandwidth at off-peak times.

>From an architecture perspective, Ten Square places servers with its >software in different locations, depending on the application. In the gas >station example, the servers are located at the ISP's point of presence. >By contrast, in a cash station application, the server is co-located with >the machine.

"It's a multi-tiered network," Shah said. "The devices are already networked back to a point-of-sale server. We actually push the content out to the consumer, and they interact with it on the same network. The back-office server then communicates via the ISP."

Perhaps the biggest challenge for providers is getting the attention of consumers, said Karl Jessen, analyst with The Yankee Group. "We're so over-stimulated with ads right now," he said. "Their challenge is to provide some real value during that 20 to 30 seconds that you're there."

Ten Square has laid the groundwork for these types of services, and its low-key rollout plan should work, Jessen added. "Their work with the pump manufacturers is really going to help them get over a lot of the little issues like interfaces.'

Ten Square is testing in a limited number of gas stations in Atlanta. The company aims to have 500 merchants running services by year-end, though not all peddling gas.