Terabyte answers the tricky questions in Kuala Lumpur aquarium

Malaysian Aquaria KLCC chief Terry O'Boyle (left) and Terabyte managing director Rowan Schaaf, and one of the kiosks in the Kuala Lumpur aquarium.

Each day in downtown Kuala Lumpur thousands of Malaysian schoolchildren file through the city's latest attraction, Aquaria KLCC.

Many - hopefully - are leaving with a little more aquatic wisdom thanks to the lure of New Zealand designed "edutainment" kiosks, which are peppered throughout the complex.

The 19 kiosks would not look out of place in a video game arcade and are the work of website design and interactive media company Terabyte.

Auckland-based Terabyte employs about 20 staff and, founded in 1988, is one of the country's oldest companies in its field.

As well as creating websites for clients including Te Papa, HSBC Bank and several Radio Network stations, Terabyte is also carving out a global niche as a supplier of interactive educational content such as that on display at the new Kuala Lumpur aquarium.

After pressing their nose to the glass in time-honoured tradition, visitors to Aquaria can approach the nearest touch-screen Terabyte kiosk to learn about the fish housed in a particular tank.

The kiosks display biological and environmental facts, figures, images and video clips in a format Terabyte chief executive Rowan Schaaf describes as "engaging with content in a meaningful way".

Those unable to travel to Malaysia can sample his company's edutainment work closer to home at Auckland Museum, where Terabyte kiosks illustrate the Earth's evolution.

Other Terabyte interactive content at the museum is used to bring to life aspects of the armoury, and underwater and foreshore displays.

"I remember going through museums when I was a kid and they were boring, stuffy places," says Schaaf. "Our aim is to stimulate kids into widening their sense of wonder."

Following Terabyte's completion of the Kuala Lumpur installation and several other projects, Schaaf is focused on securing further international education-based contracts.

He believes Aquaria has given Terabyte a useful foothold in the Asian market and says he will continue to travel regularly to the region as face-to-face contact is the most effective way of winning business.

Aquaria, which opened last month, has been driven by New Zealand entrepreneur Terry O'Boyle, but Schaaf says that connection did not mean Terabyte got a free ride. It had to pitch for the business and the contract was only secured after he visited O'Boyle in Malaysia.

O'Boyle, who has been involved in aquarium development projects around the world during the past 10 years, says a high-tech interactive element was considered vital for the Kuala Lumpur project.

Aquaria is a 5600sq m complex below ground in Kuala Lumpur's recently completed central city convention centre.

O'Boyle said that because physical expansion of the site was not a possibility, he relied on information and computing technology foundation for growth and development of the facility.

"I can't expand the aquarium in space. What I can do is expand through technology."

O'Boyle said a high-tech experience incorporating the content developed by Terabyte was vital if young people - the "point-and-click generation," as he described them - were to be attracted to the aquarium.

However, the technology should not dominate the experience, which was still about seeing marine life first hand.

Schaaf agreed: "It's important [for the technology] to augment the experience, not be the experience."

As well as enhancing the aquarium experience, the kiosks also play a role in crowd management. Aquaria has attracted an average of 6000 visitors a day since opening, with up to 12,000 filing through the doors on its busiest days.

Channelling that number of visitors through an enclosed area is a fine art and diverting some to the kiosks at key points around the building is an effective way to keep the crowd flowing.

The aquarium kiosks are based on Terabyte's Dynamic Web technology - a content management system designed to allow Aquaria staff to enter new information and images into the database as required. This may happen, for example, when new species of fish are added to a particular tank.

Dynamic Web is also the basis for another international Terabyte project, Chalkbytes, a Northern Ireland-based collaborative learning initiative that allows schools around the world to share resources via a website.

Schaaf says a common outburst around Terabyte's Parnell office, and now a standing company joke, is "did you know?" because the staff have become experts in unusual areas of history and biology through working on the company's projects.

The company is probably best known for developing Virtual Spectator, the groundbreaking online software first used in 1999 as an America's Cup viewing tool.