Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Week #8: In Summation

So, basically, my idea is to create a small tracking device that you could place on items that if you lost, you would want to be able to find. You would be able to log onto the product's website (or a phone app, assuming that the item you lost wasn't your phone) and find a whole list of items that you had chips on and where they were located.
The time of chip that would be used is RFID. While I am aware of the disadvantages of it, I think over time, as RFID becomes more popular, there will be more solutions for them, and thus, the problem will go away eventually. Until then, warnings would, of course, have to be put on the product as a warning to consumers.
If for whatever reason, the website could not track your item, you could be shown a graph of where you normally lost other items, and so you would have a few ideas of where to search. And if you were uncertain of how to use the website, or how to use the chip, there would be instructional videos readily available (in both Adobe Flash and HTML 5) on how to use them. :)

Reviewed Blogs:

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Week #7: Blog Review

Link: Future Technology

The "Future Technology" blog is dedicated to talking about technology and gadgets of the future, some of which are still only in concept form. The bloggers think that the future is going to be a lot of fun and full of interesting surprises, and their goal is to predict what those surprises might be.
One of the bits of technology that they talk about is what a stove might be like in the future. Instead of only having four different places to put pots and pans, you can place them anywhere and the cookware will instantly be identified and the surface underneath it will begin to heat up. Each location could easily be programed to heat to a specific temperature.
Another concept that it talks about is a popular one: the universal remote control. The particular design they talk about is thin, transparent, sleek, and can control all of your household gadgets. You could simultaneously change the channel on your TV and lower the brightness of you overhead lights.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Week #6: Computer Forensics and Operating Systems

On Tuesday in class, we talked about computer forensics. At first, I was not sure how to relate this to my idea (I know we don't have to relate every single thing, but still), but obviously, I would want my website to be secure so that people couldn't track items that belonged to people other than themselves, and possibly get hold of things they shouldn't. As we learned in class, identity theft is a very serious thing.
Today in class, we learned about operating systems. Though not exactly discussed in class, I think it's important to say that there are certain programs and such that work better on one OS more than another OS.
So that a certain group of customers weren't turned off or upset that they paid money for the chip and then had difficulty using the website, I would want to make sure that the website was easily used my all OSs' on all computers.