Sprayable Energy

With the school semester nearing its end, students are busy completing assignments and taking final exams. In order to help them be more productive and stay awake, students resort to drinking a lot of coffee and maybe even energy drinks. A new product, called Sprayable Energy, can help reduce the consumption while still giving an individual the energy they need. Ben Yu, the creator of Sprayable Energy, discovered that caffeine permeates the skin, and if sprayed on the neck area, it will get into [the] bloodstream more steadily", compared to drinking a large cup of coffee where you have a high and then crash. This product will retail for $15 and includes about 40 doses. The dose recommended is 4 sprays which is the equivalent of a cup of coffee.

I would give Sprayable Energy a 9/10. Students will only have to spend $15 on the product and will get 40 doses or 'cups of coffee' out of it, which is much cheaper than purchasing 40 cups of coffee from a shop which would cost anywhere from $150 to $200. Students who only drink coffee to stay awake and not for leisure may find this product more useful because all they are really looking for is the energy fix. I, personally, do not like drinking coffee and only drink it when I need a boost. When I have coffee, I also put a lot of milk and sugar in it to make it taste better which isn't exactly that healthy. With Sprayable Energy, I can get the caffeine fix without the calories. I would give this product a try because I think it would be a nice pick me up when I hit a low throughout the day and make it easier to focus on school.

Password Ring

In my last blog post, I talked about the password pill that Motorola has developed in order to eliminate the need to manually enter passwords. Recently, Google has been trying to accomplish the same thing except instead of swallowing a pill to remember passwords, a ring will be used. Google is still in the funding and developing stages but the product seems promising. The ring will have a built in USB drive that can be inserted into the computer. In order to register passwords on the ring, you must first insert it into the computer and go to the website you wish to log on to. You then manually enter your password and follow the authentication steps. The technology in the ring will then send the information to the website as well as the ring. After the information has been saved on the ring, the next time you go on the website you will be able to skip the log on process completely.

This product seems to be more promising than the password pill. When I learnt that the pill allows you to emit signals in order to log on to certain devices, I was concerned about the effects it would have on the body. With the password ring, you no longer have to worry about that. However, one problem with having to wear the ring is the possibility of losing it and having others access your personal information. With the password pill, the pill is consumed, eliminating the risk of others stealing your passwords. 

I would give the Google password ring a 7/10. It is much more comforting for me to wear a ring than to ingest chemicals. It also seems like less of a hassle because you only input the password once and it is saved on the ring forever, whereas with the pill, you need to take it everyday in order for the passwords to work. I would definitely try the ring over the pill any day.

The Future of Passwords

What if you no longer had to use typed authentication for logging into your phone or an online website? Now you can with password pills. Motorola has developed a pill you can swallow that turns you into a "human authentication token". The pills are taken daily and when the pill reaches your stomach, the stomach acid will turn a small chip in the pill on or off. When the chip is activated, it creates an "18-bit ECG-like signal" that allows you to log into your accounts just by touching the devices. Essentially, your body becomes the password. This pill has been approved for use by the FDA, but is not going to be sold for awhile according to the CEO Dennis Woodside.

This product would be the most beneficial to those people who have a hard time remembering their passwords or do not like the hassle of signing into each and every website they go on. I agree that this product would definitely save time but it also makes me uneasy. The reason being is that it makes a person become almost like a WiFi signal and since this is a newer technology, we are unaware of the effects this could have on our bodies. I would give this product a 3/10. It would save you time from having to remember passwords, but it is not a necessity as you could just write them down or use the 'remember me' function on websites. I, personally, do not think I will try this product when it comes on the market because I don't mind manually typing in my passwords and I do not want to face the possibility of harming my body.

A Magnet That Tells You When Your Food Has Expired?

When cooking meals, the one thing that annoys me the most is reaching into the fridge for an ingredient and discovering that it has gone bad. Or when you pour a glass of  milk and take the first sip and discover that the milk has expired. All of these problems could be solved with the new QR code magnets design. When you first buy a perishable product, you scan the QR code located on the food with the magnet. The technology inside the magnet will reset itself and start a new expiration timer for the food you just scanned. The magnet is then placed on the fridge door and will keep track of the time left on your food. As time passes, the magnet will change colors to notify you of how quickly the expiration date is approaching. When the magnet is green, the food is fine to eat. When the magnet is orange, the food is still good to eat but is close to expiration. And when the magnet turns red, it signals that the food has expired and should be thrown out. This product is currently still in the design phase, but I think that in the future it would be a good item to have. Individuals could save themselves a lot of money because the magnet would help reduce the amount of food thrown away. The red magnets will also protect people from upset stomachs because they will no longer have to guess to see if the food is good or not.

Overall, I would give this product a 7/10. I think this product is useful, but there are also other methods of keeping track of food expiration dates such as writing them down on paper or recording it on food containers that don't cost a cent. I am also unsure of how accurate the QR codes and magnets will be at predicting the actual expiration date. However, I would definitely give this product a try if it comes on the market and see if it really will make managing the food in my fridge easier.

The Trakdot

Over the next couple weeks, I will find new and innovative products to share and review.

The first product I have chosen is for people who love to travel and is called the Trakdot. It is a small, lightweight device you put in your suitcase that tracks the location of your luggage while you travel. When an individual lands at their destination, the Trakdot will send a notification either through the iphone app, text message, or online to alert them of where their luggage is.  One positive of this product is that if an airline loses a person's luggage, the individual will be able to locate it and potentially save themselves time and money. They will no longer have to buy a completely new wardrobe or wait days and days while the airline figures out what happened to the luggage. One problem addressed by reviews of the product was that the batteries in the Trakdot were supposed to last two days, but after less than twenty hours, the battery died. This makes it difficult for international travelers to use because it is likely the Trakdot will not be working when they land. I usually tend to travel smaller distances so I think this device would work well for me and also put my mind at ease because I will know my luggage has arrived safely. Overall, I would give this product an 8/10.

Thank Goodness for Technology

Writing can be a daunting task at times. Coming up with an idea and having to convey it through writing is difficult for any person. You want to portray the whole experience to others, but you are limited by the words you have learnt. Helen Keller must have had a similar experience to this while writing "The Story of My Life" because she only knew the words Miss. Sullivan had taught her and the ones she had read in books. During her time, there wasn't as much freedom to explore new words and topics, as resources were limited to libraries and book stores. In many of the libraries and book stores, the resources were dependent on the size of the building and the topics the owners wanted to supply. Helen Keller also required the resources to be in braille, which took longer to provide. In contrast, today we have a variety of resources to help us with our writing. We have dictionaries, as well as thesaurus', built into programs such as Word to help us expand and define our thoughts. We can also search for any topic or word on Google and learn about it in seconds. This allows us to have a greater understanding of topics and express ourselves more clearly than Helen Keller could.

Another aspect of writing that would pose a challenge for Helen Keller is editing. Writing on a typewriter or a piece of paper limits the ability to move sentences and fix poor grammar (as you can see in my jumbled mess below). The fact that she had to rely on Miss. Sullivan to help with editing, could have also made it more difficult to identify mistakes if the writing was portrayed to her  incorrectly. Writing on computers in today's society eliminates the inability to change sentences around, you can now write a whole paragraph in one area of a document and later copy and paste it into a new area. Editing has also become easier with spell check because it points out errors that may go unnoticed by underlining the error and bringing it to your attention. Therefore, with technology, writing has become more extensive and grammatically correct. 

Fake Profiles Create Fake Anonymity

When I first started to use the internet, I believed that anonymity was beneficial for society. It allowed individuals to freely view websites, like Google, without requiring them to disclose their personal information. My views on anonymity have changed since then because many websites now require people to create an account in order to use their services. The need for profile creation forces people to share their personal information which results in less anonymity. In order to counter the lost anonymity, individuals may disguise or lie about who and what they are, creating a false image for them to hide behind.  The dog cartoon mentioned on Cthargo's blog is a perfect example of this. The dog may create a fake profile portraying him as a person, ultimately making people believe him because there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. The dog is therefore tricking others into believing he is something else in order to obtain more anonymity.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, are subject to this need for more anonymity through fake accounts. These fake accounts allow people to talk to others somewhat anonymously and acquire information from them. This is known as Catfishing. An example of Catfishing appeared on the MTV show Catfish. In this instance, a woman named Sunny believed she had been talking to a man online, when in reality she was talking to a woman who had created the account to find a female partner. There have also been cases reported where sex offenders create a fake Facebook profile to try and lure underage girls to “meet them”. In both of these cases, anonymity has been achieved at the expense of others. Instead of these individuals displaying their true age and/or gender, they are hiding behind someone else, creating a false image that is anonymous for themselves but does not appear so to others. This can deeply humiliate and hurt others when they discover they have been tricked. Therefore, a system has to be established to prevent such distrust on the internet.

Measures have been taken by police, news reporters and parents against fake online profiles to prevent individuals from getting involved in the situations mentioned above. In some communities, police have been using fake profiles for the sole purpose of catching sex offenders online. They create a profile resembling a young girl and monitor her friend requests and inbox to identify if a sex offender is approaching her and arrest them. News reporters are involved in prevention by alerting the community of possible threats and encouraging parents to talk to their children about dangers online, as well as reminding other individuals to be cautious. Through announcements made by news reporters and the need for general safety, parents are working with children to help them understand what is safe and what is not safe online. They also encourage their children to be open with them and let them know if someone is threatening them or wants to meet them. Through these measures and the awareness of others, the “anonymity” of fake profile users will be limited, creating a safer online community.