Personal screen ads

If I already opened the ideas vine, let’s hear another one.
I saw a lot of media LCD screens appearing in Bucharest lately. Unfortunately, I think the crisis affected the advertising budget of companies and these screens as a consequence.
So why not using them for everyone, not only for big budget advertising companies? And here is a possible solution.
But first of all, why somebody would like to use them for ads? One example, dedications. Love ones .
And now let’s see how. Let’s say that you want to propose your love one. You go to the media screen company website, even from your mobile phone. There you will create online your message, specifying the text, the template (red text on pink falling heart, white text on a blue stripe over a bouquet of lilies etc), the exact time of appearance, the display time and the exact display from an entire network of media screens allover the city. You can even see a preview of the entire ad.
One more step left, payment. The final cost is automatically calculated taking into account the time of the day, the period and the location of the display.
The entire ad will receive a unique code in the system and you will see that code at the end. Now if you send that code through SMS to an extra-cost number you will receive a confirmation of your message, payment, URL with details and the exact time when it will be displayed.
You have to work a little bit on your synchronization and it might cost you some money, but the effect could be one of a kind.
It could also be that the easiness of creating such ads could attract even smaller companies.
Do you like the idea? What would you display on such a media screen?

Carlets – mobile car integration

I will start a new category in my blog: ideas. I will post here cool (in my opinion) new ideas to be implemented in the web, software or technology field area.
First one. From the making of the car more than 100 years ago since today, things evolved tremendously. Except the fuel, but that’s another discussion. A lot of features and gadgets are part now of the modern car, just to make your life easier.
I always liked when gadgets and technologies are integrating and interoperating smooth and nicely. In auto industry there are a lot of efforts in this direction: some cars have integrated Bluetooth, so if you enter with your phone you can use it as a handset, others have special connectors for your iPod and iPhone and so on. But what I’m talking here is really true integration. Also when it comes to personalize your car, things are looking pretty good. Some cars memorize different seat positions for different drivers. Or even mirrors position.
The mobile phone is probably the most personal device. Unlike the car, that can be driven by any member of the family or it can even be a rental. So a true integration between these two will be the most desired. Imagine that you enter your car. Previously you memorized driver seat position, mirrors etc. Just a few button pushes and your car is exactly like you want it. But if you rent the car, you will need more than this.
Now, imagine that you enter a car, not just your, but any, and the car simply adapts to your needs. Sci-fi? Not quite. The entire technology is there, it misses only the INTEGRATION.
How this will work? Simple. Enter a car, just any car, personalize it and then save the settings to your mobile phones through Bluetooth. Next time your enter another car, the settings will be taken from the mobile phone and the car will instantly adapt to your wishes. Just like that.
And the entire technology is there. Cars, for sure, can be personalized and can understand Bluetooth, mobiles, for sure, can understand Bluetooth. There is only one link missing. You can even use existing protocols in the Bluetooth stack, like OBEX. Or if you’re concerned about wireless technology and security, USB is also available .
And now let’s take a few moments to day dream of what a car can do.

• Mirrors (front and lateral), driver seat, wheel position, all these are adapted instantly to your driving style. It can even differ according to the speed.
• Forget about setting the heating or air conditioner. The car simply knows what is your favorite temperature (in summer and winter) and it sets the heating system, also according to the external temperature in such a way to be just right for you.
• Play my favorite radio station. Or no, better play my favorite tunes, directly from my phone. And change the music genre when I go faster.
• Your smartphone becomes instantly a small computer board, displaying, speed, average speed, rpms, fuel consumption etc. And the GPS software just got a little better. No guess for the average speed, it simply knows the real instant one.
• In a convertible, I don’t care about the rooftop. Weather, speed and the secret ingredient, my preferences, make the recipe.
• Lights are adapting to the road, time and weather.
• And if not everything so far wasn’t making your life easier, add voice commands on top. Anyway, it is already there, on your smartphone.
• Now let’s take a step further and replace the board panel with a small touchscreen. This will display only the information that you find useful. Forget about rpms, show me only the speed. Or do it in a different color. By day and night. Everything skinnable. And all these possible in a blink of an eye.

You can even develop plug-ins for either your mobile device (the client) or your car (the server). And because I like Java, I even found a cool name: carlets (like applets, midlets or servlets). Or you can use widgets. And you have to admit that this opens a new world of opportunities.
For all this, the auto makers will need to agree to some standards, which could be very hard in this industry.
But I can still hope and dream about it. What would you like to personalize in your car?

Standards – respect for customer

From my point of view, following standards in whatever you’re producing as a company is a form of respect for the customer.
There is no good reason, except the economical one, for not to. And economically speaking this can have multiple causes. One could be that the product was developed before the standard and adhering to the standard will be an extra cost. This is in some way understandable. Much less understandable is when making the product after the standard and intentionally not adopting it. The economical reason behind is clear: tying up the customer to the product and automatically to the company.
In my personal opinion, the customer should be educated in this way that he/she should ask the companies to follow the standards and to penalize the ones that are not doing it.
I agree that in some cases the standards are outdated. A very notable case is J2ME. Even tough a lot of mobiles are implementing it, the standard is so outdated, so general, that if you want to develop an application with the latest trends you will end up developing it in five different platforms.
Let’s take another simpler example: phone chargers. There the intention of making you as a customer dependent of the company is even more obvious. For example, Nokia, nany years back had only one type of charger for all their phones. Which was great, you could share the charger with any of your friends and colleagues with a Nokia phone. Lately they switched to a lighter version of that charger, implementing it also on all the phones.
But nowadays, when almost all their phones have a mini-USB connector, why still keeping a proprietary charging connector? Moreover, the specs for the charger are the same as the one for the power from USB. So dropping that charger connector will even save money when producing the phone. And also it will save you money on accessories, which in fact is the problem .
But less acceptable is when they use X different USB connectors. I understand the necessity of two sizes of USB connectors. But why so many shapes for the same size of the connector?
There are a lot of organizations and many efforts in standardization, but you will be, as a customer, the ultimate reason for companies in adhering to standards.