More than Security Cameras: Sensing Consumers Wirelessly

Probably like many consumers, I have often felt the presence of security cameras and in-store corner mirrors hiding behind alleys and in black domes overhead quite unsettling. Not implying that I steal in stores, or have the intention to, but even so, the sense of being watched and recorded is ever-present. What if those security cameras were not the only devices following and noting the movements of each consumer? What if on every aisle, shelf and even every single product, there were devices that record every precise move of a customer, and every item he touches, picks up, or puts back down? Originally developed for military applications as battlefield surveillance, Wireless Sensor Networking is now applied to many civilian industries such as healthcare, traffic control, home automation, and habitat monitoring. Using spatially distributed autonomous divides equipped with various sensors, the ability to cooperatively monitor physical and environmental variables (temperature, lighting, sound, motion, etc) can provide advantages in the business sector as well.
These wireless sensor networks can make it reality for business to monitor consumer behaviours and interactions within any specific store depending on the in-store advertisement, aisle layout, and product showcasing. It can records which section of items consumers tend to go first, which areas to consumers pass by frequently, or at which showcases to shoppers stop longest, drawn by advertisements. This data can be collected simultaneously from the web of devices, and transmitted to a central database for recording and analysis. Combined with understanding in consumer psychology, business can further deeply assess the buyer decision making process with physical responses of consumers in shops to create a more smart way of displaying products in the most effective purchasing order for customers.
In a more advanced application of wireless sensor networks, consumer location and identity can be distinguished and matched with the individual profiles to created and personalized advertising scheme that follows the consumer within the store. The highly customized advertisements can lure each consumer’s interest more efficiently and maximize effectiveness.
With these consumer-tracking and identifying technologies however face strict regulations regarding consumer privacy in our society and business ethic codes. Especially with privacy laws effective in most countries, gaining the trust and confidence of the consumers over these commercial surveillance and customization technologies can become a hard hurdle to leap over. Even when approved, maintaining the personal data collected confidential and secure should be of the highest priority, as any leak of this information will generate long-term consumer distrust in the firm and maybe be disastrous to the business image.
Implementing and maintaining these sensor systems can also be costly for the business, along with maintaining vast data storage space and developing analyzing methods of the data. The cost of watching over consumers closely could dangerously overweight the benefits of data collected, but overcoming these barriers could prove to be the key to success for business.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_networks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_behaviour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_privacy

Healthy Organic....Computing?

There is certainly a trend of “organic” these days. Organic foods, which are supposedly healthier to the human body, and has a less impact on the ecosystem. Similarly organic light-emitting diodes, which are seen to be used in television screens and computer flat panels, as well as general room lightings, which draw less power compared to our already power efficient LEDs.
In this move towards “organic”, there is also an innovating technology in the computing world: organic computing. This emerging computing system although still under development is capable of adapting dynamically to the immediate conditions of its environment and has the following self properties:

-Self-organization,
-Self-configuration (auto-configuration),
-Self-optimization (automated optimization),
-Self-healing,
-Self-protection (automated computer security),
-Self-explaining, and
-Context-awareness.

Like the Biologically-inspired computing concept, these computing methods concentrate on connectism, social behaviour, and emergence, while relying heavily on biology, computer science, and mathematic, it gives the system the opportunity to apply simple sets of rules throughout time to eventually create its individual complex behaviour, and in this way, is distinguished from Artificial Intelligence.
The previously mentioned characteristics makes organic computing an attractive potential for businesses in our modern information technology society. With abilities or self-organization and self-configuration and automization, organic computing systems can integrate and control business facilities’ security control, internal maintenance, human assistance, and every other daily aspects that are presently run manually by miscellaneous employees. A self aware and intelligent building administrator can unify all of these unnecessary maintenance functions and reduce the management and administration expenses.
Having an unlimited potential for replacing human labour, organic computing systems can eventually replace and automate aspects of business in areas of customer relations (dealing and solving consumer problems intelligently), supple chain management (maintaining stock, and reordering according to warehouse conditions), and even assisting in top executive decisions (investment consulting, business market prediction).
Many of these technologies for the organic computing can revolutionize and almost completely automate the process of business, and restructure our modern corporate design.
On the other hand, with greater reliance to automatic computing, and complex computer behaviours, there comes a problem of controllability of the system. These self-aware systems must me designed as safe, and trustworthy as possible with strong orientation towards human beings. As these new systems can increasingly take control of business itself, there comes a great risk that small instabilities of the computing system can cause a great loss for a business that over-relys on it. Yet, as our technology advances, it seems more to businesses’ merit for organic computing technology to be developed and incorporated into businesses and society, of course, to an extent.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_computing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologically-inspired_computing

Extreme Makeover: Overhauling the Internet

There are currently 1.1 billion users logged on to the Internet world wide; each and every one of us is linked to each other through tightly woven webs of domestic, government, academic, and business networks across the globe.

Our Internet however, was originally designed in the United States for military use, which had not anticipated the massive expansion of usage to create today’s information society to facilitate e-commerce, social networking, web-browsing, internet research, instant messaging, and every other World Wide Web functions that we consider daily necessities, and often take for granted. Because of the sudden and dramatic increase in the usage of the public network, we have come to encounter problems that had not been anticipated during the designing and implementation of Internet protocols. I believe we all have Symantec Norton Antivirus, MacAfee, or some sort of antivirus software to protect our computers from the constant bombarding malicious attacks. Every other day, our antivirus warns us to update our virus definitions; it is in a way, vaccinating the computers each time against hundreds of new diseases. Sometimes I feel the antivirus software blocking my every move, and scanning the computer every few hours becomes more of a nuisance than the viruses themselves. Our current Internet also is suspected to privacy issues and stability concerns for the network as the exponential growth of web usage strains the structure itself.
In the midst of these problems, the Japanese Ministry of Communications recently revealed its plan to develop a completely redesigned network architecture to replace or support our current Internet as early as 2020. With a request of nearly $70 million from the Japanese Government for the next fiscal year, and its partnerships with leading businesses and academic institutions, the ministry aims to meet the needs of higher bandwidth, stronger security, and a more stable network.
From a business perspective this new idea sure does have its charms and doubtful areas.
A faster and secure network links between business and individuals has the potential in creating new confidence in e-commerce and boost the online industry. Credit card purchases online, and completely interactive virtual stores could make consumer experiences a much more enjoyable activity while it promotes new revenue for businesses from the increased accessibility, security and functionality of the new Internet. However, as our current Internet has already establish itself firmly into the roots of society and business, the transition to a completely new system and architecture of networks can not only be complicated but costly. Hardware upgrades, network rewiring, software redesigning, and all aspects of what makes our current Internet functions must be changed, and re-learned. Thus, although the idea of a post-internet society seems to have its sweet merits, when it comes to replacing and implanting something that is already heavily part of our business can turn out to be painstaking, if not impossible.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42185

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/419451