Security company requires employees to get RFID implants

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/134

Interesting story about the first case (i am aware of) where a company has required all employees who access a secure area to get a verichip implant.

Its not good to think that some kind of personal data can be read off you by scanners where ever you walk. Especially when it would appear verichip tags could possibly be easily cloned with the right equipment http://cq.cx/verichip.pl. If so this could be a bigger security hole than the old card systems used by the company in question. It is possibly a mistake by the company to rely for security purposes on such a new technology, especially as when questioned they where unaware of some of the security issues around the devices.

A would be ID thief would have to get within a foot of the subjects implant, due to the range of the chips. I personally think that some one who had thier mindset on such theft could easily do this, i often have people within such a range whether i am queueing at a petrol station or in a lecture.
Also with the constant moving of technology and security how many of these implants would an employee be expected to have over their working life. Every couple of years as one item becomes obsolete are they just going to demand employees get another implant, and how many of these things are people going to end up with in their bicep.

Most commonly suggested features from our questionnaire:

  • As peoples food keeps freezing, the fridge should monitor the temperature of the food, Not the actual air temperature. (Idea: use a temperature-sensitive infa-red camera to monitor food temperature. Have several independantly controlled cooling elements distributed throughout the fridge. This would allow the contents of the fridge to be cooled evenly. Alternatively,install a fan inside the fridge to constantly circulate the air to avoid cool air pooling at the bottom and freezing things [in a simular way to how a fan oven creates a more even heat distribution in an oven].)
  • People want bigger fridges with more organised compartments. (Idea: Have seperate compartments within your fridge, which can be independantly temperature-controlled to refelct whats in it [eg: meat should be colder than cheese.] Making bigger fridges fit in the same space is just not feasable, so a more organised internal structure can increase the effective capacity without increasing overall size. Each shelf could be replaced with a slide-out draw. This would make it easier to get to the back of the fridge and would also mean the user would be less likely to forget that ‘thing’ at the back of the fridge as it was hidden by the cheese! As bottles of juice & milk, etc always take up more of the precious vertical fridge-door space, a series of vertical dispencers could be put in the door panel. These would be filled with your juice or milk and would more efficiently store the liquids. They would have to be removable to make them easy to refill or clean.
  • People accidentally leave the door open/the door does not shut properly. (Idea: if the fridge door is left open for more than 30 seconds/1 minute, an auidable alarm should sound to inform the owner that the fridge is still open. It could be annoying if it immediately sounds a loud noise after 1 mnute if the owner is still using it, so a gradually increasing alarm could be used or an alarm could sound only if the door is slightly open as opposed to fully open.)
  • Food keeps going off / running out. (Idea: Implement an RFID (or barcode) based inventory control system. This would keep track of the food in the fridge, along with its repsective use-by dates. This would only work on pre-purchased food in its original container. If food is decanted into another container or home-made food is stored in the fridge, RFID-programamble tuppaware containers could be used.) An RFID inventory could be used to automatically order food that is running out or going off. It would also allow the owner to view the contents of the fridge on a screen on the outside of the fridge door. This would save energy as you would have to open the fridge door as often.
  • Fridge should be easier to clean. (Idea: The shelves/draws should be removable. There should be a series of drainage channels in the sides/bottom of the fridge. These would collect any spillages or melted ice in the fridge and channel it to a removable drainage container. This would help reduce destroying food as ‘the milk accidentally leaked’ and make an integrated fridge/freezer easier to defrost.)
  • People want an un-interruptable power supply (UPS). This would help keep food fresh in a power cut, or if the house is on a coin-operated power supply/meter. (Ideas: A UPS could be very useful in tackeling those problems, however large PC UPS’s can usually only sustain a computer for 10 minutes so it is doubtful a fridge could be kept operating for a useful period of time without giving a substantial volume of the internal capacity over to a battery. It would be possible for the firdge to go into a ‘low power’ mode, keeping track of how long it had been without power. This would allow the owner to make a more educated decision on whether or not to throw away the contents of the fridge after a power cut. The fridge could have an integrated mobile phone circuit that could text the owner it its power supply is interrupted.)
  • Better fridge lighting. (Ideas: Have a greater selection of lights inside the fridge. Alternatively have the entire internal back panel of the firdge light up. An ultra-violet light could be installed in the fridge to light it up and would also prove to be an extremely effective anti-bacterial protection system.)

Blogger and bad HCI?

One thing I noticed when looking at the list of blog groups for those taking the HCI module this year, is the number of people who have got the address of their blog wrong.

If you sign up for a blog that uses the blogger software, you have to sign up on Blogger.com. So, logically, your blog would be hosted there right? Wrong. Blogs that you sign up for at Blogger.com are actually hosted on the Blogspot.com domain. This accounts for the wrong addresses given for a number of the blogs and is an understandable mistake. Perhaps Blogger should reconsider where users sign up for their blogs, or make it more clear where the site will be hosted.

Intels Vision of an Intelligent Fridge as part of a house network

Article from 1998 about what the hitec home of last year (2005) would be like. intresting, and certainly all the technology is possible. leads me to wonder why it has not happened. perhaps people do not like to be overly reliant on technology. perhaps it is just no one has decided to develop it as a product.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1998/09/15/intel_thinks_intelligent_fridge/

From reading this it gives some user stories, important factors to consider is that any technology must not artificially limit what the user can do. I also think users want items on demand without a wait, or they may prefer to go without.

From my personal experience i will rarely use my laptop (even if i have it on me) for a quick piece of information as it takes so long to boot it up. However i will use my pda for such purposes even thougth it has a small screen and fiddly interface because it is quicker and therefore more practicle.

However it is clear we could go so far as to produce a complete network solution for every aspect of a users life. This is possible using current technology (althougth cost is a factor). However i feel that for the aspects of this project trying such i thing might be too wide rangeing.

Maybe the problem with the view of the then future, it requires at lot of investment in technology and different pieces of technology within that. maybe users are only prepared to buy if they see a definite benefit from one product, and they would want such a system to be proven before investing. Who would want to invest £1000’s in a network the’re not even sure they’d use.
let me know any comments on what you think – Al

Tech Banzai – Expensive Ovens, Cheap Meals

Tech Banzai – Expensive Ovens, Cheap Meals

I’m not sure what use an internet controllable oven would be, though the idea of being able to see inside your fridge (rather than oven as jokingly mentioned at the end of the entry) while not in your house could be useful if you intend to pop to the shops after work or lectures and have internet access. Or at least have some link from the fridge to a mobile device that could provide you with a shopping list when you’re at the supermarket.

Of course, this only works if you’re not the kind of person who leaves their shopping lists/mobiles at home by mistake when going shopping.

Initial questionnaire

We conducted an initial survey to see what people thought about the idea of an intelligent fridge and what kind of features they would like to see in it.

So far, the main complaints that those who responded to the questionnaire had were that their fridge was not big enough (or had space for a certain shape of product) and that their food tended to freeze. These two points can sometimes be related – if the fridge is overstocked with food, items can freeze because there is not enough empty space to allow cold air in the fridge to circulate. Another complaint was that it was sometimes difficult to tell what was in the fridge – especially a problem for very full fridges, and things that were forgotten about because they were not easy to see often went “off”.

More on this questionnaire later.

Tangible interface for home entertainment systems

Towards a Playful User Interface for Home Entertainment Systems

This would be useful for people like my dad who has trouble reading the small print in tv guides and the tiny labels on remote control buttons and as it seems to be fairly intuitive to use, if my parents did have something like this for their tv, especially if it could pick up the channel the vcr plays on, there would be fewer phone calls asking me “how do I get the video to work?”.

Another interesting point, considering Monday’s lecture on questionnaires, was the various questionnaires used in the testing of the interface and the answers given to the questions.

Scenarios

Student house – Student takes other persons milk out of the fridge. Audible message warns that its not their milk, also tells the milks owner that the other person took their milk.

Ordering – Person takes juice out of the fridge, pours some and puts the juice back. The fridge keeps track of what is removed using RFID tags and keeps track of consumption by monitoring its weight. When the juice is running out, the fridge adds juice to the shopping list.

Cooking – Parent comes home from work. The fridge will present them with a choice of meals based on what is in the fridge in order of cooking time.

Special Occasions – For a Christmas meal, the fridge will present a range of choices. The owner selects a choice, the fridge orders the food. When required, the fridge will then show the user how to prepare and cook the food. Can be presented as a video, or just audio if the cook does not want to keep looking at the fridge.

Safety – If their is a food safety scare, the fridge will update this information off the internet and inform the household that the dangerous food should be thrown out.

Ordering – When ordering the weekly shop, the fridge presents you with current offers that you may be interested in based on your previous orders.