Week 8

As you can see, the Body Temperature Suit is designed to maintain constant temperature between the inside and outside of the body to allow people to perform sports/exercise for a long period of time. While the BTS monitors the surrounding temperature, it instinctively changes the surrounding temperature to a comfortable atmosphere when it feels needed to balance the temperature of the body. This will allow continual activity without feeling weakness, lightheaded, or nausea.

Throughout the past eight weeks, I have learned a lot about starting my own company. It has made me recognize areas that I would not have thought about before, including many of the technological aspects. While considering the technical aspect of the BTS itself is important, it also made me realize what I need to think about in terms of advertisement and the background logistics. Using websites as a form of marketing would be significant while thinking about the type of operating systems that are best suitable for my employees is important as well. Overall, starting this BTS was not as simple as I originally thought with all of these other factors to think about.

            This blogging experience was pretty interesting considering that I have never used one before. I thought this was an effective way of starting an entrepreneurial idea because I got some feedback from people about where I can improve. They also brought up views that I would not have thought of. However, I think that by starting off with a blog is risky since it opens up the idea to the public. It gives anyone access to steal the idea and start it before the originator if they had all the appropriate resources. Yet, I think utilizing my online resources will help me in the long run as long as I am smart about it.

Comments on Peers:

Erin Rose

http://erinarose.blogspot.com/2011/10/week-4-input-output.html?showComment=1320001433764#c7163098066352417735

Alex Rajaniemi

http://alexrajaniemi.blogspot.com/2011/09/privacy-and-security-on-mobilemed.html?showComment=1320008137721#c8651494220782249226

Jacob Higgins

http://thehigginshub.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-1-product-introduction.html?showComment=1320009758110#c5557538520531850840

Week 7

            Working in a large company that deals with technology and using the Internet requires the understanding of packets and protocols. Essentially, the knowledge of both of these terms will be important for the communication through networks, since the BTS will be using it as a form of communication with consumers.  Communication through networks work similarly to mailing a letter through the post office. It is broken up into pieces called packets that are then reassembled at the destination. Each of these pieces of a packet become vital parts of getting the message across, like the to and from address of a letter.

 To know where the information needs to be sent on a network, IP addresses are used in every node. This is like the specific home addresses that each person has. However, we would not refer to our website as a string of numbers in IP addresses. Rather, we would assign domain names to those IP address so that it will be easier for customers to remember us. In order for us to be easily recognized and not confused with other companies, we would need to make sure that our domain name is the only one that pops up when searched in a search engine. Because this would be an expensive investment, we would need to work on this throughout a span on time since it would take time for the BTS to grow in society.  

            Moreover, the BTS would be one of several billion websites out there on the Internet. However, to start, we would need to understand how we can form this website. We will need to understand the several types of rules of communications, otherwise known as protocols. The most commonly used is the web protocol (http). I believe this would be where the BTS website would begin with in terms of types of protocols. This hypertext transfer protocol is a 4-step process between client and web servers. Furthermore, we would use other protocols, such as Internet Message Access Protocol and Simple Mail Transfer Protocols to communication with our customers to know what type of BTS they want or would be appropriate for them.  When it comes to the checkout area, we would need to enforce a safety aspect like using https so ensure customers that their personal information will be secure.

            Overall, this would become another department in the BTS company so that we will have someone always managing the website. Part of this department would entail the knowledge of all of the listed items. 

Week 6

            As I have mentioned in the past blog, selecting the proper type of computer is important for a company. Along with that selection process, companies have to choose the right type of operating system since it manages many aspects of a computer, including CPU, process, memory, file system, device, and user. Different types of Operating System comprises of Multi-user versus Single-user or Multi-tasking versus Single-tasking.

            For companies like the BTS, we understand the different types of operating systems by the popular names, like Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Unix, and Linux. Of course, we need to take into consideration the price and what each Operating System is most known for as well. While Windows is a more user-friendly system due to the graphical user interface, Unix and Linux is more command line based, which servers often use because it is an open source that can be copied, modified, and redistributed without paying fees. However, in the case of this company, user-friendly systems would be more appropriate for the BTS working environment since many people may not be familiar with command lines.

            In addition to understanding Operating Systems, the BTS company would need employees who are familiar with a building website. Part of this job would involve understand components like hexadecimal color. In order for technicians to build the website, they need to understand how to display colors on the website for visual appeal and to offer different color selections of the BTS. These employees would be dealing a lot with graphic interface so with that in mind, would you say that selecting a Windows Operating System be the best fit for the BTS Company? I would say so.

Week 5

Many people and companies are exposing themselves into the blogging world of technology.  They use this form of technology as another way to grab attention. For many companies, they have a tab for blogging under their website to give customers the inside scoop. Take Extreme Endurance for example, which is a company that produces products to improve athletic performance. (http://xendurance.com/blog/)

On their website, they include different details about the company, including the products, the science behind it, and the athletes involved. However, one component that allows customers to feel extra connected is through the blog that is set up by their athletic admins. Through this page, the athletes are able to share their experiences in Ironman, marathons, etc. Particularly, athlete Tam did a blog on her first Ironman and explained where she ran into troubles, including with her equipment and physical abilities. It also shared photos and personal insights.

Although this blog is aimed more towards personal experiences over the actual product, I think having this option for customers will really help them relate to whether or not the product will be suitable for them. The blog puts this in real perspective rather than just information that customer’s may be skeptical about. This blog also provides a lot of supporting evidence and elaborate details for customers since they want them to believe their stories are real and not just made up. This way it makes them very creditable and reliable.

In general, this is a great perspective for a new starting company idea like myself because it allows me to know see it from the customers side – what I would want to see from a reliable company. This blog that Extreme Endurance sets up a relatable and trustworthy connection with their customers, which is what I will want to be looking for. 

Week 4

Technology today has evolved tremendously since it was first discovered. We have gone from manually taking record of inventory to RFID technology and traditional home landlines to cell phones that now serve as multiple functions.  Both RFID technology and the new Google wallet will be beneficial for many corporations out there, including the BTS.

Radio Frequency Identification will be a pretty effective way of replacing barcodes because of its ability to count inventor quickly and more accurately. That way if we had a large batch of the BTS, we would not need to spend all our time and effort counting and scanning each suite. Moreover, RFID is capable of storing data, in comparison to a barcode that only works as a meaningless code. Since temperature is an important factor to this suite, using the RFID in the same concept as The Pill that is used in sports, this will allow us to monitor the athlete’s temperature. A downfall to following the concept of The Pill is the price of the entire recorder and monitoring system. While if I stick with using Passive RFID tags, it would be more cost efficient, Active RFID tags would be more useful in this instance. Choices would need to be compromised and decided upon when considering the RFID.

The Google wallet would also be a good attribute to invest on because I believe many customers would be into this technology since it is convenient and secure. In order to accommodate the customers, I would need to follow up with this technology and get the appropriate transaction machines and work with the appropriate banks that accept this. But whether I am investing in the RFID or the Google wallet, technology will continue to grow and we will continue to follow these trends as a company aiming for success. 

Week 3

For any business, having good computers will be very important. In order to have a successfully well-known business, we would create an online website for customers to order from. Due to this aspect of the company, we would need a high processor speed so that orders can be taken quickly and carried out efficiently. The control unit of the processor will be important for coordinating any operations on the computer while the arithmetic logic unit of the processor will be important for performing calculations involved with the ordering process. If either of these procedures ran slowly, then we would have poor customer service, which could result in low profits. Another significant feature we would need to consider is the memory space or RAM. In order to run an effective website and run operative number-intensive applications for online or in store purchases, we would need a large amount of RAM.

In addition to these important items, we would need dependable motherboards, graphic cards, hard drives, and other parts of a computer to assure that it will not crash in the middle of any operations. If a segment of a computer was to malfunction and needed a computer replacement, we would need to properly dispose of the hard drives so that no information of our company or the customers’ is leaked out.  As a company’s responsibility, we would need to advise employees that deleting files do not permanently rid data so we need to be careful with handling private information and respect the security of the customer’s personal information.

Since the Body Temperature Suit will require personal information about each individual customer, it will be essential that we ask for the appropriate information. We will need to understand and differentiate what information is needed and what is not. Body size and type will be required to match the appropriate suit for the customer’s body because the BTS needs to be well fitted and work properly with an individual’s body. If the order were made online, we would need to obtain a billing as well as a shipping address. However, we will not need information like date of birth or social security. For online payments, we would ask for the credit card name, number, expiration date, authorization code, and area code of the card. Each of these pieces will be important for carrying out the transaction. Therefore, we will need to provide proper computers for employees, but employees will also need to know how to properly use the computers provided. 

Week 2

Technology today has helped make life for human beings a lot easier, especially in the process of documenting information. Programs, such as Microsoft Excel became very helpful to many fields, including the start up of a new product.

Microsoft Excel will come in handy when trying to document information from the test trials I run for the Body Temperature Suite (BTS). Because this product relies heavily on temperature, Excel would help neatly record and organize all the body temperatures of people and then find an average of these temperatures. The average will allow us to know what is a proper condition to set for the BTS that will help enhance and prolong performance. I can also use Excel to arrange these temperatures in a particular order without having to individually sort them. Options like conditional formatting allows rules to be set for cell formatting as well. For example, for temperature below a certain degree would be set to one color; for temperature over a certain degree would be set to be another color. This helps easily recognize two categories, below average and above average.

As a new product, keeping track of all financial expenses as well as annual profit would be very important. The functions for excel to take information and transform it into graphs and charts will be very helpful for us to visually see the increase or decrease in sales profits. In addition, the option of pivot tables and graphs enables us to efficiently summarize and analyze large amounts of data, including the different temperatures and the financial expenditures in order to create this product.

Overall, Microsoft Excel will help in the start up of this product as well as a projected continual success for the BTS. As it will be used for data organization about the suite, it will be significant for economic purposes too.