We carry handhelds so we don't
forget what we've got to do, but what happens when we forget our handheld? Six students from Canada's Simon Fraser
University don't have an answer, but they have developed the
latest in purse technology to help prevent the
aforementioned situation from occuring to the ladies. The Ladybag's function is fairly simple: an RFID scanner in the
bottom of the bag will display a LED-lit icon of whatever it is you didn't remember to embagify. (It'll also display
emoticons of how your bag thinks you're feeling, depending on how you're holding and handling it.) Of course, if you're
like us and frequently forget your bag when out and about, you'd do best to skip the Ladybag (or Manbag, as it were) and
make like us: find a keeper.
[Via
The Raw Feed]
posted Apr 24th 2006 12:32AM
Boy, good thing we have universities in North America that produce this sort of cutting edge thinking. Right when you thought your tax dollars were being wasted in subsidizing the educations of your neighbors' kids, we have Grade A breakthroughs like this that make it all worthwhile.
Hey, don't knock the bag, man.
---
I'd say finding a keeper works, but the LED's don't show up as well on my girlfriend (and for some reason, they would only show the >:( emoticon...)
and remember, these are Canadian tax dollars, so it's not that bad.
They look like a McDonald's pancake bag and Happy Meal box.
i guess someone forgot to put their heart into their bag.
Fuck you seamus.
The end result is not what really matters. It is the process of getting there that matters because they were given a problem to solve and the design processes aided them in understanding the human interactions involved.
I'm in the same program that those students are in and it really isn't as easy as it looks. We are taught to think and not create pretty designer things that have all these crazy functionalities and they don't work.
Congratualations to those six women for developing a great porfolio piece that is getting international recognition. The process is what will get them hired, not the bag.
I guess theses girls will get an "F" after teach' finds out it's plagerism.
Check out this way cooler project from MIT.
http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~nanda/design/electronics/byob/byob.html
Christian, you think it's plagerism because the purse lights up with LEDs in both? Try to read a little more closely pal.
from what i gather, the rfid is key. it can sense what is in your bag, and if you go to leave and it knows your cell phone isn't in it, then it will light up and let you know. pretty smart actually...when you need to have 10 things with you at all times, knowing you've got it all on your way out could be really cool.
I was one of the teams working alongside these women at SFU Surrey and while I'm horribly jealous that their project got more recognition than ours, they did work hard on it, and it is a different technology than the MIT one. Furthermore, we're taught to look for inspiration from other projects, and to improve on other people's ideas to further the design process. This bag took a lot of engineering and programming to make happen and went through an 8 month process to complete. All of us worked our asses off and this is one of the projects (mainly because its 6 women, who knew, women can do technology whoa!) that was recognized. So good for u SFU people! And ... as a side note, everyone pays for their own school around here so tax dollars are for the most part, moot. We also all put in hundreds of dollars into these projects out of our own pockets.
tmchow, hows bout' you give BYOB a read.
they've got radio tracking of objects and a voice module!!
Hey, I was in the same class as this team, and a personal friend of the members. Considering there are similarities in tons of other products and technologies out in the market already, I don't believe they plagiarized anything. They researched for months on other related projects, including the bYOB from MIT, and documented this information in their project process and also in their presentations from the beginning!
I wouldn't even say it's the same technology, they definitely have similarities, but it's about building ideas from existing ideas and improving or branching into other ideas, or even finding new uses/functions for existing things already. How often are you going to come up with an idea that's completely original anyway? Most likely there's probably someone else in the world who's already building something like it or thought of something like it before. It’s about how you present something and what you do with an idea that really counts!
Of course there would be similarities between this Ladybag prototype and other projects out there like bYOB, especially on the surface, but come one now…. you don’t have the whole story, you don’t know what process this team went through, and how could you possibly understand what any of these projects are about with such little information that you have. It’s all about the thought and design process behind this project. Sure, there are physical similarities, but considering that this team was given a problem and asked to try and find a solution within a certain amount of time, I congratulate them on how they approached it, and how they tried to apply the technology to some common product.
Also, another thing... they did pay for everything out of their own pockets to produce the bag (or borrowed equipment as well) and you should all keep in mind, it was just a PROTOTYPE to demonstrate the technology, not necessarily something meant to be the most aesthetically pleasing. Really, it’s not like they ever thought that people would be so interested in their prototype/idea of the Ladybag.
Honestly, considering that they’re all full time university students and have many other courses and projects to work on as well, all they were thinking at the time they were doing this project was that they wanted to make something fun, useful and related to them, and hopefully do well in the course. It’s not like they anticipated all this attention. You can’t really compare what they’ve produced to something produced by probably someone else who’s an expert that goes to MIT either. These girls worked as hard as they did with the limited amount of experience/knowledge that they had on electronics, and I think that was totally ambitious of them to try. They deserve the recognition that they are receiving!
I think it's a clever use of tagometric data - it's inventory control, just like big companies use. The trend from tools that are "corporate only" to ones that fit a personal need is well-established: websites, cell phones, routers, the list goes on...
Don't forget to bring a towel.