Category: Technology

Do you, ever in your life, need to check the schedule of the next movie, train, ferry, or bus ? How many times do you need to check it, in a day ? Is that easy to “check” ?

I do it a lot and found it a very inconvenient task. You know, first you need to take out your PDA, notepad or wallet, find the schedule table (be it a spreadsheet file in your PDA, or a piece of paper). Then check your watch, tell the time and check against the schedule table. You’d probably need to check multiple times as well since you’d misread the schedule easily. Why can’t we have a simpler system ?

Let me introduce My Timetable Checker (version 1.0) :

1. Dial a phone number, or surf to a web page, from your mobile phone / PDA
2. Select the item (ferry / bus to certain destination, a movie’s name etc.) you want to check the next schedule
3. The system will check the time of your mobile phone, perform a search , compare your phone’s time against the schedule table and then tell you (by replaying a voice record or just showing you the information) the next closest schedule.

Isn’t it simple ?

And My Timetable Checker (version 2.0) :

1. As long as you preset where is your ferry pier or where is your preferred cinema etc.
2. The system will check your location, based on the GPS system in your PDA, or cell stations around your mobile phone.
3. The system will then warn you that you are not going to make it because you’re too far away from the ferry pier, bus terminal, cinema etc. and suggest other schedule.

Isn’t it even better ?

Who’s gonna do it ? Let me call this great system – Personal Information Search System (P.I.S.S.).

There are now many “Smart Elevator System” installed for new commercial buildings in town. Here’s how it works:

• Let’s say you have 4 elevator cars in the building lobby;
• Numeric pads are installed in common areas where elevator passengers wait. Passengers enter their destination floor on the touch screen.
• The requests are processed, and a message is displayed informing users to ride one of the four cars.
• And in the cars, there are no floor buttons (!).

In a way it works like magic – because it groups passengers to different cars to minimize travel time.

So, is it a good system ? I think it depends on who you are … I mean if you work in that building, this design is pretty good.

But what if you work for DHL, UPS or Fedex ? In other words, you are a courier and need to deliver packages to say 3/F, 11/F, 21/F etc. etc. ? There are no buttons in the elevator cars, you know 😎 So, you have to press “3” in the lobby numeric pad, get into a car, go to that floor, deliver the package; then go back to lobby and press “11” in the numeric pad, get into yet another car. etc. etc. etc.

Lesson Learnt: It’s good for you, but may not be good for others.