University Magazine Issue 1

TECHNOLOGY
Smart Gadgets
Innovations in Information Technology
BY JOHNSON KINYUA
The computing discipline has always been a very exciting
and rapidly developing technological field, and phenomenal
developments in the field continue to take place. These developments
have been translated into products and services in the
real world that have made work more efficient, decreased the
need to travel, reduced costs, improved the quality of life, improved
manufacturing processes, created smart offices, given
birth to many smart gadgets and increased connectivity. In
the near future we shall have all devices at home and in the
office and connect to the Internet, the so-called “Internet of
Things”. The consequence of all these developments has been
a proliferation of technology buzzwords, the creation of inno-
vative smart gadgets and connectivity anytime and anywhere
as discussed in the following sections. There are many new
technology buzzwords that have emerged and some common
buzzwords include iPhone, cyberbullying, googling, hacker,
spyware, botnet, botnet Herder, cloud computing, blog, wiki,
cyber-terrorism and e-learning.
Innovations in information technology have resulted in the
development of many smart gadgets which can be found almost
everywhere: at home, in the office, in businesses, in cars,
and even on planes and ships.
THE TRAKDOT
The Trakdot knows which airport is holding
your misplaced luggage. It is a distressingly
common scenario: you have successfully
landed at your port of call but your luggage
cannot be found because it ended up somewhere
else. Trakdot is a tracking device that aims to make the
stress more bearable by knowing where your luggage ended
up. The black and orange, GSM-equipped gadget is slightly
larger than a deck of playing cards and powered by AA batteries.
It is programmed to power down once the airplane it is
on reaches certain speeds, but once on the ground, users can
check their bags’ location via an app, text message or email.
BONE CONDUCTION HEADPHONES
Panasonic bone-conduction TV headphones
connect to a TV via the Bluetooth wireless
standard and attach to your head like a normal set of
headphones. But instead of using your ears, the headphones
work like hearing aids by transmitting sound waves through
your skull.
YOUM
The bendable ‘Youm’ OLED display of
Samsung uses thin plastic instead of glass,
thereby making it unbreakable.
GOOGLE GLASS
Google Glass is a real-time GPS, a video camera, and Internet
browser. The unit is perched on the bridge of the user’s nose
like eyeglasses. The user just says “OK, Glass” or gestures with
hands and Google Glass responds instantly, showing the results
in a small display that floats just above the right eye.
Google Glass isn’t
even on the market
yet, but smart glasses
like Google Glass are
already expected to
bring major changes
to the workplace.
Smart glasses have the
potential to improve
workplace efficiency
in numerous industries.
For example
smart glasses in field services will bring about big savings from
diagnosing and fixing problems more quickly and without
needing to bring additional experts to remote sites. If used in
manufacturing and other heavy industries, the glasses could
be used for tasks like on-the-job training or assisting with
repairs. The impact on industries like retail and healthcare is
also expected to be significant. Those industries would use the
smart glasses mostly for looking up information, for example
searching the inventory.
46 University Magazine, VIU Spring 2014