Final Posting - But not the end for FoodOn...?

So over the past 8 weeks I have spent my time talking about my new innovation in food technology. It started as a small app on your phone to order food from a restaurant before you got there so that it would be ready when you arrived and by the end of this 8 week period, it has manifested into a hub of communication between a consumer and his food with outlets to a computer-oriented ordering system and a caloric counter/tracker as well as featuring a restaurant suggestion algorithmic process. This project has seriously ballooned in the past weeks but the idea is still the same. It connects you to your food in an extremely 21st century way so that you can, “Eat More, Wait Less”. It even started without a name, much less the slogan you saw before. But this project, this entrepreneurial idea has been christened a name, that of which is FoodOn.
This project has led me to expand my imagination within the outer reaches of the 21st century movements in technology to boundaries that I have never thought of before. It is truly a magnificent implementation of both technology and creativity in creating something that does not exist now and possibly could make the world a much better place. In conclusion, this project will remain within my portfolio because perhaps one day, I will see the advent of FoodOn. But for now, it has been my pleasure in developing this idea for future innovation in food technology.

Comments:
1. Corinne Sartori http://theteacart.blogspot.com/2011/10/week-eight-summary-post.html?showComment=1320016638082#c2024292205311236258

2. Jackie Badger http://jackiebadger.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-7-networking.html?showComment=1320017231894#c3836112324283345257

3. Yebin Choi http://ychoi17.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-1-social-media.html?showComment=1320022433684#c3683979869798361128

Week 7 - FoodOn Goes Web-Based (O/S,Networking)

    This week marks the last developmental blog post before the wrap blog post for next week. That means that I should tie up all loose ends with my FoodOn app. Last week I mentioned briefly about an online aspect that could trailer on along with the app itself.
    Basically what this online experience would be is a way for people who don’t have the mobile capabilities of a smartphone to still enjoy the functionalities of the FoodOn app. What the website will first do is verify your identity with an online id username that is tied to your phone number which will allow restaurants to at least contact you for reservation and cancellation purposes and once you give our password that is also tied to your phone number, you can then browse the website which will allow you to do all the same things that you can do with the mobile app. You would be able to track your caloric progress, you would be able to view recommendations based on your previous selections. And of course, you would be able to access a restaurants menu through the website.
    This app ties in with last weeks lecture because it will be able to work on several Operating Systems. Because it is a web/mobile application, it will be available to any operating system that can access a flash-enabled website. The consumer’s info will also be safe because of the SSL protocol that would be implemented into the website so the restaurant/consumer relationship would be kept between the consumer and the provider.
    Overall, this app would be accessible on any Operating System including both of the major mobile operating systems, Android and Apple’s iOS. This will allow maximum implementation and proliferation of this software allowing the maximum amount of people who access the internet and use their phones to be exposed to this application. As a result, I hope for the overwhelming success of FoodOn.

Week 6 - Marketing Considered (Color Schemes for Print/Web)

    Last week I took a break from the FoodOn app to take a look at one of the most widely viewed technology-related blogs out there on the web, Wired. This break has allowed me to consider several implications of the app to better market it for our world today.
    First I considered what the app really was. It was in essence, a food ordering app with many fixings and features that make it different from the other possible services out there today. I realized that this was revolutionary because in our day, we have access to advanced technology 24/7. The way that we are connected transcends normal boundaries due to the worldwide web that has become ubiquitous in our culture. Therefore, the customer base is already established. The next way to figure out how to get this product widely used by the consumer base, is marketing.
    Marketing plays an overwhelming role in the consideration for any product because it is the advertising that will get people to use the product and then ultimately trust the product. It is no good if a product is touted to be great but no one uses it because there have been some people who have tried it and found it to fail. This will cause an uproar of distrust that will destroy an up and coming service such as FoodOn. Therefore, what I now must consider is how to market it to the people itself.
    Last week we talked about color in the computer world and in the print world which can be interrelated to the idea of marketing because marketing for this kind of product will have to be considered online as well as in print.
    Online, what I will get into more depth next blog post, is possibly having in addition to the main app, the same services but on a website as well that you can access with your phone number and password that will present you with the same options and features as the app does for your phone. In this way, people without smart phones or people who are just at home on the computer who find accessing a web page is more suitable, then this option will ensure that those customers are not lost.
    But for now, if we must consider the color scheme for the online adverts, then the colors must be in RGB so that it can be properly viewed online. These colors, known as additive colors serve as the basis for web based images. For print, the adverts must be printed in CKMY so that the web-based images will match the print adverts. If our color scheme is not consistent throughout our advertising campaigns, people will lose faith in our service and in the early stages of marketing, consumer trust is essential. The print based CKMY color adverts will most likely be featured in magazines, newspapers as well as the menus of the restaurants themselves. Therefore, our service will be known as a trustable companion to the restaurant themselves.
    All in all, the advertising campaigns will have to be extensive. But I believe that because the service is so consumer intuitive, word of mouth will hopefully play a large role in spreading the news on FoodOn.

Week 5 - Blog Review: Wired's Gadget Lab

So through out this blogging experience I have been through actually not so much. I’m not much of a blogger so my blogs are not wildly colorful or busy and the content is pure. No ads, no hyperlinks, and nothing but my ideas. Today, it will be different. Today I will talk about someone else other than myself this being another blog.
    I don’t really get out much into the blogging world and actually when i was sifting through this one, I didn’t even know it was an actual blog. It was so well written, with various contributors that I thought it was a professional forum, which it is in a sense. This is most likely due to the fact that I believe that all blogs are written by preteen girls who simply need a place to dump their irrational pleas of understanding. However, this was far from it.
    Gadget Lab, from the popular tech site/magazine Wired, is a supreme blog that constantly posts stories about the latest tech trends, and the cutting edge things that are happening in our world. This includes updates on the new iPhone, any new tech products such as the Roku products that are set for release, and any news as well concerned with the gadget and tech world which is so quickly developing will be found on here. Gadget Lab is managed by a host of people to make sure that the blog posts are of top-notch quality and with hundreds of thousands of readers weekly, this is not a surprise.
    Their latest post is of the iPhone 4S and how the iOS5 is indeed an amazing economic breakthrough in terms of financial success. However, pure profit is just the beginning. The posts goes on to explain how the iPhone 4S is not a disappointment, but a breakthrough in preparation for the iPhone 5 because of its revolutionary voice control features and its breakneck speeds allowing users to do more and wait less.
    So all in all, venturing out into the blog world wasn’t too bad. I found things from other people I never would have so quickly found out about and I also found out not all blogs are written by preteen girls. So if you have the time, and if you would like to find out whats hot and whats happening in the tech world check out Wired’s Gadget Lab. Or you just might miss out.
    Link: http://http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab

Week 4 - Issues Troubleshooting (Input/Output)

On my first blog post, introducing the FoodOn app in its makings, I received a comment that opened up some really interesting questions that I didn’t even realize. The comment was:
    “Would customers pay for the food and the service up front or when they got there? You might want to have the customer put down some sort of deposit otherwise the restaurants might be scared that the customer might not show up. It would definitely be useful if a person was in a rush. You could integrate the app with other systems out there like Yelp and open table to bring in customer reviews of different locations so that customers can more easily choose the best place for the meal.”
    So this comment brings in several topics of interest:
1. Pay system
2. Customer review site integration
    I have some possible answers to these questions that were brought up. For the pay system, it is reasonable to wonder how a restaurant would react to a customer that reserved and didn’t show up. After all, food prepared and wasted would be a disaster to the restaurant. Therefore, a credit card integration option would be offered however, for cash only transactions, there should be a warning system. If you order food and don’t pick it up, the restaurant will mark you and you will have one strike left. If you order form the restaurant twice and not go in the restaurant, you will be banned by phone number to use FoodOn for that restaurant. However, to make unforeseeable circumstances an option, there will be an option to cancel up to 20 minutes give or take depending on the restaurant your order.
    Also, I believe the customer review site integration system could be extremely well implemented because the review is already uploaded into another system. It would be very useful to our databases if we merged data.
    Last week’s lecture was input/output and this is extremely applicable to my idea because my idea represents the pinnacle of input and output technology. Technology already implemented by Google such as GOOG-411 and Google Voice can be well integrated into the FoodOn app so that people could simply tell their smart phones what they feel like eating. Then from there on, the app would search and tell them the possible choice they could be eating without them even having to look at their phone. This would be very useful for people who are already driving who cannot use their phone as they drive. Google Wallet NFC (Near-Field Communication) technology can also be implemented, because the cost of the meal would already be uploaded to the phone and all the customer would have to do is simply swipe their phone on their way out of the restaurant and they would be good to go.

Week 3 - Calorie Counting (Hardware/Computer Forensics)

    This week, I will develop on an aforementioned feature for FoodOn that will be implemented upon its release. It is a feature for the healthy-minded nation that our customers will be glad to know exists. This feature is a calorie counter that will be added as an additional tab in the app that will measure the amount of calories consumed over a standardized period of time. This is also made possible by the fact that all the restaurants that sign up with the service will be required to list all of the dishes with the calories as well as the nutritional information such as protein, fat, vitamin content, etc. Calorie meters will bring more people to use FoodOn because most restaurants today do not offer this information and therefore consumers will want to come to restaurants that sign up with FoodOn because of this information that is made available to them. As a result, everyone wins.
    Last week, the lecture was on computer hardware and computer forensics. My app will utilize information presented in both of the lectures because to support the apps functionality, very powerful hardware will be necessary to sync up all of the mobile devices. Several computers will have to be utilized, but most likely, the servers themselves will have to be very powerful. Cloud computing will be utilized because the power of the internet is great, but to deliver all of the information, memory of the servers will have to be vast, as well as the processor speeds which will probably exceed several gigahertz.
    On the other side, computer security will be a problem as well. The information that FoodOn offers on the nutritional info is very powerful and rival corporations could utilize it to hurt the reputations of other restaurants and companies. Therefore powerful anti-hacking measures will have to be taken. All this will be taken into account when the app is started up and the bigger restaurant chains sign up with the FoodOn service.

Week 2 - Excel

    The revolution in eating has begun. My idea, where we you order food from your phone before you even get to the restaurant has ballooned. FoodOn, will be the new name for the application for the smartphones of the world and will also include an algorithm similar to Genius for Apple that will allow users to automatically find selections they like. This selection process will range from dishes within the menu itself of the restaurant you have already selected to go to, to the choosing of the actual restaurant itself. The algorithm will process your eating habits over a trial period of perhaps a month to give you the best possible results of places that you might actually enjoy going to.
    The choosing of the possible dishes in the restaurant can be facilitated through this algorithm because it can monitor your dish choosing habits form your previous restaurant visits and therefore give you an accurate portrayal of what you might like even if you have never visited the restaurant before. This of course requires you to make previous selections over an extended period of time to ensure accuracy and maximum satisfaction and it also requires the restaurant to input every major ingredient used in a certain dish so the algorithm can “guess” what you might like to eat. This is different from the Genius feature in Apple because most of the time, I believe that the application is too rash and bases its decisions too rapidly thus giving me possibilities I do not really end up taking seriously.
    This can all be tied back to the previous lecture of Excel because an Excel database might be what is used to log all of the eating choices that a customer or user of the application makes. It can also chart the ingredients that a user intakes so the algorithm that was stated earlier can process the possible selections much more easily and with more speed. Although i am not really sure on the more technical aspects of Excel, I am sure that some form of functions will be used to calculate the sheer amount of food that the consumer will intake as this will all go into the calculation of recommended menu items and eating venues. And if there will be much data being processed, perhaps with numbers such as calories a person consumes, pivot tables will most likely be used.
    All in all, a successful start, I see this application becoming a large-scale operation that if done right, will revolutionize the restaurant market.

Week 1 Post 1 - The Delicious Social Media

    My entrepreneurial idea is the creation of an application for all Droid/Apple phones that will enable a person to order food from any particular restaurant that has signed up with the application thus, having the food, table, and whatever other order he/she desires available right as they arrive at the restaurant. They can also utilize the application to order inside of the restaurant, thus eliminating the need for a concrete menu. Waiter, food preparation as well as nutritional info would be able to be found in seconds as long as the restaurant provides the information and the customer would be able to track how long the wait will take, and who is serving their food (Waiter Watch TM).
    This follows in accordance with last weeks lecture of social media as well as the lecture before that of the history of computing because the application will be a highly social application as well as being very environmentally friendly.
    People would be able to use this application for dates, social gatherings or just to catch a quick bite to eat and it will make all food eating experiences a much better time. Also, because the act of eating itself is a very social activity unless you are eating alone, already existing applications such as foursquare could be used with this application for the dissemination of information on networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. Integration into the already existing internet infrastructure would be quick and effortless. As well as being highly profitable to the restaurant that is being attended, because more people would be exposed to the restaurant and therefore, more people would go.
    The first lecture we had was on the history of computing and how rapidly technological advances come upon us. This application just shows much much we have advanced as we can order anything from anywhere (as long as the restaurant signs up) and have our food ready to eat right as we arrive. It uses a preexisting device so there is no need for other hardware, just software that is easily downloadable onto our phone and because as time passes the people without smartphones will soon be none, everyone would be able to have unlimited access to this marvelous app. Furthermore, it even helps the environment because paper menus are now, with the advent of this app, a thing of the past. Now that's green computing.
    Future things to focus on would be the inner workings of the app itself as well as figuring out a name for this app.