IT360 Show April 30 - May 2, 2007

[John Van Ostrand]

On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 18:43 -0500, Colin McGregor wrote:
> I'll get back to you on that, There are folks involved
> in the group who work for RedHat, and I would like a
> word with them first...

No problem, I thought I would offer.


> Well, several years ago I did an LCD based name badge
> for a science fiction convention using a BASIC Stamp
> (using an earlier version of this):
> 
>   www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27100
> 
> and a 16 character x 1 line display sort of along the
> lines of what you see here:
> 
>   www.411techsystems.com/html/lcd_outlet.html
> 
> I put the who thing in a blue plastic project box,
> programmed it in BASIC (I could get messages of up to
> about 170 characters long, which wasn't bad given how
> (very) little memory the BASIC stamp had), and I could
> run it all for about 1 day off a 9V battery...

Here is what I meant, http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7c54/,
US$29. I've seen ones like these in various places.

> So, that sort of guerrilla marketting can be done, but
> ... Other that hauling my original LCD badge out of
> retirement, and seeing if I can pull together enough
> parts for another badge from bits currently kicking
> around home, I don't see a cost effective case for
> smart badges here... Would be a fun project to revisit
> though :-) . Would also be interesting to find out if
> there are other cheaper solutions that would work
> (when I did my LCD badge, the BASIC Stamp was about
> the cheapest, smallest pre-assembled controller I
> could get my hands on...).
> 
> Still other guerrilla tactics are worth looking into,
> for example I remember the one science fiction
> convention were the people promoting an upcomming
> convention were all wearing vests made from the same
> cotton print fabric, so if you saw said vest you knew
> you were talking to someone very involved with said
> convention ... Some sort of ... "gender agnostic" ...
> clothing item might be an idea (I'm not a T-Shirt fan,
> and ties are likely to be ... problematic), still...

Good comments.

--
John Van Ostrand
         Net Direct Inc.
 
CTO, co-CEO
564 Weber St. N. Unit 12
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Linux Solutions / IBM
Hardware
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