Have your luggage got lost at the airport? Did it happen to you that something went missing from your suitcase? You are not alone… I guess that the concept of ‘location-enabled’ suitcases is nothing new but there was no implementation worth looking at… until now.
Airbus decided to get serious about it, partnered with T-Mobiel and Rimowa (luggage producer) and packed a suitcase with GPS and RFID sensors together with GSM module in order to create ‘Bag2Go’, the first bag in the world that will sync up with your smartphone and tell exactly what happened with you bag. Pretty cool. It will also feature a built-in scale mounted in the handle to provide information on luggage weight.
The consortium claims that Bag2Go will not be much more expensive than a regular model (up-to 20% more, probably plus GSM carrier charges) but don’t expect much. It is still a prototype and we don’t know whether it will be actually available to buy for the mass market. The other possibility is renting. Airbus chief innovation officer Yann Barbaux said:
There are companies which already do this for maybe €25. We think with this system could be done for €8, and it would still be profitable.
I like this idea a lot. It is improving safety of your luggage and reassuring you that your bag is still coming while you’re the last one waiting in the luggage claim (or does it only happens to me?). I don’t know if you can do anything when you learn that your suitcase is on the other side of the world but at least you will know that. I hope that the project and other similar will be finally completed and released to the general public.
source: Antyweb
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Stereotypes are oversimplifications of people groups widely circulated in certain societies. We all have them about others, others have them about us. We can fight with them but sometimes the best way is to simply laugh at them. Bulgarian designer Yanko Tsvetkov decided to take this approach and created Stereotype Maps project.
Tsvetkov was initially inspired by the 2009 political crisis in Europe, as grim as it may have been. Rather than focusing on the negative, he had the idea to replace names of countries on a map with funny phrases that described how they handled the crisis. He posted it to Flickr and the image quickly went viral in Europe. Up-to now he created over 40 different maps.
Check some of them below and all of them at Yanko’s website. How do you see other countries?
