Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: April 7, 2013

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REAL LIFE NEWS: CHECK IF YOUR PARCEL HAS BEEN DROPPED

by Hazed

We all buy stuff online nowadays. Not just books and DVDs, but electrical products such as phones, tablets and ebook readers. Trouble is, gadgets are a bit more fragile than books, and can get damaged in transit.

Whether it’s by accident, or due to delivery people mishandling packages (like this USPS worker hurling a package containing a fragile clock over a fence or this FedEx drivery tossing a computer monitor over a fence) you have no way of knowing whether your eagerly-awaited gadget is going to work without opening it up and trying it out. Trouble is, by that time, the delivery person is long gone taking your signature with him/her/it!

But there may be a solution, in the form of a new way to keep track on what happens to packages. It’s called DropTag and it’s been developed by Cambridge Consultants. It’s a sticky radio tag that gets attached to the parcel. Using a battery, a Bluetooth transmitter, an acceleromater and a memory chip, it logs any g forces it experiences. When you receive a parcel you can query the DropTag using an app on your smartphone and check whether it’s been thrown around – all before you sign for it.

Ingenious!

Source: http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/news/pr/release/116/en

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