Instead of coming up with a fictitious business scenario, I thought I would talk about a company I used to work for. Anybody who spends time in New York City knows about the taxi enhancement project that allows for passengers to pay with credit cards and watch TV. I am fortunate enough to say that I had the opportunity to work on that project. I will be taking this opportunity to explain how the technology in the enhancement project worked.
When a passenger enters a the cab, the first thing they will notice is a touch screen LCD monitor mounted in the divider. This acts as an BOTH and input and output device because it allow users to make selections as to what they want to read, hear and see (by touch), as well as seeing the results.
The map function on these screens ran on the Google map API. The map system shows where the cab is in the city, and allows passenger the ability to feel comfortable that they are taking the most direct root.
The system runs on a small computer placed on the drivers side of the divider. The software that we used was actually Microsoft Windows embedded. This allowed us a slim yet robust operating system where we could modify the services to work the way we wanted them to.
The computer itself was fairly unimpressive except for one special piece of hardware. The lifeblood of our system was the GPS/GSM module. The GPS section was used for location-based services like finding the car on a map, or tracking the cab from a remote source. The GSM section of the module was used to transmit data through a cellular network. This data included credit card numbers for transactions, video, audio and text for news updates.
Obviously there is a lot more to the taxi enhancement project, but that is actually a pretty good overview. If you are interested in hearing more, feel free to contact me.
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