Final Post

I am creating an app called South Campus Congestion—where GPS’s will be installed on all busses. The app will generate the best times for students to take the bus to and from campus to avoid congestion. Every time a student takes the bus, they will essentially “check in” thus alerting other students when a bus is at capacity.

Throughout the semester, I have learned a lot goes in to actually developing an app, knowledge that expands outside of this course. One of the most important things I learned was the how computer codes are in binary. Although this seems like the hardest part of developing an application, the techniques we went over in class to learn how to use binary was beneficial.

I also learned the importance of Twitter when marketing a product like mine. Although I used Twitter prior to this class to communicate with people, it is also a way to see what people are saying about you or your product. Twitter would help my South Campus Congestion app in terms of marketing; the word simply spreads faster over this network. Through Microsoft Excel, my idea had room to develop in terms of tracking users. I would be able to develop a spread to keep track of how many people use the app daily. Knowing Excel is important because it shortens many of your tasks that you will otherwise have to do manually. It speeds up the process of computing data.

Outside of marketing an idea, security is very important. I did not realize how vulnerable many internet users are to having their information stolen, or worst their identity. For my application, it is restricted to Syracuse university personnel, but that can actually make them more vulnerable to identity theft. I say this because in order to access the application you have to have an SU id and a password. Since we learned in class that the most identity theft prone people are college students, because they do not frequently check their credit reports. If the application was hacked, then hackers have access not only to the South Campus Congestion application but student’s Myslice, email blackboard etc. This is worrisome to me because it is a plausible scenario.

To avoid security threats I researched other schools that have similar applications available to students and viewed the precautions they took when it came to technology. Many of the campuses like Stanford just make their application for public use. If I had to alter one thing about my application it would be making it a public application. I would make it public because many people outside of the SU campus access these bus line, like the Connective Corridor.  

To make my plan reality, I need to have a concrete idea of what I am producing.

1.     GPS installed on all buses

2.     Develop the Application for all Markets (Android and Apple)

3.     Install Security tactics

4.     Test effectiveness