Week 8

This week began with hopes of finally testing my app with the beacons, once the batteries in the beacons were replaced and to gather more stories for the application’s content.

On Thursday night, my phone fell into a toilet. After about an hour in rice, I thought it was fine… until Friday afternoon when I went to interview Professor Pearson. She had some fantastic stories about older buildings on campus — buildings that have since been demolished and replaced. I recorded about 15 minutes worth of audio that I intended on saving and editing down later in the weekend. Instead, my phone froze and did not save any of the audio. I have rescheduled with Professor Pearson this Friday to redo those recordings. I have since purchased a new phone. Not too bad considering the antennae in my phone was already damaged, so I haven’t been able to use my GPS since August (I get lost very easily so this has been both an annoyance, and a character building situation for me).

On Saturday morning I took an X-Acto knife to the Estimote beacons, with intentions of replacing the batteries. Upon removing all of the batteries, I realized that the ones that were purchased to replace them were incorrect. At first, I thought that I could manipulate the battery placeholder to allow the smaller batteries to work, but alas, I could not.

On Sunday, I began reaching out to a list of TCNJ IMM alumni. I sent about 20 early alumni a message through LinkedIn or email, explaining my project and how I would like to include their stories. The one positive of this project so far, is that I have been making a great deal of connections, and collecting the content without a problem. 3 individuals have gotten back to me so far, and I plan on emailing the others who I have messaged on LinkedIn this week to follow up.

Today, Tuesday, I have decided that I will begin building a website to host all of the content I have been gathering. Considering the roadblocks I have been hitting, and my lack of experience in app development, I have chosen to go back to my roots. I feel that it will be a much more well developed project if I try and attempt it through web development, instead of application development.

As of right now, I am working through using image mapping, so the user can click on a region of the campus map and it will take them to a secondary page with audio files containing the stories I have been gathering.

I am currently attempting to create a clickable map utilizing image mapping through html.