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Team:Paris/Tool introduction
From 2009.igem.org
Tool : iPhone Protocols Managements
this year, we decided to try a tool project. We though about some nice applications and the iPhone idear became quite interesting. Why ? Why, using an iPhone for a biology tool ?
In fact we noticed that a lot of people have an iPhone, and use some applications on it (mostly gadgets), but just take a look on this phone... just wondering if it still a "phone" : 16 to 32 Go hard drive flash / 600MHz CPU / 256Mo Ram / multi-touch display / accelerometer / light sensor / voice record / wifi / bluetooth etc etc... sounds more like a computer to us. And all of this, for playing Dark Vador with the Light Saber sound apps (i like it anyway :) ).
We discuss about the interest of having a small computer in the lab, is it useful? What do we need when we go to the lab? First of, we need to have some physical support for our protocols, the way to keep in mind some changes during the lab work and make some last time calculations. We also need sometimes digital supports like USB storage for some machines, or digital pictures (more and more techniques use a computer for initiate the manipulation, and analyze them like RT-Q-PCR, DNA sequencing, DNA chips...).
Except the Digital support, we can assume that our physical lab work supports are notes used as reminders; temporary short life storages which became (one way or another) copied on the LabBook. These kind of support can be compare to some Pot-it...
The Post-it
At this time, and i guess a lots of labs do it in this way too, we use papers, pencil and the ultimate useful wipe marker and colored stickers combo. It's flexible, visible, mobile, and also easy and quick to use and modify. Can we put all this techniques on a simple interface? on a 3,5" display? It's a bit tricky to answer this question, but in the first place, the answers is No. In fact, why do we still use a lots of Post-it despite the fact that we have a lots of computers, and communication techniques which can improve our works ?
