Recently, we’ve seen the introduction of a few consumer products with twitter integration. Now I’m not talking software products or applications such as FourSquare. No I’m referring to actual consumer products such as Withings Wifi Scale. If you’re not familiar with it, the scale automatically sends your measurements via WiFi to your PC and iPhone. However, what’s different about this scale is that it boasts Twitter support allowing you to tweet your weight.
So this got me thinking, what other home appliances and consumer products can we add Twitter support to. I came up with 10 ideas, some of which are good but most are gags… or are they?
Please make any comments on how you would improve how these ideas would work or provide your own ideas. If any are worthy, I will add them and give credit.
Finally, if you feel like taking these ideas, building them and selling them, feel free. I’m all for open idea sharing. Just please give me a shout and let me know so I can mention it on this blog site.
1. Twitter-Enabled Garage Door Opener
The idea would be to tweet when your garage is opened or closed. Great for those stalkers who are trying to get into your garage. But I guess I would use it by searching my twitter timeline at bed time to see if the last tweet was “garage opened” or “garage closed” determining if I need to go close it. Laziness to the next level.
2. Twitter-Enabled TV
Here the idea would be for the TV to tweet which channel and show you’re watching. This will probably be based on duration of time a channel is on. Maybe it can also tweet attention span based on how often you change channels. You’ll probably want some filtering for those people who watch some late night TV.
3. Twitter-Enabled Mailbox
Wouldn’t it be great if your mailbox could tweet every time it was opened. With a weight sensor, it could also tell you if it had mail inserted or removed. Great way for mail receipt notification.
4. Twitter-Enabled Wii Fit Plus
This is a basic extension of the Withings Wifi Scale I mentioned earlier. Basically configure you Wii Fit Plus to tweet certain statistics about your workouts and personal assessments. I actually think this idea has some merit.
5. Twitter-Enabled Microphone
The idea here would be a mic with speech recognition that would tweet what you say. Maybe enabled with a button on the mic to it doesn’t tweet everything you say. Would be a great addition to a conference or a wedding to give updates via Twitter.
6. Twitter-Enabled Coffee Machine
Now this would be the ultimate office coffee machine. Instead of putting a web cam to see if coffee is ready, it would just tweet whenever coffee is almost out, started brewing or ready to consume. This can also let you see how old the coffee is too by searching your timeline for last “started brewing” tweet.
7. Twitter-Enabled Car
How about enabling your car with WiFi and Twitter. It could tweet updates such as gas remaining, gas consumption and other diagnostics. Maybe even tweet maintenance schedule and reminders.
8. Twitter-Enabled Bicycle
Similar to the car idea, this bicycle would collect information about your ride and tweet it. It could also tweet famous landmarks that you may have hit during your ride as well. This idea could also cover stationary bikes at home.
9. Twitter-Enabled Toothbrush
Shout-out to @eQandil for this idea. Basically this toothbrush would tweet every time it was used. Maybe for how long it was used too. The higher end model would even tell you how many brushstrokes where done. Great way to ensure your kids are brushing their teeth.
10. Twitter-Enabled Music System
Now this one may actually be a real useful idea. Many people like to share their media via twitter (and other means) with friends. Basically this system would send a tweet for any new album being played, for any new song or for the current song, etc. I guess this could be expanded to commercial audio systems that are used by DJs and such. I’m sure my man @bmedia911 would be using that.










Cute idea to use Twitter as message broker for all those applications. Jay Black (uwaterloo Prof) actually found several applications in pervasive computing using Jabber about a decade ago.
This stuff might interest you:
http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~jpblack/research/
However, the issue that I see with twitter is, that the standard interface (i.e. webbrowser) will not be enough for particular applications. First, you need something that is extensible and can go mobile (I don’t know if a simple Java API is available for Twitter on Blackberries).
In addition think about feedback control. Just sending out status updates is lame, actually enabeling your coffee brewer/garage opener might be easier. This also brings in issues of security and privacy but that can be handled by the applications.
Thomas
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by VerasityBlog: Check out my 10 Twitter Enabled Products and how they could be fun to use – http://ow.ly/1iYH2 #twitter…
Thanks for the comments Thomas.
So although I agree regarding the simplicity and lack of functionality on the web interface of Twitter, I’m not sure I’d call it the “standard interface”. Twitter exists with the purpose of being the medium and not the client. It always boasted mobile access and there are numerous clients for all mobile platforms (BlackBerry included).
As for your comment about feedback control, I completely agree. My article was more related to the one directional “notification” or “information” trend that is being associated with Twitter and other social networks. I do fully agree that a full enabling the appliances would be more useful, private and secure.
Great blog by the way.
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Keep up the great work!