imran*ali

Almost two years ago, here on MM2.0, I suggested that Twitter was perhaps a communications multiplexer, providing an enabling infrastructure for machine-2-machine communications that had hitherto, simply not existed.

A couple years later and we’re seeing a groundswell of experimentation in this area. A couple of great examples include…

A Twitter-enabled cat flap – that invokes a Twitter message each time the homeowners cats enters or exits their home. The cars are equipped with RFID tags that ensure only they can use the door! Is Twitter giving a new voice to an old species? This isn’t too dissimilar to the Botanicalls project, covered by MM2.0 at the beginning of last year…

BakerTweet enables bakers to keep customers informed about the freshness of their products by Twittering a public message each time a new batch of baked goods is nearing readiness. The service consists of a durable, hygenic device that’s installed into a kitchen – bakers then list their items at an online account that configures the box. They then simple need to hit an item selector on the box and push a button to Twitter the message. It’s not difficult to envisage appliances sending this message themselves as appropriate data comes in…. watch a video of BakerTweet in action.

A confluence of cheap electronics kits such as the Arduino, coupled with the mobile+broadband messaging bus that is Twitter is giving voice to the objects around us. Bruce Sterling’s spimes and Julian Bleecker’s blogjects.