Weird things people have built for Twitter

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I’m pretty sure you know what Twitter is. But if you lived under the rock till now, then let me explain you what it is. Twitter is a microblogging service where you share what you’re doing with the world in 140 characters or less. Simple, isn’t it? OK, let’s get to the point. Most people use Twitter for social things, meeting friends, chatting and whatnot, some use it for self promotion, marketing and there are some people who modify or hack actual devices to use it’s API. I have shortly explained what is Twitter’s API in this post.

Guys at the Makezine have created a Kill-a-Watt to work with Twitter and they call it Tweet-a-Watt. They have modified a Kill-a-Watt power meter to tweet the daily KWH consumed to the user’s Twitter account. Useful? Who cares, it’s cool and geekish.

Over at Botanicalls they came up with a plant water sensor that tells you when you have to water your plants. The Botanicalls system and applications use networked open source hardware and software to allow plants to communicate with people on people’s terms – using the telephone, text messages or Twitter. This could actually be usefull. The gizmo will also thank you when you water it, and even scold you for overwatering. This device costs $99 and only comes in kit form and requires assembly.

RoBe:Do created a robot that allows you to send an order for fresh popcorn via Twitter and have it delivered to the couch. It’s quite pricy, tho. It costs around $1,500. Check out this video to see the robot in action.

Roland Crosby came up with Laundryroom Twitter Bot, which tells how many washers and dryers are free.

If you use TiVo, then you should definitely get TwiVo by Darren Cloutie. You guessed it right, it’s a hack for TiVo devices, so they send out a tweet whenever something new has been recorded.

And last, but not least. A guy called Ryan Rose created a washing machine Twitter hack. The washing machine is programmed to send text message notifications over Twitter when clothes are done. See the video here.

Did you make any gizmos that work with Twitter? Do you know anyone who did? Leave a comment.

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