Tweetshirt

Yesterday I gave a demo of my TWEET-SHIRT at Barcamp Gent.
A tweetshirt is a web connected t-shirt with an embedded display that can be configured through a web interface to diplay a.o. live Twitter feeds, Flickr pictures, custom texts ....
Every t-shirt has a web-interface that allows one to configure what is shown on the display.
www.tweetshirt.net

Big fun!
The demo was done with a prototype I just finished the day before, pieced together with old cellphone parts, a 2,5 inch video display and lots of duct tape.

It still has some design flaws, mainly the heat produced by the display (it's comfortable the first 10 minutes but it actually gets VERY hot).
Also the battery drain is excessive: I walked around fully wired with a 9-volt battery in my pocket and used about 4 of them during 1 day.

It's a concept, but it's a concept I want to take further so I gues I'm on the lookout for hardware partners or other interested partners to get this thing to a finished wearable product.
Thanks bnox for spreading !

I started the project as a real-life case for the use of Flash (Lite) as development platform for mobile devices. So everything (including the webinterface) is written in flash lite (meaning you can also control your T-shirt with any flash-lite enabled mobile phone)
Everying runs both on the mobile device as in standard websites, so you can just as easily put the widget on your site as some form of twitter/flickr display.


Below are the slides of my presentation. (also made in Flash lite - just click to proceed)


These kind of ideas have a "networked" way of growing, So thanks to Dorien for the inspiration, Clopin for the slogan and also maeseele for a very cool add-on idea: (the X-ray:  connect a mini-camera at the back of the T-shirt, so you'd have a see-through effect when looking at the front display.)

Twunch interview

Vorige vrijdag vond er weer eens een Twunch plaats.
Een Twunch is een lunchafspraak tussen twitteraars.
@natanoj was erbij om een interview af te nemen wat dat twitter-fenomeen nu eigenlijk allemaal te betekenen heeft.
Ook ik mocht mijn 2 cent in het schaaltje doen - waar ik natuurlijk graag gebruik van maakte.
Gelukkig heeft @natanoj - zijn naam is wel duidelijk als hij je vertelt dat het Jonatan achtertevoor is - de zemel stukken er netjes uitgeknipt en blijft er nog een min of meer samenhangend relaas over.
Beluisteren:

(Of download de .mp3 hier)

Het werd vandaag uitgezonden op supo (Up yours !) de KHM campus radio.
De immer eloquente @tomklaasen legt uit wat twitter juist is en de immer goed-gezind-makende @sasvangent spreekt over haar twilight ervaringen.
Nice!

Pitches and speeches

Wauw - What a great speech that was - the Obama victory speech.
You can rewatch it here and reread it here.
Although he's probably not written it himself, clearly Obama has a way with words and a gift to inspire people with his ideas.
That's a gift, and something the world can use, an inspiring leader, and probably one of the main reasons he won.

It's not a gift that I have :-)
"I'm a developer - I don't do pitches (very well)" I tweeted some time ago at FOWA, when I was picked as 1 of the 3 winners for the Adobe AIR competition that had to present their idea to a expert-panel and to the public.
The video recording of those presentations are now online.
A bit shocking to see yourselves one stage - especially with such a cruel English accent - but well - it was fun :-)
The video is here.

My app-idea came accross a bit incomprehensible I'm afraid. I just wanted to cram everything in that one minute. (Big mistake BTW)
It was an idea I woke up with that morning and turned it in a few minutes before deadline, but actually it was just a variation on the little ideas I build for myself all the time: bridging the gap between your PC and the world around you, allowing you to have a two way interaction between your PC and its environment.
That's also why I like the Tikitag project that much: it's another method of interaction to add to the chain: moving RFID-tagged objects around the place to trigger actions on your PC (thus linking a physical object to the web)
Voice recognition, X10 control, webcam controls ... all methods of interaction with the real world around you, thus enriching your experience.

The Relocally thing - As I dubbed it - is another example: what if you could enrich the way you access your online social network by allowing trusted accounts a controlled access to your PC to trigger some event.
Like when you send a tweet with a link to a music file, and that file would be played instantly on the PC's of your connected contacts.
Or what if you (or someone else your trust) could control your (PC based) video recorder - or your lights - or your ... whatever ... by tracking messages from Twitter, facebook, Netlog ...
For example it could listen for colours and adjust the lighting accordingly (probably more suited for public places that what to give the audience some form of interaction)
The though behind this is always the same: make sure all devices are connected to the web in one way or another and are able to receive input from the web, and you'll have a whoppingly cool system that brings the web in your home without being tied to a computer all the time.
Relocally would then enable your remote friends to interact with your environmental experience - and if that would enrich your experience ... why not ?

And then that Richard Moross guy spoiled the moment a bit by asking how I would monetize the app ...
Excuse me ? Monetize it? No thank you, why would you want to monetize on an idea that's about social experience ?
Djeez.

Anyway - probably AIR is not the right platform to build it on because it still has very limited access to the host (e.g. it can't spawn new processes) and probably this idea will end up in one of my homebrewn domotica/automation setups, but still ...
To borrow some Obama words:
    So let us summon a new spirit
    This is our time:
  Can we build it?     YES WE CAN !

Twitteraars op de dodentocht

Audio message

Click to hear the full recording

twitter2identica and plurk2identica

<%
identicaAccount = "Steffest"
identicaPass = "*********"
	
identica("hello identicaworld!")
	
	
function identica(message)
	
	' based on http://monkey.linuxworld.com/scripts/twit
		
	url_login = "http://identi.ca/main/login"
	url_post = "http://identi.ca/notice/new"
	
	' first: login
	useragent = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT")
	poststring = "nickname=" & identicaAccount & "&password=" & identicaPass
	set objXMLHTTP = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.SERVERXMLHTTP")
	objXMLHTTP.Open "POST", url_login, false
	objXMLHTTP.setRequestHeader "User-Agent",useragent 
	objXMLHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
	objXMLHTTP.Send poststring
			
	' then send the message
		message=server.URLEncode(message)
	poststring  = "status_textarea=" & message
	
	objXMLHTTP.Open "POST", url_post, false,plurkAccount,plurkPass
	objXMLHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
	objXMLHTTP.Send poststring
		
	identica = objXMLHTTP.responseText
end function

Twit2art meeting

Feedtweeter

• when posting to twitter, images and html will be stripped because twitter doesn't display that
• commercial messages can be stripped
• you can define some special chars like: "when a tweet starts with *, post it to my blog" or "when a flickr image contains the tag "granny", send it by email to grandma"
• and endless other variations

Plurk2twitter

Allez vooruit ... ik kon het toch niet laten.
Plurk is leuk, maar Twitter is ook leuk.
Zucht, en kiezen is moeilijk!
Maar dikwijls is kiezen ook helemaal niet niet nodig!
Plurk heeft helaas (nog) geen API, maar wel een RSS (Atom) feed waar we iets mee kunnen doen, bijvoorbeeld: posten naar twitter.

Dit is het script:
Het scant de Plurk RSS feed en post elke nieuwe plurk naar twitter.
(kheb uiteraard wel mijn paswoord eruit gehaald)
Quick & Dirty (jummie !)
maar werkt goed genoeg voor 1 persoon.

a picture is worth a thousand tweets

Twistory with a twist

Coding Horror quote