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Man hooks home into Twitter

World's first self-Tweeting home?

A computer engineer has connected his home to social networking service Twitter, enabling it to Tweet him with updates about his residence’s electricity and water consumption.

Andy Stanford-Clark, 43, has fitted wireless sensors onto household items scattered around his 16th Century thatched cottage on the Isle of Wight, according to various online reports.

The sensors feed information to a central hub that, with the help of some specially written software, translates into words a sensor notification that, say, the bathroom heater has been turned on.

As a result, Stanford-Clark then receives a “bathroom heater turned on” Twitter message through his mobile phone.

The fellow’s aim is to help his family become more eco-friendly by reducing their energy consumption at home. But it’s not clear exactly how a Twitter notification that his bathroom heater’s just been turned on helps Stanford-Clark reduce energy use.

Perhaps he then drives home to switch the heater off...

Nonetheless, Stanford-Clark reportedly claimed to have already cut his electricity consumption by one third since installing his Twitter technology. ®

Latest Comments

Hmmm...

Surely a Jabber server and compatible mobile app would be just as good? Plus there'd be no need to worry about Twitter's security.

Not that notifications of heaters being switched on would be of much use or interest to Twitter hackers.

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One way pointlessness

Unless it can work two ways - you get a text telling you the heating came on, oops, forgot to turn it off, text back "HEATING OFF" and have it turn off - then it's utterly pointless.

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Yeah

He has to be single!!!!!

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but think of the children?!?!?!

What would Paris say?

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nice test of error handling

now that twitter has gone titsup again over some old 80s star apparantly dieing. heaven forbid how it would hold up when something fucking important happened.

picture of evil steve because... meh... i have to use his bloody toy operating system just to use Final Cut Pro because "everybody uses it" apart from that being marginally more shit than every other video editing package out there. menu always at the top was an ok idea when dont have an apple 30inch fucking screen. and no menu accellerators like wot windows does, its remember the mental keystrokes time...

could somebody fund me for 3 or 4 years to write a decent bloody video editing package? seriously you'd be nominated for the nobel prize.

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