'The Physical Internet' as a buzz phrase has been thrown about a fair bit recently and only really recently have I seen things start to get interesting. I really like the idea of making the internet tangible and a flipside to this is taking a real world interaction and broadcasting this onto the net. A few things have made this much more attainable ->
1) Twitter and other systems have opened up to let other systems interact through them via an API to send/retrieve data.
2) Electronics such as arduino or ioBridge have made the geeky electronics bit much easier.
3) Programming interfaces such as Processing or Openframeworks have made the geeky programming bit much easier.
Here is a little recap of some interesting/useful/useless/fun interfaces.
This teacher's kids want to use pop music they love for a project. Their teacher wants them to do so legally and with respect, so he's trying to contact the artist directly. To get her attention (the artist is Taylor Swift), he's asking all his Twitter PLN to re-tweet his open letter to Taylor Swift to her Twitter account, so her mentions column will be filled with the RT of his letter. If you Tweet, please copy and paste this into Twitter:RT @thenerdyteacher An Open Letter to @TaylorSwift13 - http://bit.ly/gV6uaH
"Stweet is a mix of street and twitt, offering a real new way to discover geolocalised twitts from Twitter on a Google Street View panorama.
Stweet is an artistic project dealing with the appropriation of geographical, photographic and real-time data from the Web. It offers a real new way enriched representation of information created on internet by two major players of the web, Twitter and Google."
They're like the Merry Pranksters, without the merriment or the pranks. A group of four college Republicans have set off across the country in a rented Ford Explorer to remind America that not all young people are Barack Obama supporters, and that it's still possible to drive 2,500 miles without once crossing a Democratic district.
The quartet, who call their project "Where is the Red," left from Tampa, Florida in June, and are currently in Gahanna, Ohio.
"@lincolnenergy
As part of our Electro-Magnates projects we are exploring as many channels as possible to make our energy data accessible. We are currently experimenting with a social media channel - Twitter - to provide information on the University of Lincoln's energy usage. To see more information on a particular building just send a tweet to @lincolnenergy (tweet must start with @lincolnenergy) with one of the below building codes (in bold green). An incorrectly formatted tweet will default to a response for the Main Admin building."