Youngest Twitterer EVAR?
Ed. Note: Boing Boing's current guestblogger Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks.
Corey Menscher, an ITP student, has designed a kick sensor which monitors his pregnant wife's belly, and generates a fetal tweet whenever the baby kicks.
Update: Corey explains the technical details of the project in this comment, with more details here.
KickBee on Twitter
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I want one of these for my colon.
Great idea, but me thinks that it might need to be calibrated:
Can this be the official coining of the term "twitrist" despite how much it sounds like "titty twist"?
Fourteen years later, Mom will still be pulling out this list in order to guilt-trip her kid. ;)
I think it should be "tweeter," not "twitterer." After all, one produces tweets, not twits.
Here's a link to a web page with explanation of how it works -
http://portfolio.menscher.com/itp/kickbee/ though it doesn't say how data transmission to twitter is implemented, but I'd love to see the device.
Gabrielm, yes, the earlier calibrations were, um, a bit hyper...
Knifie. Eeew.
Anyone got implementation details? The Maker Shed botanicalls kit will post to twitter whenever your plant needs to be watered, but its not wireless. Is this one of those things where its easy as long as you have $1000 and a research partnership with a mobile phone company?
Perhaps is a bluetooth device that talks to Windows Mobile which generates SMS messages?
NM, thanks Flamy. Bluetooth is correct IC.
"Can this be the official coining of the term "twitrist" despite how much it sounds like "titty twist"?"
..and yet, to my continual amazement (and lack of maturity) we still say 'pianist'.
Where's the flickr feed?
#1 just gave birth to a brown baby boy.
Kickbee Maker here...
To answer some technical questions, there are currently two piezo sensors and an analog circuit detecting low frequency vibrations and sent to an Arduino Mini. The Arduino uses a SparkFun BlueSMIRF v2 module to talk to my Java app serially over Bluetooth. The Java app analyzes the sensor readings and decides when to update Twitter. There's also a button that toggles a "standby" mode on and off so that the device won't post to Twitter until it's been put on and adjusted properly. It's all powered by a 9v battery. I added some photos of the device to the link on the Twitter page.
Thanks for your interest! I'm still tweaking the electronics and writing code...plus I need to make it look a bit more friendly. So please excuse the obvious test posts.
If you're in NYC, I strongly urge you to check it (and the other great projects) at the NYU ITP Winter Show Dec. 17 & 18! http://bit.ly/itpWinterShow08
I just launched a little service this week called Tweetlet that sends you messages from your baby during pregnancy. You get messages like:
"Hi dad, I just opened my eyes for the first time!"
http://tweetlet.com
too bad you can;t make it say "about 3 hours ago from womb"
Clay Shirky,
I have now joined Facebook upon the information in the essay you posted earlier, but I don't think I can bring myself to Twitter. At any rate, today I saw an ancient and everdear friend of mine from high school do a standup comedy routine with a facebook link. We haven't talked in 15 years, but today I definitely felt the connection. Up with all them good social networking sites, maybe I will start to twitter after all.
Okay, I'm on twitter now with this same username. Show me the magic.
Is this its sleep/wake cycle?
http://xefer.com/twitter/kickbee
Knifie Sp00nie, you are almost as disgusting as you are funny.
There are a lot of good uses for this tool. What a great therapeutic tool to conquer boner shame.
wolfiesma, follow the white rabbit Xeni
cshirky, I am on that, over.
do they make one with fifty thousand waterproof sensors?
@ Dad:
"Am actually spawn of the devil & when born WILL SUBJUGATE THE EARTH. Lulz!"
...I can see it now:
"I broke mommy's water @ 11:33am 03/04/09. I will get spanked for this lol!"
What about hiccups? Does the Java app analyze the piezo sensors to distinguish the impulse's regularity and intensity? The hiccups of my unborn are strong and regular (several times a day for about 5-10 minutes each time) while her 'kicks' are not really kicks, instead, only her stretching her legs.
Around the eight month mark, this Twitter feed is going to going to become annoyingly active.
My partner and I have a similar system set up. Whenever she feels a kick from the baby, she kicks me! It's great!
... Hannes form I TAKE THE PISS - ITTP here! I too believe Twitter is a great service to mankind. But my 7 months old son does not seem to share my enthusiasm.
Instead, nonconformist as he is, he takes the piss.
http://www.hannesnehls.de/#itakethepiss
... at least we have a great tool for monitoring him.