"A wireless square with sensors and a simple web app to set rules, Twine tells you what your things are doing by email, text or Twitter." I want one!
This project was developed by David Carr and John Kestener, the designer-engineers behind Supermechanical. They are passionate about creating connectable objects.They honed their skills in the interdisciplinary MIT Media Lab.
More information about Twine can be found on the KICKSTARTER website. Here is a bite of info from the site for the tech-curious:
"Twine is a wireless module tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The module has WiFi, on-board temperature and vibration sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors. Power is supplied by the on-board mini USB or two AAA batteries (and Twine will email you when you need to change the batteries)."
"The Spool web app makes it simple to set up and monitor your Twines from a browser anywhere. You set rules to trigger messages — no programming needed. The rules are put together with a palette of available conditions and actions, and read like English: WHEN moisture sensor gets wet THEN tweet "The basement is flooding!" We'll get you started with a bunch of rule sets, and you can share rules you create with other Twine owners."
"Because the hardware and software are made for each other, setup is easy. There's nothing to install — just point Twine to your WiFi network. Sensors are immediately recognized by the web app when you plug them in, and it reflects what the sensors see in real time, which makes understanding and testing your rules easy."
RELATED
One of my favorite blogs is FlowingData, Nathan Yau's labor of love for the past several years. Nathan is a UCLA PhD candidate in statistics with a focus in data visualization. He shares interesting tidbits of information on his blog, including those that relate to his main interests, social data visualization, self-surveillance, and data for non-professionals. He supports accessible and useful data visualization.
Nathan is the author of the book, Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics, nicely explained in the video below:
Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.
Below is information about the video posted on Vimeo:
"Google Street View stop motion animation short made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins.
Story: A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View. All screen imagery was animated - there are no screen replacements.
Produced, animated, filmed, lit, edited & graded by Tom Jenkins (www.theoryfilms.co.uk / https://www.facebook.com/theoryfilms - !NEW MAKING OF PICS ON FB PAGE! / @thetheoryUK / http://twitter.com/#!/thetheoryUK). Shot using Canon 5d MkII, Dragonframe Stop Motion software and customised slider. Music by the wonderfull Cinematic Orchestra (www.cinematicorchestra.com) and the track is Arrival of the Birds."
Thanks to Nathan Yau (Flowing Data) for sharing this video!
One of the blogs I enjoy following is Innovative Interactivity (II). Here is the description from the "About" section of the blog:
"Innovative interactivity serves as an open forum for multimedia producers, interactive web developers, and new media professionals. Content focuses on the dynamics and theory of how people receive and react to different forms of information on the web, both through visual, multimedia storytelling and interactive information design."
"The goal is that this blog will provide an outlet for those in the online realm, whether you are interested in learning about multimedia storytelling, interactive web development, programming languages, software tools, data visualization, or all of the above. Hopefully you will be inspired from what you read here to surpass your current standards in order to develop highly effective multimedia interactives for the digital community."
Tracy Boyer Clark is the founder & managing editor of Innovative Interactivity. She is finishing up her MBA/MSIS dual master's degree at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Here are a few links to recent II blog posts:
Behind the scenes of NFB's One Millionth Tower
Lessons learned from Internet Summit 2011
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivers monumental speech for women in tech
Today is Thanksgiving, and one of the things I'm thankful for is the opportunity to share interesting ideas and links with readers of this blog!
The following post was written by Tina Barseghian, who is an editor/blogger at KQED/NPR for the Mind/Shift blog. Mind/Shift focuses on ideas and technology that will impact the future of how we learn.
Read, Hear, or Create a Story: Apps for Traveling with Kids Tina Barseghian, Mind/Shift, 11/23/11
Link to other Mind/Shift post collections:
Children and Social Media
Tech Tools
Mobile Learning
Digital Divide
School Day of the Future
RELATED
Boredom Busters: 50 Fantastic Play-and-Learn Apps, Sites, and Toys
Tina Barseghian, Mind/Shift, 6/17/11
Libraries and Museums Become Hands-On Learning Labs
Audrey Watters, Mind/Shift. 11/23/11
"A new competition sponsored by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has just announced 12 winning libraries and museums that will receive $1.2 million in grant money to help push the boundaries of what these institutions look like, specifically helping to create facilities that are better "learning labs" for teens"
Lauren Britton Smedley (Transliteracy Development Director a the Fayetteville Free Library)
IDEO's Design for Learning (Sandy Speicher, Duane Bray, Rachel Switzky)
K12 Laboratory at D. School (Stanford)
Books Should Be Free
Storynory, Storynory iTunes Library: Podcasted stories for children, offers a free audio story every week, has some online multimedia activities.
