Tweet your way to productivity

From security systems that blow the whistle on intruders via tweet to plants that demand water on Twitter, the micro blogging service has evolved into much more than just a waste of time Kavita Kukday-Deb  With more than 55 million tweets a day, many accuse Twitter, the micro blogging site, of being a drain on productivity. But that’s a misconception you had better not encourage. In fact, scores of companies have piggy-backed on the popular communication tool to build some wonderful productivity apps.


What makes these companies tick is Twitter’s open ended framework that provides users with endless possibilities within the 140-character limit. Using this structure, people have simply begun building conduits and pipes to connect to the service to perform various day-to-day tasks.
  
Instant sharing, of course, is the central idea behind micro blogging. And built around this capability are tools such as Twit-Pic.com and Twitter share.com that lets you swap photos and other digital media with friends and family.
 
For those into software programming, for instance, a Twitter-based services on Snipt.org allows the sharing of snippets of code.
  
Spun from the same fundamental concept of sharing, there are sites such as TweetMyJobs.com and TwitJob Search.com. These have turned Twitter’s limited format of short, text-based announcements into a front-end for employers to promote their job openings, and for job seekers to search for those jobs. Since Twitter is as real time as it gets, there is a perception amongst job seekers that career openings show up here before they hit the traditional online job sites such as Monster or Naukri.
  
Think regular news sites give dated stories? Micro blog-based applications can help. Take, for instance, Tweet news.appspot.com, a brainchild of Yahoo BOSS engineer Vik Singh. This app simply takes Yahoo’s news results and compares them to emerging topics on Twitter. In short, it uses topics that are most popular on Twitter as an index for determining the importance of different news stories.
  
Other similar sites that use Twitter trends to sort top world news include TwitScoop.com and Twittersphere.com. The Twitter trend finder gives them an edge over the algorithm-based ranking systems, such as Google News, by offering faster updates and
  
better relevance,
Twitscoop claims.
  
Twestival.com is another example wherein people have piggybacked on the microblogging framework to organise events to raise money for charity. The site claims to have already organised more than 150 offline events across the world, and raised over $1.2 million within 14 months.
  
On the hardware side, businesses are making use of the ubiquity of Twitter to keep you connected with your home appliances.
  
Botanicalls.com, for example, has a Twitter-enabled hardware kit that lets your home plants ask for water every time the moisture level in the soil dips.
  
The DIY assembly kit has a tiny moisture sensor attached to a circuit board with an Ethernet port that connects to your Internet. After you have the system in place, you just need to place the sensor into your plant’s soil. This keeps tabs on the moisture level, and once it drops below a certain range, the system sends you a tweet saying your plants are thirsty.

On a similar principle, IBM’s Andy Stanford-Clark claims to have hacked into his home electricity meter to tweet energy usage. If you follow his tweets (www.twitter.com/ andy_house), you can see in real time when Stanford-Clark turns his lights off or whether he has an unusually high electricity usage on a particular day. Updates are sent via sensors in the home, and the system uses IBM middle ware to connect to the service. Stanford-Clark says that he can turn the lights on or off remotely from the website itself.

Inspired? Well, you could take a crack at making an energy-measuring gadget yourself with step-bystep instructions at Tweet-a-Watt (www.ladyada.net/make/tweetawatt). This isn’t a project for non-engineers, but for those with thorough knowledge of wires and circuitry. The site gives a fair idea of what you’d need to put together a gadget that will plug into a home electrical system, connect to a Wi-Fi network and send progress tweets. Share this with a group of friends and you’ll have a healthy energysaving competition going for you. And then there’s Linux expert Shantanu Goel who has tried to create a remote security system that leverages Twitter.
  
He connected motion-sensing software to a webcam on his computer, which in turn connects to the internet. So if someone breaks into his house, the software detects movement and tweets a warning. He also has step-by-step instructions on his website (tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/ 05/14/keep-tab-on-home-security with-a-webcam-and-twitter.html) for creating you very own home spy.