Making twitter useful
Twitter, the microblogging service, has taken over its users like a rage. Apart from being the “sms of the internet”, one can find awesome and extremely useful applications for twitter once you let go the reins of creativity. I don’t want to ramble out on twitter, the service, but thought of some interesting uses for twitter. Here are they.
1. Controller
Twitter could be used to control home devices. All you need is a tweet with a special message encoded. A client program running on your home PC decodes tweets. On finding a control message, the client program can take up the required action with the help of a microcontroller and a X10 controller.
2. Diary
With twitter, diary writing has never been so easy and detailed. All you have to do is to route tweets through a dedicated program which posts as well as records your thoughts in a database for easy retrieval and reading. With people tweeting what they feel in most cases, the tweets form a comprehensive diary of thoughts. You can also add a hashtag to diary tweets to distinguish them from other tweets.
3. Breaking News
Now this is not a novel idea. But you could always enhance such news stories by having the reporters/journalists tweeting news to a central server, which could then relay the news to all its followers. This helps the reporters to remain anonymous, while delivering the news as it develops to a wide audience
4. Offline IM
You can use twitter as a sort of offline IM, since you do not need Internet connectivity to send tweets. This opens up a wide range of possiblities. For instance, if you are visiting a new place and need someone to show you around, just alert one of your fellow tweeters from the area through your mobile. Such “on the go” solutions are really of great help in many tight circumstances
5. Democracy
Now, this may sound absurd. But I believe it is entirely feasible to work out the Idea Ad.
These are just suggestions or directions to which the usage of a great service can be extended to. As for the controlling idea, I actually was about to implement a Project when we gave up for a more community-based idea. How the project ended up is another story of which I will talk off later.
As for the idea of using twitter in Democracy, Shasi Tharoor is pretty much doing the same. He usually updates his followers on important meetings about to take place and generally gives out what happened at the meetings. And he responds very well to good questions. Who knows, maybe we truly are on the way to digital democracy !
And, by the way, you can follow me on twitter at @rpisharody
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