The Inventors of Precious the tweeting bike have got an amazing website which i have just discovered, full of all their fun inventions.
Here is how they describe their ethos “ We simply think of ourselves as inventors who are trying to take all the amazingness of what can be done online and bring it into some sort of device or experience in the real world.”
hhhggghhgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Its all about making interaction devices fun ,imaginative and enjoyable to use
by building in THE AWESOME FACTOR!!
“It’s time to stop going on as though flying cars and telekinesis headsetsdon’t exist, and time to make the real world as advanced as the virtual one that’s changed our lives in a single decade. Perhaps you’ll come for a ride with us.”
I know I would like to!!
So i was surfing the net and found this amazing website, well an amazing bike!!
Precious is a bike that has been loaded with a myriad of sensors, measuring everything from the temperature, humidity, grade, speed, cadence, travel-direction and position (via GPS). The on-board brain then passes all this information back to home base via text-message.
Once the info is received, the servers then look for patterns 24 hours a day, and if they find anything interesting, e.g. it’s been 70ºF with non-stop hills for two days, it will push a message expressing the bike’s feelings on the matter.
The resulting Twitter stream is surprisingly lifelike and even replies to Tweets from his followers.
Precious (yesiamprecious) on Twitter
All the sensor readings that are received by the server are also displayed on the website in real time, pretty impressive.
http://yesiamprecious.com
YouTube – Yes I am Precious – A Bike with a Brain
I found this great website that combines the U.S. Department of State, Canadian Foreign Affairs Department, Australia Smart Traveler, and New Zealand Safe Travel to provide a safety rating for each country around the world.
I see this as providing a really rich and interesting source of information as it corelates economic security, governmental stability, natural disasters and a whole host of other information.
By noticing a change in a countrys status from day to day it makes you wonder what that cause is. Possible information source for my travel Kettle.
Countries are rated in 5 levels:
http://isitsafetovisit.com/about/us
Geocaching is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache(a container of any size or shape) anywhere around the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache’s exis location online.
What is Geocaching?
Anyone with a GPS device can then try to locate the geocache and then log when they visited the location as well as trading treasures. Sometimes this may involve solving a problem, a riddle or a map. Remember if you take something you must leave something, its only polite.
If only Indiana Jones had owned one of these it would have saved him so much trouble.
Geocaching leads to a lot of unusual data being recovered such as when was a person last in the area? tracking an object all around the world, who collects it and where it has been. Local stories from people who have visited the site. Who first places the object. Secret places you would probably never find. Who was last at that location and what activities they did. Could this lead to some interesting insight into local areas and who visits them?
