Fans of Krispy Kreme’s doughnuts know they need to pull over and buy some when the Hot Now sign is on. Doughnuts are the best when they are ultra fresh, straight out of the fryer.

So why not build a twitter service when the baker in your neighborhood gets his fresh bread out of the oven?  Thats what Albion Cafe on Boundary Street in London did. You’ll get tweeted whenever the fresh bread comes out of the oven. It also tell you what kind of bread it is.

Peter Parkes took it a step further:

I’ve put together an app which takes the feed from Albion’s Twitter account, checks for updates, filters them (I’m only really interested in bread), and if (according to Fire Eagle) I’m within a mile of the bakery, sends me an SMS.

I’m thinking about turning it into some sort of web service – and maybe Albion will even pay for the SMS charges – but for now, I’m just enjoying the occasional ding to let me know there’s a loaf waiting.

Usefull services for everyday rituals. People might even pay for it.

Lets take it another step further… can’t my watch receive the SMS and buzz slightly or my ring turn warm when the bread comes out of the oven? I don’t what my big clunky phone to do all this.

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At SPRXmobile we believe in explicit location updates instead of implicit (like Latitude). We see that people still are worried around location updates and have the need to actively update their location when desired.

Some of the current worries and problems around loc. updates we see today:

• Loc. update apps use to much battery because the use of GPS
• You would like to update your location when you are inside. Inside GPS does not work
• The degree of accuracy is something you would like regulate. Are you in Amsterdam? or are you on Prinsengracht 404?)
  
• You are not sure which apps update where and when. Too many apps slurping your location. Not sure about the interval. You need to manage all these settings.
• Location Updates when automated are not a social gesture. There is meaning behind location updates. When we automate this the meaning is lost..
• You need to start up separate apps to update your location. It should be made possible to update from “where” you already are on the web (and that is twitter of course ;-))

That’s why we built WhereMeNow. It’s probably the easiest way to update your location. You regulate the accuracy. You decide when. It uses Twitter to do so.. Here is how it works..

1. Go to www.wheremenow.com and fill in your Twittername and click the link to Fire Eagle button.

2. Authorize WhereMeNow to update your account on FireEagle

3. Done! You now just tweet your location to @wheremenow..

Some cool things about this service:

• Everybody sees in twitter where you are. Updates are now social.
• It’s a H.U.M.A.N. who makes the update
• You get a confirmation tweet back when you updated
• We will create a personal page on WhereMeNow with you last updated location on http://wheremenow.com/[twittername] (planned to launch this tomorrow)
• We will add a RSS button to your personal page so people can see where you are in other parts of the web.

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David Rose, CEO of Vitality, is a product designer, technology visionary, and social entrepreneur. He has a great story and vision about how you can get information and interactivity out of your screen and into your umbrella, your pill box or bus stop.

The Web of Things Blogs has a summation:

by Dominique Guinard

Great pleasure to be able to attend another talk from David Rose from Ambient Devices and Vitality Inc.

Instead of a pure transcription I’ll try to sum up some aspects of the talk. Note that does not entirely reflect what Dave meant but rather my interpretation
of the talk. Dave began by talking about clairvoyance and magics. He explained how they materialized these chimers into the well-known Orb which changes its color according to a trend. Dave then explained how ambient devices where between push and pull technologies, how they should be peripherial and seamless with the environment(s).

He explained how facinated he was by the idea of dashboards a information concentrators. He especially focused on how to design them in an ambient manner so that they do not turn into pizza-style-portals with too much information to be really integrated to the environment. In the field of weather forcast he presented a prototype he designed recently. This small black screen provides very general information and is very ambient when people are far away. As people come closer it displays more accurate information and increases the info bandwidth and concentration on the screen.

The next part of the talk was about life-cycles of nature and the way to map it as an output interface for ambient devices. As an example gardening and the growing of fruits and vegetables could be mapped to something like the Orb. As apples grow they change their colors (green to yellow to reddish…) the same pattern can be applied to ambient devices.

He then talked about monitoring the energy consumption, an especially interesting topic to us our Energie Visible project develops. He pointed at the fact that energy metering is already in place just not at the right place and not using the right human-computer interface. It is in our cellars when it should be informing us in our living room. In this field he introduced the off-the-shelves products of Ambient Devices Inc.

He went on talking about one of the products of Vitality Inc. The Glowcap is the world’s first Internet connected pill cap! It may sound silly but it actually has a number of uses. It can be used to coordinate re-fills for instance or to check whether you really take your medications. It reminds me of a paper we wrote a while ago about RFDiyin the hospital. But Glowcaps go far beyond and I think they encapsulate the evolution of the Internet of Things. From being able to identify things to being able to enhance and literally connect things..

The last project he talked about was the Ambient umbrella, that knows when it’s gonna rain. While it has not real use it makes a point: take the information away from your browser, embed the Internet into every-day objects.

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