Monday, March 21, 2011

Weirdness over IP series, part 1

My last post looked at the trend toward "everything over IP" and listed some of the weirder things that have been hooked up to the internet.
So, in this spirit of everything over IP (or perhaps in this case, "IP on everything"), I thought I would take the liberty of wiring in some of my own household items to benefit the cause.

Weirdness over IP (WoIP) - Part 1

Introducing, TP over IP!

TP over IP
Now you can be notified when your roll is running low. And thanks to automatic social networking updates, your friends will always know why you are AFK (although, thanks to mobile devices, that's not strictly necessary).

But wait, there's more!

If desired, you can even set personal earth-friendly budgeting goals, like one square per swipe, or, for the especially bold, one square per session.

Signing up for paperless billing might be easier.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Everything over IP

Welcome to the era of "everything over IP." It seems like more and more devices are getting hooked up to the internet these days. Did you know vending machines are often connected now?
Here is a short list of some of the more interesting things that have been wired to the net:
  • Doorbells - Some guy actually put together detailed instructions on how to make this happen here
  • Mailboxes (the snail mail kind). Here's a how-to
  • Coffee Makers - You can do this using Coffee Pot Control Protocol (CPCP), which is outlined in RFC 2324. The protcol doesn't support decaf though. Sorry.
    Here is an excerpt from the official RFC:
    There is coffee all over the world. Increasingly, in a world in which computing is ubiquitous, the computists want to make coffee. Coffee brewing is an art, but the distributed intelligence of the web-connected world transcends art.  Thus, there is a strong, dark, rich requirement for a protocol designed espressoly for the brewing of coffee. Coffee is brewed using coffee pots.  Networked coffee pots require a control protocol if they are to be controlled.
Some day, you will probably be able to connect your toothbrush to the internet. Oh, wait a minute, that's already in the works.

Looks like a video game company plans to come out with a Wifi-enabled toothbrush in a few years. Just think of the possibilities. Armed with your wifi toothbrush, you'll be able to have toothbrush wars with your friends, and see who can knock out the most tartar and plaque. Fun.

It's doubtful many people on the net would be interested in tracking their friends' brushing habits, but then again, why not?  We already get Facebook status updates and Tweets to the tune of, "@superBoBo: Got a like, major headache. Took a couple p-killers," and "@WhoppiePie22: clipping nails with my brand new clippers. 50 cents at Ross. a steal!" and  "@jake057: Chillin' with my hamster in the back yard."

So why not, "@sam_fitchmeister: just brushed my teeth. 125 strokes in 56 seconds."
Not a stretch to imagine I guess.

Of course, there would be the challenge of keeping your wifi toothbrush up-to-date with the latest security patches. Sure would be a bummer if some hacker got access to your molars.