Posts Tagged ‘hack’



Twitter Hack – How to Tweet Your Palm Pre’s GPS Location!

September 11th, 2009

Here’s a really fun Twitter hack that shows you how to “tweet” your Palm Pre’s GPS location to your Twitter account.  This could be a great way to track your Pre’s whereabouts as you can also optionally set your Twitter account to “protected” so only you see the GPS updates.

(Screenshot of @trackmypalmpre, which gets updated with location of my Palm Pre every hour.)

As promised on my last blog post on how to set up Google GPS tracking on your Palm Pre, I will now show you how to “tweet’ your GPS location to a Twitter account so you can track it on Twitter too.

This might be a great way to keep “track” of where your Palm Pre has been.  You could probably even make a GoogleMaps using the Twitter RSS feed to show exactly where your Palm Pre has been traveling in the past.

via palm pre hacks

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trackmypalmpre

Twitter Hack – Home Automation Using Twitter Status Updates!

July 20th, 2009

Here’s an incredibly fun way to devise up home automation using Twitter Status updates as commands for remote-control of your home appliances.  This is a really cool project (as any other Twitter hacks) as it makes use of your actual @reply messages to control your home.

With http://twitter.com/MattsOffice you can send a command by placing a keyword in a @reply message. Valid keywords are “light”, “bright”, “dark”, “temp”, “hot”, “cold”, “lcd”, and “view”. For example, to retrieve the temperature of my office I just need to update my Twitter status with a simple question like “@MattsOffice What is the temperature?”

via diy blog

twitter-hack

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Hackers Send Out Fake Death Tweets!

June 30th, 2009

Hackers have been sending out fake death tweets of famous people like Britney Spears.  Although the matter has been revolved already, (what seems to be caused by TwitPic) it’s interesting to note that Twitter has the power to spread false rumors as much as real ones.

Twitpic fixed this vulnerability by Monday and in an apology letter explained that the hackers tried every PIN combination possible until one worked. Now, Twitpic says a “fix has been put in place to prevent this from happening,” and that less than 10 users were affected by the hack and “no account information was compromised.”

via cnet

Twitter Hack – How to Make a Twitter TypeWriter!

June 23rd, 2009

For those of you who are tired of watching your 20″ LCD screen for the latest tweets, there’s another way of reading your tweets via a Typewriter!

The folks at Oomlout.co.uk have figured out how to connect an arduino and ethernet module to monitor the search term “Oomlout” and automatically type out the latest tweet relating to that keyword.

It search’s for a term every 10 seconds (in our case ‘oomlout’ although ‘#haiku’ is good fun too). When a new tweet is posted it will proceed to whir to life and type it out (at the same time making us feel like we’re back in the 1970s).

This should be actually a pretty easy project as most typewriters support RS232 communication.  You can also check out their Typewriter Twitter @Oomlout.

via hackaday

twitter-typewriter

Twitter Hack – How to Get Rid of Inactive Followers!

April 27th, 2009

Using Twitter-friends.com, you can easily find out which of your followers “never” use Twitter.   You can unfollow those inactive followers and it makes sense, they are probably not twittering all that much anyways.  Simply log-in to Twitter-friends.com and click on “Inactive” tab to see which of your followers are the most inactive.

My goal was to unfollow anybody who hadn’t updated in x days. I decided that 30 days was a reasonable number. If you haven’t updated in a month, chances are that account has been abandoned, or you’ve been forced to leave Twitter for other reasons.

I also felt this period covered me for folk who were on holiday, moving home, or away from Twitter for some reason beyond their control but would return in the future.

via twittercism

twitterfriends

Twitter Hack – Brain Twitter Interface for Locked-in Syndrome or a Spinal Cord Injury

April 25th, 2009

WOW!  Twitter can now officially be twitted using your brain!  NitroLab of University of Wisconsin has figured out a way to write tweets using the human brain waves.  The whole process is rather cumbersome but it’s a viable solution for those with Locked-in syndrome or a spinal cord injury to communicate online with the world.

The 140 characters of Twitter really allows this device to be the perfect interface as writing a letter can take a second or two as seen in the video.

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Video demo of writing, “Spelling with my brain” @uwbci.

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

via hackaday

Twitter Hack – How to Make an RFID Cat Tracker!

April 11th, 2009

Couple days ago, we saw the cat-tracking Tweeting Cat Door that will let you know when your cat has left the house. (and came back)  Now, we found something even better than that, an RFID cat tracker that will let you track the cat when he/she is within certain boundaries of RFID signals, a much better solution for those of you who either don’t have a cat door or simply want to track your cat within a specified area.

This gadget is called CATaLOG, cat tracking/logging system based on Arduino, RS232 RFID module, and Arduino Ethernet Shield.

rfid-twitter

The author Pete has open sourced the code so if you got some soldering skills, just get the parts, simply put it together, load the code, and you should be set to go so you can track your cat via twitter.  (You can see an example of the device working @BobbinAndTuffin.

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(screenshot of @BobbinAndTuffin)

The CATaLOG project aims to track our two cats Bobbin and Tuffin as they go in and out of the house so we can see which cat spends more time outside, what their favourite time to go out is, and also get sent SMS messages if a cat goes missing for a certain amount of time.

Great job Pete and make sure to let us know on any future Twitter Hacks via @TweetHacking.

CATaLOG Homepage

via hackedgadgets

Twitter Hack – Twitter Popcorn Robot!

April 10th, 2009

So, you are going to watch movie in 10 minutes when you get home from work?

Simply send a tweet to your Twitter Popcorn Robot before you leave your work (assuming you live 10 minutes away) and enjoy the popcorn when you get home, all ready to be served.

Does this sound like a cool Twitter robot?

Yes, it’s actually real and William Self(@robedorobotics) has put together an amazing Twitter Popcorn robot using a netbook, USB infrared transmitter, USB-based sensors and controllers.

William also says he will be updating with more features so we will keep our eyes glued to his blog.

Soon, you’ll see our wheeled robots gaining new structure: arms, grippers and maybe even a humanoid torso. We’re not promising a fully capable R2-D2 or Rosie robot. Those would probably cost you $50,000. We are promising good technology and useful robots. Plus fun. Plenty of fun.

Keep up the great work and don’t forget to tip us first @tweethacking on your next Twitter Hack projects.

via engadget

Here’s the video of it in action:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

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(Send a tweet to start the popcorn!)

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(The robot will not only make the popcorn, it will bring it to your couch.)

Twitter Hack – How to Make a Sonar Distance Twitter Buzzer!

April 8th, 2009

Using an ultrasonic range finder modules from SparkFun and Arduino microcontroller as the controller, Josh over at blog.joshuamcginnis.com has created an awesome DIY sonar distance Twitter buzzer that will tweet the distance he’s sitting/standing from his laptop.

Now, this might look very useless but it can come in handy for security applications or other DIY projects that need status updates via Twitter.

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Here’s the screenshot of @hereandaway, which will tell you how far Josh is sitting from the computer:

sonar-2

Great job Josh, let us know on any new updates with your cool sonar project, perhaps you can make a wireless version and stick it on your dog…

arduino & sonar returns your distance away from the computer and it is displayed on the screen. the farther away you are from the computer the larger the text and the greener the screen. the closer you are, the smaller the text and the redder the screen. get within 5 inches and a buzzer alarms. distance is twittered.

via hacks blog

Twitter Hack – Baker Tweet Updates Baking Status on Twitter!

April 8th, 2009

Twitter Hacking has been going sorta crazy lately, with cool hacks like the Botannicals which can tell you when your plants need watering.

Of course, don’t forget about Baker Tweet, this gadget will “tweet” whatever is coming out of your oven, you can follow @albionsoven to see what Albion’s Oven is cooking.

According to the Baker Tweet page:

BakerTweet allows businesses to use Twitter to communicate in real-time about offers, pricing and stock from a device that can withstand kitchen peril and is much simpler to operate than a laptop or a mobile.

Here’s a picture of what it looks like:

baker-tweet-1

And here’s a video demo:

How It Works:

it’s a bakery-proof box that sends messages wirelessly to Twitter. The clever bit is that the baker can update their messages and things they’re selling using a simple web interface. Obviously not something that you’d do mid-bake but it’s an important feature for future-proofing the device.

This might come in handy for those of you bakers who need to know what’s coming out of your oven in real-time.  I see a lot of good applications for this in the near future for many bakeries out there.

via hackedgadgets