Not too long ago, i heard a story about how a guy was making organs that tweet. As in building a heart that can provide monitoring and status information online. Granted, folks tend to vent their spleens when on the internet, but this could be a great deal more literal.
Bad jokes aside, when i heard the report, the first thing i thought of was "So, what happens when Twitter goes away?"
i get the concept at hand here, and what they are talking about. "Tweeting" means posting short messages. It's what folks understand. Like xeroxing a kleenex you hoovered up, still, there are a growing number of services that provide that sort of messaging with little intent of being used by a wider audience. Why? Well, aside from the OAuth handshake, there's something innately appealing about the idea of being able to post info to a simple URL for yourself.
That's definitely the idea behind the "Internet of Things" you occasionally hear about. A web of devices talking to each other (and you). People are thinking about using sites like Twitter and Facebook as the channels of communication, but i'm not really comfy with the idea of those companies knowing my energy consumption patterns and glucose levels. Or, for that matter, my credit and insurance company getting a hold of them without my approval.
So that's kind of the idea behind the stuff Jeff and i are working on, Notifications. In short, it's a simple way for sites (or devices) to post short messages to a URL and have them get to you. What's more, you have control over those messages, and can silence or drop a site easily. Devices also have it pretty easy and can either post stuff just to a URL, or pass them through an encryption filter that prevents the carrier from being able to read the contents.
Internally, i've been kinda selling Notifications as being "Twitter for Mozilla", but i'm not sure that's right. Really, it's "Send and forget" for stuff that needs to talk to other stuff. Even better, is that you can run your own server. Heck, you can even run your own client that blasts these messages to Facebook or Twitter as well. It's not tied to Firefox at all, and that's the beauty of it.
It's simple, secure, and under your complete control. i think that's kind of cool, and hopefully you will as well.
