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How to Add Anything to the Internet of Things: Creating the Geography of Everything

By Cities Tweets, geography of everything, internet of things, iphone rfid, qrcode, rfid, social life of objects, splimes, talesofthings

Every object in existence can be tagged with any media, linked to tell a story, to recount its memories in a read/write environment and tweet when its interacted with.


Its a concept that takes a bit of time to take in, for example a wall in Camden Town, London, tweeted me last week when someone replayed its memories of having a Banksy painted on it. That wall is part of the Internet of Things via the project TalesofThings.

The best part is, its incredibly easy to add objects. You simply sign up at talesofthings.com and then take click on ‘add a thing’. This takes you to a form where you give your object a name, for a example ‘Andy’s Mug’ or ‘BBC Broadcasting House’ are some of things we have added so far. You then type in a short story, or tale, linked to that object and upload a photograph to the site.

Everything has a location so we are creating a ‘Geography of Everything’, a brave claim perhaps but one that develops a new a new kind of geography, the geography of things. Simply click on the map to set a location, your object will now become part of the ‘World of Things‘ map.

Thats it, your object will now become part of the Internet of Things and will be able to tweet, have new stories/tales added as its passed on, sold or interacted with. It is all part of a Social Web of Things or SWOT as its known.

Each thing created gets assigned a unique ‘qrcode’ which can be attached to your object. For example, we have attached a qrcode to our office here in CASA which visitors scan using our free iPhone app. This ‘virtual guest book’ allows our office to recall the story of CASA and the people that pass through our doors. You can print out your codes via the site and attach them to anything.

Any media can be added to you object, the clip below provides a glimpse of the system running via our recent link up with Oxfam via Future Everything, complete with the iPhone RFID reader:

Anything, anywhere can be tagged with any media, do take a look at the beta version of TalesofThings, we are very proud of the work and as the Ericsson Labs blog noted, this is really part of the social web of things, it will be trillions of tags around in a couple of years…

Magic Window for iPad: Timelapse Cities and Landscapes

By ipad, Magic Window, Timelapse, timelapse app

The iPad is an intriguing device in terms of visualisation with various apps catching our attention. The first of which to reach the blog is Magic Window –  a series of 10 timelapse movies wrapped up in an app.

With scenes ranging from landscapes through to cities it makes for a unique view when your have your iPad docked or just sitting around the office/house.

Magic Window for iPad Demo from josh michaels on Vimeo.

As big fans of timelaspe imagery here on du, the MagicWindow app comes highly recommended. With 10 scenes, the first two are pre-installed with the remaining 8 available for download at around 1Gb per scene. High resolution timelapses take space so the file size is not surprising and they do hold up in terms of quality.

You can download the app from both the US iTunes ($3.99) and  UK iTunes store (£2.39). The iPad store is not up and running yet outside of the USA, but if you run a simple search for Magic Window iPad in any of the localized stores it will come up.

A-Team: Drive the Van in Google Earth

By A Team, Google Earth

Google Earth still amazes in terms of visualisation and in the latest development, planetinaction has created a ‘game’ linked to the up and coming A Team movie:


YouTube can be a harsh place to be sometimes and the comments on the various clips have been cutting. What needs to be remembered is that this is running in Google Earth and for us that stands as some achievement.

Click here and play the game.

Picked up via the ever excellent Google Earth Blog

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