Botanicalls

The plant that twitters when it's thirsty

People always used to laugh when Prince Charles talked to his plants. Now, thanks to Twitter and a software called Botanicalls, the plants can talk back.

The leading actor in the Botanicalls realm seems to be a plant called Pothos.

Please don't ask me what kind of plant Pothos is. I can barely tell an oak tree from a park bench. However, he (can a plant be a "he"?) has more than 2,600 followers and--suggesting Pothos might be a little on the self-centered side--Pothos is following no one.

Botanicalls' software is very simple. It hooks your plant to its own Twitter page and the plant feeds information straight to your cell phone. Most of the information, strangely, is about feeding.

Pothos has already offered 151 updates. Gems such as "Water me please." And "Thank you for watering me." Or even "You didn't water me enough."… Read more

Eight oddball Twitter utilities

Twitter is a great personal and social communications platform. But that's not all you can use it for.

I've dug through countless services to find some interesting, loopy, and just plain cool tools that allow you to do more than talk to friends. From receiving tweets when your clothes are clean to tracking packages, Twitter is a great place to solve many of the day's tasks.

PIMPY3WASH OK, so maybe you can't use this and it's only designed for one person, but PIMPY3WASH is the neatest washing machine hack I've seen, so I had … Read more

Follow your man-eating plant on Twitter

Social networking has arrived at the plantbox. An outfit called Adafruit Industries is peddling a gadget that's part Twitter, part Tamagotchi, and part Martha Stewart, with a good dose of Little Shop of Horrors thrown in along the way.

"Botanicalls Twitter" is a $160 kit that monitors house plants and relays their condition to a Twitter account, texting your mobile phone if necessary. The system, which has its roots as a research project at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, uses embedded sensors that supposedly detect whether a plant is in need of water, food, or … Read more

Plants that Twitter when they need to be watered

If you thought it was bad enough that all your friends, and even your mother, want you to keep up with them via their Twitter pages, your plants could now do the same.

That's because the folks at Botanicalls, a group that formed at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program that figured out how to get plants to make phone calls when they need to be watered, have now extended that functionality to Twitter.

"Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What's up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status … Read more