Admittedly, I’m not sure what my marketing angle is on this post. Perhaps, as a new father, I’m simply wrestling the privacy concerns this little idea might raise versus the obvious charm (and by “charm” I mean “marketability”) of receiving tweets from the fruit of one’s loins.

The Twoddler is a prototype device, developed by a team at Hasselt University in Belgium. Essentially, it interfaces a Fisher Price toy to a Twitter account, such that when the toddler performs different actions, the account is updated.

Here’s how the team describes it:

“The software captures sensor data from the activity centre and tries to select a predefined text that is related to that sensor data. We are extending the system so it becomes easier to relate certain patterns of sensor readings with a set of strings.

“For example: when Yorin plays with mommy’s picture for over three minutes, a Twitter message will be posted saying, ‘@mommy_yorin Yorin misses mommy and looks forward to playing with her this evening.’ Or when Yorin is hitting the doorbell button four times in a row, a Twitter message will be posted saying, ‘Yorin is showing off his music skills with a new tune.’ We hope to even support dynamic composition of new strings in the future.”

See this diabolical/charming little project in action.