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

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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...