Tweeting from the Womb with the Kickbee

Twitter is the perfect way to stay in touch with your friends and with people who may have the same interests as you but that you never met – and probably never will. Applications developer Corey Menscher doesn’t see tweeting as exclusive only to people who can read and write, and he created a device that helps unborn babies tweet from their mother’s womb.

The idea of the device is simple: it is worn over the midsection of the mother, and can detect movement inside. Whatever data is picked up is sent via Bluetooth to a computer, where it’s divided into baby movement and just plain intestinal gas. In the case of the former, an application sends an automatic message to Twitter and even to phones all over the world, thus helping fathers constantly stay in touch with their babies and their wives, says the creator of Kickbee.

“The Kickbee is a stretchable band worn by a pregnant mother. Vibration sensors are attached directly to the band, and are triggered by movement underneath. The band and electronics are covered in a soft fabric cover for design and comfort. A microcontroller in the garment captures the movement and transmits the signals wirelessly to a computer running a custom application,” Menscher explains on the official product page.

“The application receives the sensor values and analyzes them. When a kick is detected, a message is posted to the social messaging service Twitter via its API (Application Programming Interface). Twitter makes it easy to share these short messages of ‘I kicked Mommy!’ with family and friends, and allows them to be sent as text messages to any mobile phone in the world. The Twitter account can also act as a data log that can be accessed later for visualization or archiving,” the developer further says of the device. Menscher came up with the idea for it while his own wife was pregnant with their first child.

Right now, the Kickbee is still pending a patent, so it might be another while until it becomes available for purchase. Reaction to it ranges from ecstatic to humorous, from those saying it’s a great idea to those who believe it borders on weird.

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