Do you know what an API is? Me neither, but it has something to do with the inner workings of web applications like Twitter, LibraryThing, GoodReads, Facebook etc. When web application developers let their API’s into the wild strange things can happen.

For instance. I’m on Twitter. I’m also on GoodReads. I clicked a button on GoodReads that allowed my activity there to be let loose on Twitter. So when I add a book to my “shelf” on GoodReads it goes out as a twitter. That’s fine. Except that when I just change my status of what page I’m on in a particular book on GoodReads it also sends that to Twitter. So yesterday, for much of the day my twitter status said:

So, that was a little embarrassing. I checked GoodReads and there is no obvious way to turn this off. I don’t know whose API is at fault here, so I’m avoiding GoodReads until I figure this out.

This got me to thinking.

What if other things were to tap into Twitter. Like my house for instance. What if everything I did were to be broadcast to Twitter. It might look like this. (And yes, the House made a few typos).