How’s Your Internet Feeling Today?

The boon of a slow news day (or morning, at the very least) is that it gives an intrepid internetsman like myself the opportunity to force upon hapless readers all sorts of awesome stuff. Take this, for example. Yes, it does look like one of those aroma therapy candles your mom would buy, doesn’t it? She’s got to hide your scent somehow, you basement-dwelling freak technology enthusiast. But a candle it’s not – this is an oracle into the state of the social web. Existing as little more than an Arduino hooked up to a WiFly (okay, so that’s all it is), this little unit scans Twitter at large for trigger words like ‘happy’, ‘sad’, and ‘angry’, and attempts to identify and display the general mood of the internet by changing color and intensity to suit. Hot. Useless? Well, it would probably be more helpful to have an Arduino lamp scanning the local weather than the internet, which generally has 100% chance of thunderstorms. But then again, I can’t think of a reason for a Twitter enthusiast not to have one. I wonder what color it displays for Justin Bieber. Actually, no I don’t. [Via HacknMod]