A glimpse of future technology from IBM Hursley
Happy Twitter Christmas
IBM master inventor Andy Stanford-Clark has wired-up his Christmas tree lights to a microcontroller plugged into a PC. Using some clever IBM middeware, The microcontroller sets the illumination colour based on a signal from the internet or via SMS over a GSM network - so you can tweet "ibmlights" with the word RED, GREEN or BLUE to change their colour.
Hursley has been home to IBM's WebSphere middleware, MQ Series, message queue technology and the CICs transaction system. IBM uses the site to showcase future technologies like the connected home, smart metering and high-tech retailing.