Photos via Corey Menscher 

Twitter — despite its navelgazing reputation to outsiders — is quite an interesting tool for developers and inventors to play with. Unlike other social media that adopted a “closed garden” approach to developers, Twitter has been friendlier then its peers from the get-go. As a result, there’s been a ton of Twitter mashups but none have pushed the boundaries on physical computing quite as memorably as Corey Menschler, an NYU ITP graduate student. An expectant father, Corey wanted to share the joys of fatherhood and getting a sense of connection with his unborn kid. Why should his wife have all the fun? Meet his invention, Kickbee: a wearable maternity belt for moms that sends out tweets every time her baby kicks. 

The tweets, themselves, read hilariously: “”Wow I’m being very active! I kicked Mommy 84 times at 03:44AM on Thu, Dec 11!” 12:46 AM Dec 11th from web. The belt is made of sensors that are powered by an Arduino Mini microcontroller, a Java application that translates the sensory information, and Bluetooth which helps upload the data to Twitter. Nice!

Sure, it may seem like fun-n-games but you think about how useful this could be to health, fitness, and other useful applications. 

Can someone nominate this guy, Geek Dad of the Year?