[NCLUG] What should I have on my information display?

[Brian Wood]

On 12/27/2010 03:30 PM, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
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> I'm looking for suggestions on more things to put on my information display
> at home.  See the second picture here:
>
>     http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/jafo_20101025_224922
>
> I have almost half of it still available.
>
> My old one also would display if there was an alert from the Internet storm
> center, but I removed that because every time there was one of those it was
> always a non-event.  It also used to display caller-ID, but we no longer
> have a land line.  I'll probably add some information about our home
> network connection, so I can glance up to see if it's saturated or not.
>
> Any ideas on good things I can add to the display?  Particularly things
> that I can get off the Internet rather than, say, having to install an
> electronic power meter on the house.
>
> Of course, the software that I use to display this is all publicly
> available if anyone else wants to reproduce it.  I will say that the Atom
> 330 ION system I got to put there has a surprisingly loud fan, so going
> with a newer Atom that has lower power use would probably be recommended.
> The 330 system I got on a special around christmas for a really attractive
> price though.

Pretty cool.

Who would have ever thought that "Weather Underground" would be 
something useful, people of my generation read that phrase very differently.

I suppose stock quotes are too obvious, and of limited usefulness.

Just some ideas, off the top of my head:

If it were me I'd think about a scrolling version of the /. RSS feed.

The "Doomsday Clock", or the "National Debt Clock", both might be 
interesting, though somewhat depressing.

The video/stills from selected web cams, especially the highway cams 
during bad weather, might be useful.

Traffic alerts, for a route you take often.

The Security Alert "Color"? Meaningless.

You might mine Twitter for information, as suggested here:

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/how-to-mine-twitter-for-information/

It would be nice to see Twitter actually be useful for something.


Altitude would be of limited use, and if it changed significantly you 
would probably have more important things on your mind.