Meet BEV: The Twitter Activated Vending Machine

Now this is innovative -- a South African beverage company has built an iced tea slinging robot that connects to Twitter's streaming API to recognize tweets containing the hashtag #BOSTweet4T. It dispenses samples when it detects based on geolocation when the Tweeter is in close enough proximity to pick up the drink.

The machine de-activates itself for a brief period of time to display the Tweeter's user name and counts down the seconds before reactivation.

Bos Ice Tea's BEV machine is the world's first Twitter-activated sampling machine. She currently resides at Wembley Square. Follow BOS on Twitter to stay on top of her whereabouts.

This is just one example of the possibilites of APIs when connected to physical goods. With a commerce API, this type of thing could become transactional...