Imagine electronic Post-it notes allowing users to dynamically access and display information and stick them wherever one thinks the information is needed--the underlying principle of PostBits. Of course, with current technology, PostBits resemble small blocks with a 2.7-inch touchscreen, but using an E-Ink display and a colored plastic coating, the PostBit devices last more than eight days and have been successfully, as this report demonstrates, deployed to home environments.

Technically, the PostBit devices are not much more than smart monitors endowed with an 8 MHz central processing unit (CPU) and 4 GB microSD card, communicating with a central (Java-based) server deployed in the (public) cloud using ZigBee as a local low-power wireless protocol and a local Internet protocol (IP) gateway for accessing the Internet.

Users control the information displayed on the PostBits by using a simple web user interface and may choose from (pre-integrated) public information feeds (for example, weather, Twitter, news) or enter their own (short) texts.

Besides a good technical discussion, the paper also reports on early usage patterns exhibited by six families each using five PostBits in their home environment over the course of one week. Among expected interaction scenarios (for example, shopping lists displayed on PostBits in the kitchen), three emerging usage behaviors are noteworthy: spatially directed remote postings (sending memorable information to a specific PostBit, for example, in your study), active in situ communication (updating your status information on a PostBit at home from work), and spatially filtered information feeds (using two PostBits to simultaneously follow two Twitter streams).

The major part of the paper dwells on the sociological dimension of the small-scale field study with a good introduction to related work. Lots of graphics and also photographs from “PostBits in action” render the thorough discussion easily comprehensible. This study is geared to anyone interested in novel applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) at home.