Web site puts mundane existence online

AMSTERDAM (Wired) - Alex van Es, a systems analyst from the town of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, consumed a couple of croissants, an apple, and a cup of tea Sunday morning. He read a local newspaper and treated his cat to some gourmet cat food.

Those are just a few of the facts of his life Van Es shares on his Web site, Icepick.com (http://www.icepick.com). Whenever Van Es throws something in the trash, he runs the wrappings through a barcode scanner, which is wired to a database on his computer, which is connected to his Web site. Garbage is fascinating, but the barcode trash bin is only one component of his wired home.

Van Es built Icepick.com in order to keep tabs on his house while he was at work. ``I was living above an office at the time,'' he said. ``By accident, people were ringing my doorbell all the time. I wanted to keep tabs on who was at my doorstep when I was away. Also, my cat was about to go into labor, and I didn't want to miss that.''

Van Es seems willing to share every quantifiable detail of his life. He has connected his doorbell, his refrigerator, his phone, his toilet, his alarm clock, and six cameras to the Web.

The result is that 400 people a day know a lot of little things about the 25-year old programmer. For instance: At 3:26:37 p.m. on Saturday, someone rang his doorbell for 2.910156 seconds. Since July 17, he's opened his refrigerator on 1,347 occasions, and yesterday he flushed his toilet 17 times.

Three Internet cameras, known as webcams, pinpoint Van Es inside his home. Most of the time he's behind his PC. Occasionally he can be seen peeping into the fridge. When you're tired of watching him, you can check the new ``catcam,'' which tracks whether his cat has had dinner yet. The outdoor cameras keep an eye on who's pushing the doorbell and what's happening down the street.

One of the newest additions to Icepick.com is the interactive alarm clock. Each day, visitors to the site are invited to choose one of 20 wake-up tunes that Van Es has stored on his hard disk. He awakes the following morning to the most popular song.

Obviously, Van Es isn't concerned about privacy. ``Whenever there's a reason, I'll simply disconnect the webcams,'' he says.

That doesn't make him an exhibitionist. But he's fascinated with the concept of reporting the minutiae of his life to the world.

``It's a challenge,'' he says. ``I'd like to be on the edge of what's technically feasible. Every time I try to connect something new to the Internet it remains to be seen whether it will work or not.''

After watching Van Es and reading the spreadsheets, many Icepick visitors are compelled to offer advice.

``You'll have to tidy up a bit,'' wrote one. ``Why don't you put away those slippers that are lying about?''

Others, finding few fruits or vegetables in the trash bin, have expressed concern about Van Es's eating habits. (As Van Es points out, such items don't have barcodes.) Many Dutch visitors have taken offense at his apparent refusal to recycle his newspapers.

Some people are unashamedly voyeuristic in their queries. One visitor recently inquired about Van Es's marital status and whether he couldn't connect his bed to the Internet.

(Reuters/Wired)

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