There's no more denying it: the holiday season has arrived. You may have already been complaining about all of the lights, decorations and Christmas music since the end of Halloween, but now that December has arrived, you might just have to surrender yourself to the season and go with it.
If you DO decide to put up holiday lights, you might as well make them awesome. In the past, that would usually imply some kind of Griswoldian mega-display that could threaten the power supply in your neighbourhood. In this age of energy conservation, that might not cut it anymore - and besides, instead of trying to dazzle your neighbours, why not connect with them? Even if that means your neighbours on the other side of the planet?
That's the idea behind CheerLights, a project that allows people around the world to sync their light displays via Twitter. That means that every set of lights on the CheerLights network will change colour simultaneously, each time someone posts a tweet to the @Cheerlights Twitter account or uses the hashtag #cheerlights.
Obviously the more people taking part, the better (this IS a social network after all); it's possible to change all the lights in a given neighbourhood at once just by sending a tweet, so long as every house is participating.
Getting your own set of lights on the network takes a bit of basic electrical engineering, but fortunately the people at LifeHacker have provided a helpful, how-to video:
Sources:
@TheStromboShow