Mention Quartz on Twitter, and its newsroom lights up

Zach Seward of the Quartz staff writes that a light bulb in the newsroom of the new financial news site will light up any time it is mentioned on Twitter.

Seward writes, “To slake my obsession and distract myself from work, I recently set up a lightbulb in our office that toggles on and off when someone mentions @quartznews on Twitter, among other rules. Now, when you interact with us, our newsroom is literally brightened.

“The setup is fairly simple, thanks to some new products that help anyone with a nerdy curiosity play around with the Internet of Things. The lightbulb, pictured above, is plugged into a Belkin WeMo Switch, which was released last month. It connects to the Internet over WiFi, and an accompanying iPhone app lets you turn on and off any device plugged into the WeMo. (I use one at home to flip on my AC before getting home.)

“In addition to manual control with your phone, it’s also possible to give the switch a bit of a Web-connected brain. Belkin has partnered with ifttt, a Web service that stands for ‘if this, then that.’ That allowed us to set some rules for our little lightbulb: if something happens, then flip the switch.”

Read more here.