Infant tweets? Well actually Twoddling. What is this technologically laden world coming to? Yet I must admit, of the five presentations I saw earlier this month of Belgium internet business start-ups perhaps the most interesting - if impractical - was the one on the Twoddler.

All of the presentations were examples of marvellous ways in which entrepreneurs take their ideas and transform them into business start-ups waiting for angel investment funds.

The Twoddler is a prototype created as part of a course on mobile and pervasive computing at Belgium's Hasselt University. This year it won an Innovative and Creative Applications award. The students who designed the prototype toy and presented it to the gathering of investors, did so partially tongue-in-cheek.

"This is a toy that allows working parents to know when their children are active, say at a crèche," said one of the presenters at the event, amidst much laughter from the audience. "The child won't know they are sending a tweet. They are simply playing."

The Twoddler is a modified Fisher Price activity centre re-designed to send messages via Twitter to parents if their baby repeatedly presses or plays with certain buttons or features of the toy.

The toy has pictures posted on it of the child's parents or other family messages, so if the child turns the handle with mummy's photograph on it a tweet would be sent to the toddler's personal Twitter account.

As the creators put it: "When Yorin plays with mommy's picture for over three minutes, a Twitter message will be posted saying "[AT]mommy_yorin Yorin misses mommy and looks forward playing with her this evening". When Yorin hits the doorbell button four times in a row, a Twitter message will be posted saying "Yorin is showing off his music skills with a new tune".

A Twoddler could also communicate with another child's Twoddler. For example a child plays with his toy, generating effects such as coloured lights that blink on another toddler's activity centre.

"With Twoddler we hope to have created a platform for Twoddler communication and open opportunities to learn more about how we can support online presence of Toddlers for their parents," the creators say. "Presence information is based on simple, playful and non-intrusive activity recognition."

However some parents may be turned off of this idea of driving technology down to the smaller masses. "Your idea may be interesting, but I will never want to buy this toy if it came on the market," said one of the audience members. "I do not want to know what my children are doing while I am at work."

Since their public presentation the prototype has since received very harsh criticism against it from the likes of Wired Magazine.

"As if Twitter weren't already full of utterly bland, mindless codswallop, researchers from Hasselt University in Belgium are about to add the random, idiotic bleatings of a baby to the stream of nonsense," says a Wired blogger. "Worse, the baby won't even know it is broadcasting its brainless, repetitive activities to the world."

The creators subsequently posted a message on their website, basically telling the reporters to lighten up a bit: "Twoddler is a prototype system as a result of a course on combining hardware and software in an innovative way. It is not a commercial product nor is it available for general usage. How serious you take this, is entirely up to you!"

For a bit of fun visit the website

(http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/twoddler) featuring the toy.

Here in brief (since I got so enthused with the idea behind the

Twoddler) are the other five business ideas in various stages of the start up process. All are looking for investors.

IDiscover (www.idiscover.be/en) is developing the modified hardware and new software to create an interactive mobile device that can be used, for example, for a game to guide students on a tour of a museum.

Gaming combined with learning could be a powerful tool to making the dreaded school trip more productive.

Yaxo (www.yaxo.be), another start-up, provides a backend for sales people to monitor potential customers as they navigate an online store's purchasing system. Right now it is being tested on a department store's card sign-up system. The software provides customer service with a live vision of a customer's decision.

Thus if a customer has entered information (or is adding items to an online cart) and then pauses for an overly long time, the store rep can send a popup message, email or phone message asking if they want help with their transaction.

BeBuzy.be has created a site that can best be described as the eBay for local services. Thus if someone in Brussels needs to find a plumber they can enter a place and time they want the service. The site will generate a list of plumbers who are willing to travel the distance and are available to do the job, along with price. Customers are also able to rate service providers.

Meanwhile Netway (www.netway.eu) is attempting to provide a simpler solution to Java. The company is based in Luxembourg and has gone beyond the start-up phase. It has developed the Ergo Netway suite, software for the web interfaces used in e-commerce and e-business.

The people behind the company begin from a philosophical position.

"Simplicity is about living life with more enjoyment and less pain," one of the presenters said at the event. "Simplifying interfaces" is the company's slogan.

The company approaches software development as a science: "This visionary approach was justified by the growing development of e-business and by the lack of attention paid to the behaviour of visitors when those e-commerce sites were developed."

Send any comments to elamin.ahmed@gmail.com