TILTS: How technology could improve Halloween

I love Halloween. I love watching my kids dress up in their favorite costumes running from house to house saying "trick or treat" trying to break last year's candy record. I even secretly wish that just once the Great Pumpkin would show up for Linus in the pumpkin patch.

But my love of Halloween doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Especially when it comes to technology.

So my technology I'd like to see is the merger of Halloween and technology. I'd start by putting facial recognition cameras and software on my front porch so I could recognize not only what an approaching trick-or-treater is dressed up as but who is under the costume as well (I like to give the kids on my street two treats instead of the usual one).

I might even take it to the next level and employ voice recognition software along with the previous facial recognition. This way I could just leave a sealed box of candy on my front porch that would dispense exactly one or two pieces of candy only after recognizing the words "trick or treat". This would surely eliminate the hassle of being interrupted all night having to answer the door and do the same candy dispensing routine over and over all night.

Halloween analytics

I'd still want to know who showed up at my house so each costume and trick-or-treaters name would be logged to a file on my computer so I could review it later. This would also help me create a more accurate candy estimate for next year.

Of course, my current year's estimates might be off so I would have the candy dispensing device automatically send a text message to my cell phone whenever candy levels ran low.

Now imagine everyone in my neighborhood had this technology. My kids would surely be able to double their candy load since they wouldn't have to wait at each house for the owner to open the door. Perhaps several homeowners, specifically ones that live in a cul-de-sac, could pool their money together and share in the technology for all of the homes in the cul-de-sac. Now my kids could make one stop in the cul-de-sac and cover 5 or 6 homes at once.

Who has the best candy?

Lastly, I would embed GPS and wi-fi into my kids' Halloween buckets. This way, my kids could rate the candy they receive at each house and provide instant feedback to other trick-or-treaters in the area. No more wasted time walking up a long driveway just to get a handful of pennies or an apple when other trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood are reporting that the house on the corner is giving out full-sized candy bars.

I hope you realize by now that this is all completely preposterous. Probably not out of the realm of possibility but preposterous nonetheless. I love technology but I wouldn't wish a single one of the technologies I mentioned here on anyone. OK, maybe just the GPS/wi-fi ratings system, but that's it.

What ridiculous merger of Halloween and technology can you come up with? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Disclaimer: Technologies presented in the TILTS series are based on my original (and sometimes delirious) thoughts. I present them here to the public only because I can not afford to implement any of them myself. If you steal borrow one of my ideas and end up filthy rich because of it, please remember where you got the idea and throw a little love my way. Something like a BMW or a big fat check would do just fine.