What the author describes in his article about not making something because you think others have already done it is exactly my ideology. It is interesting that of all of the themes that are mentioned, there are only a few that I have not thought about either attempting to make or thinking about making in the future. I think that as his list becomes more extensive and the further down you scroll down the page, the concepts behind the ideas become more complicated and you start to see more arbitrary, focused projects where the concept could be applied to a wide variety of projects but the final product is very different.
I think that described phenomenon is the beauty of physical computing or IM, from an already established idea or concept, you could come up with some of the greatest hits.