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One use for that display area is for ambient data. There are things like the "ambient orb" that display the status of, say, the stock market using the color of the orb (you can buy the official ambient orb at a ridiculous price or build your own using some LEDs and an Arduino...). It turns out that these kinds of peripheral information systems work quite well. You don't really ever look at them, but you're sufficiently aware of their status that you can react if something changes.

There are a bunch of things you could turn into ambient data: stock market, weather predictions, calendar notifications, network traffic, server status, build status (some people hook them up to automatic test suites, so that a broken codebase is immediately apparent), and so on. The idea is to give the user information without demanding their focus/attention. It works quite well.

I've been considering getting one of these for use as a build tool.

Eons ago, Slashdot had an article on using lava lamps as part of your build control process. The idea was that if the build broke, the lava lamp of the developer who broke was switched on. Since lava lamps take a while to get going, you had about twenty minutes or so to fix the build before everyone started noticing what was going on.

Now I thought about doing the same with an Ambient Orb. A spot of searching suggests I'm not the only one who thought about this, but I ran into two problems straight off - the ambient orb doesn't work in Europe, and you need to post data to an external web site whereas my stuff is internal only. So that's a dead end.

Enter Arduino. There are sites on the web showing how to create a glowing orb using an Arduino-based device connected via USB. Now if I had that, I could write a small app to interpret cruise control output and then have the globe start glowing orange for, say, failed unit tests or red for 'this build is dead'. Green or blue for 'everything is fine'. I'm pretty interested in doing this project, as ever it's a question of time, but I can easily see the benefits of it.

Cheers,
Ian

http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/Ambient_energyPI F.pdf

Isn't this coming from the director of the laboratory whose only successful prodcut is a glowing green ball that changes colors with the stock market?

Seriously, what kind of disruptive innovation has ever come from the MIT Media Lab? Companies have put money in there for years and gotten nothing in return.

By the way, looking for disruptive vs. incremental technology changes is complete and utter nonsense. Entrepreneurs look for where they can make money. There's plenty of money to be made in all kinds of places in our economy, ranging from mom and pop restaurants all the way up to the latest and greatest gizmo. Game changing technology might be interesting or it might not. The road is littered with companies who changed the game and then were crushed by other players.

Money is made with smart market analysis that asks what do people want and how much are they willing to pay. Throw in a way to keep competitors out, and you have the beginnings (but not everything) of a good startup whether you make new fangled ball bearings or web pages. MIT Media Lab not required.

I've been wanting to do this same thing with one of these Ambient Orbs.

They have a pretty complete spectrum range and can also pulse at varying speeds. I figured it could be cool (and useful) having color represent server health and pulsing equal load. The only problem is you have to transmit your info to ambient, who then transmits it to your orb 15-20 minutes later; I would prefer a more immediate local solution that didn't involve me transmitting somewhat sensitive information.

I know I know, I can make one myself, but who has the time?

....for desktop computers users at least.

I've been using my Ambient Weather Beacon for few months now. I don't know if it helps, but I know my daily headaches went away after I put it behind my monitors. Plus, it's wicked cool!

You are probably thinking about Ambient devices, http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/index.html a few years ago they started with the stock marked orb, then the weather beacon. They seem to target urban yuppie geeks who are trying to decrease the amount of "cute" things in their decorating. The tech is RF based, and by subscribing to the service you can change what is displayed. I have the weather beacon, I like it. I'll save the customer raves for Amazon.

I think a bunch of these in some systematic display would be pretty awesome. Maybe they pulse green slowly when things are good, and flash red when all hell is loose.

What the practice of software development really needs is some way to assign blame to people and keep them under pressure to get things right. Right?

Hooking a computer up to a lava lamp is neat (however not as cool as the Ambient Orb), but treating programmers like Pavlovian dogs is ridiculous.

Now, everyone go buy an Ambient Orb so they can mass-produce them more, and then I can finally afford one!

I could see a sysadmin type writing a tiny bit of code make their case glow red when getting slashdotted, predicting the weather like the Ambient beacon (link above), etc. I think Ambient is a very cool company and I'd like to see their design principles ripple outward into other companies' products.

I have, sort of.. It's called the Ambient Orb. There are some variations between the ideas, however.

you are referring to the ambient orb. i have one at work which tracks the s&p. it plugs into power - no usb, serial, etc is needed because it picks up a broadcast radio signal.

why binary - make one of these hover about - it can indicate a range of whatever.

For some reason, my links to Ambient got munged...

Just go to AmbientDevices.com to check out the orb and the dashboard.

Along those lines, these guys make some great products but come on, a cellular modem embedded in every device? Why not lower the cost significantly and just have the damn thing plug into your computer. Sheesh.

We are programmed to focus our attention on people that "might be speaking to us." This is completely unconscious, but has a "high interrupt level."

When we hear each utterrance (especially when it is LOUD) in a half-conversation, we get the subconscious cue that the person is trying to raise our attention and we get a priority interrupt which we cannot block. This is a (perhaps survival-based?) response that won't go away, I predict.

Researchers in the relatively new UI area of peripheral attention create "polite" UI objects that don't compete for your attention with things you have to attend to with a high priority. These guys use this idea for cute products.

Maybe such researchers can come up with something.

The concept of "bystander UI" referred to in the article is interesting.

This platform takes advantage of existing long-range (pager networks, 2.5G, SMS), as well as emerging short-range (Bluetooth, 802.11) connectivity standards.

These are the schematics to our "orb classic" which used an external pager. The orb we currently sell has the pager unit internal to the orb.

This platform takes advantage of existing long-range (pager networks, 2.5G, SMS), as well as emerging short-range (Bluetooth, 802.11) connectivity standards.

These are the schematics to our "orb classic" which used an external pager. The orb we currently sell has the pager unit internal to the orb.

The Ambient Orb slowly transitions between thousands of colors to show changes in the weather, the health of your stock portfolio, or if your boss or kid is on instant messenger. http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/orborder.htm l

http://www.ambientdevices.com

From their web site:

"Frosted glass orb glows a color to indicate your information.

"The Ambient Orb slowly transitions between thousands of colors to show changes in the weather, the health of your stock portfolio, or if your boss or kid is on instant messenger."

It's actually quite slick, and I bought one for myself. It currently tells me the outdoor temperature via warmer/colder colors. Looks great sitting on my desk.

$150.00.

http://www.ambientdevices.com/developer/

-Tommy

http://www.ambientdevices.com/developer/

-Tommy

you can buy the developer kit if you want to hook it up to your computer, but it works great just wireless, no computer or net connection necessary.

Basically they are saying why be stupid enough to wait 10 years for WiFi to finally be broad enough that everyone can buy one, just put it on a wide-area network so anyone can buy one today.

Probably they'll make a wifi one later for compusa crowd, but by making it wireless this Orb can be in Chiasso as well as compusa..

Ambient Devices' Orb. Ambient Devices is an MIT Media Lab company and it has this Orb that changes color according to the stock portfolio. Check out the link, scroll down a bit.

Ambient Devices