Ambient Market Maven

First, you can completely map the color palette. In other words, you can do much more than just define endpoints with critical values which means that the scaling can be linear, logarithmic, or something else.

Second, you can actually track TWO things and have the orb switch colors between them. This makes all sorts of data presentation possible: current value and rate of change, current value and current min or max, etc. Recently it altered me to a spike in usage - otherwise, I might not have noticed it until it had passed. So even though it's very "cute" it can be programmed to be very useful as well.

For most any situation where you have something that can be expressed as "on a scale of... what/how is..." that people need to know and an applicance can do the trick (i.e., you don't need human explanation), the Orb might be a good solution for you.


Ehh... It's okay...   July 16, 2004
Michael Wahl (Pittsburgh, PA USA)
24 out of 27 found this review helpful

It looks nice and the whole concept behind it is nice, with all the different options available online for what you can track with the Orb. Of course, the colors are also nice.
However, I've had the Orb for about six months and paid for premium service to track my local weather... and according to the Orb... it's only rained once in the last 5 months (and coverage isn't an issue, being near a major city). And so you know, aside from the weather in about 4 cities, and the generic Stock Market tracker, you need to subscribe to the premium service to have access to he other options ($6.95/month or $19.99/quarter).
It's sleek, stylish, and a great conversation piece, but if you want up-to-date, accurate info, this probably isn't the best way to go.


New York Times Review   November 13, 2003
12 out of 19 found this review helpful

Glass That Glows and Gives Stock Information
by BARNABY FEDER June 10, 2003

Hordes of entrepreneurs and giant companies compete to make consumer electronic devices faster, multifeatured and able to process mind-boggling amounts of data. But David Rose is betting there is money to be made heading against the crowd. His company, Ambient Devices, a start-up in Cambridge, Mass., is producing devices that display limited information in ways that can be understood with just a glance.

Researchers have speculated since the 1980's that data-deluged consumers might welcome a new class of unobtrusive display devices that can instantly convey general information like the direction of the stock market or traffic conditions to viewers who know what is being monitored. The potential appeal of bare-bones displays is clear in the continuing popularity of things like clocks and nondigital speedometers.

The information age twist is that, thanks to computers and wireless communications, even the simplest display can now draw on data from anywhere in the world. Moreover, computers make it possible to switch such a device from being a stock monitor to a traffic reporter without replacing the display.

Researchers at M.I.T.'s Media Lab, Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon have built a winsome array of objects that can represent changing information - like lighted glass fixtures that change color, pinwheels that change speed and water tubes that show varying concentrations of bubbles. One experiment at the University of California at Berkeley involved a mobile representing the schedules of buses that passed near the researchers' laboratory, with arms that rose and fell to indicate how far away each bus was supposed to be.

A year ago, Ambient Devices began to test commercially whether consumers would pay for devices that offer unobtrusive displays of information.

"Our philosophy is to make them friendly to live with by sidestepping all issues of how to work it or which button to press," said Mr. Rose, the company's president and a former programmer and product designer. "We're going to increase the number of devices in your life but you won't think of them as devices."

Ambient started with a $299 color-shifting glass orb sold primarily through Hammacher Schlemmer and Web sites like ThinkGeek. The direction of the stock market - deep red when the Dow Jones Industrial Average is headed down, shading to bright green when it is surging - has been the most common subject of interest for the 800 or so early purchasers, Mr. Rose said.

The orbs are plugged into the wall and are meant to be left on like clocks. They receive their data wirelessly through radio signals sent over pager networks. The orbs can represent any type of information available on the Internet, but such content is translated and compressed by Ambient's main server into a proprietary code so that only brief snippets of data are needed to control the orb's color.

Ambient offers a few data streams like stock indexes and weather reports free with the device. But it charges a subscription fee, generally $7 a month, for more specialized data, like tracking a particular stock.

Michael F. Anthony, chairman and chief executive of Brookstone, said he was impressed by how much attention the orb that he keeps on a table in his office has attracted. He said his orb is programmed to track Brookstone's stock.

Asked whether subordinates steer clear of the office when the orb is glowing red, Mr. Anthony laughed and said, "I've made it stay green."

Ambient's emphasis on simplicity is not entirely foreign to information technology trends. Mr. Rose, 36, who earlier in his career worked on making products like personal digital assistants easier to use, noted that the demand was strong for simpler interfaces on devices.

ahhh.... the pretty red color... WAIT... RED?!?!?   April 29, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

I received this for Christmas... best gift ever. Information is pushed to your device (it uses a cell phone - like network, so the only necessary cord is the power cord); it provides an extremely easy (and fun to show off) information center. Web configuration is simple, and there's no need to subscribe on a monthly basis (unless you want the added benefit of monitoring you Custom stock portfolio or other more specific channels.
A great gift -- a great tech toy.


Weather function limited to 4 cities for free   October 29, 2004
D. Hartley
10 out of 12 found this review helpful

I think it was NYC, Atlanta, Chicago and San Fran? (maybe LA?) got free updates, otherwise you needed to subscribe to the monthly fee. I was disapointed, returned it.

Functionality-wise it is pretty neat, and did work well. Would consider buying it again if they added Boston to the roster of free cities.