--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
April 16, 2004
New Technology Uses 'Glanceable' Objects
By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
It looks like a size-XXXL chicken egg and glows in colors that change and waver
in intensity as it tracks qualitative shifts in financial data from the
Internet. But the white plastic Orb was designed to be far more than a
barometer of the Dow Jones Industrial average, it's programmed out-of-the-box
function.
Adherents see the glowing $150 device as pioneering a movement where data
generated by computers will be increasingly expressed not on video displays but
in objects that fit more naturally into our lives.
Ambient Devices of Cambridge, Mass. began selling the Orb a year ago. If the
Dow average is up for the day, it glows green. On a down day, the Orb reddens.
The colors' intensity reflects the extent of the swing; yellow means the market
is stable.
Provided with that basic information, an Orb owner can decide whether to go
online for more detail.
Ambient users have programmed Orbs for a remarkable array of tasks: tracking
job openings in Atlanta, measuring the flow of visitors to a Boston-based
interactive design agency's Web site, gauging energy use in a New York City
apartment, tracking eBay auctions, notifying someone when a particular person
is online or a certain number of e-mails have filled their inbox.
"When you think about the magic of the Orb, it's a thermometer for the rest of
your life," said author Seth Godin, who writes on business and social trends.
Godin hopes to program his Orb to track sales of his books on Amazon.com to
save time and "increase my peace of mind."
The Orb's power lies in how can reflect the ease with which humans process
basic visual information.
"It's based on our brain's natural ability to process many streams of
information in parallel," said David Rose, the president of Ambient Devices,
which says it has sold about 20,000 to date. "Our perceptual system is great at
multiprocessing hundreds of peripheral cues every second. We do it without even
trying. Today's computer interfaces completely ignore this."
Rose envisions Orbs and related products being scattered throughout people's
offices, homes and cars, "dedicated to information they care about."
The idea behind Orb came out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Media Lab, where "Tangible Bits" research led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii aims
to replace computers' graphical user interface with tangible representations of
the data they produce - giving physical form to information.
Paul Saffo, research director at the Institute for the Future, calls the Orb
and similar objects "calm computing devices" and believes they augur future
relief from information overload.
They reflect the "ubiquitous computing" concept pioneered by the late Mark
Weiser, former chief technologist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, he
said. In 1998, Weiser built a water fountain outside his office whose flow and
height mimicked the volume and price trend of the stock market.
"Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality," Weiser wrote
in his research. "Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated
world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world
with people."
Ambient's Rose thinks a huge market awaits the Orb and its descendants: "Once
people are aware how easy and delightful it is to have these information
devices in their lives, it will become second nature."
Ambient Devices delivers information to its products through a nationwide
wireless network that the company says reaches more than 90 percent of the U.S.
population. Users can register and customize the information their Orbs reflect
via the Internet. The Orbs can even be "tuned" to several different data
streams.
Ambient isn't stopping with the Orb.
Spinoffs in development include interactive, color-changing picture frames that
let people inform loved ones far away know when they are "thinking about them."
Each frame has a "proximity monitor" that lets users know how close the person
at the other end is.
Other inventions include an Ambient-equipped watch, on which
prescription-related icons light up at doctor-recommended medication times. An
Ambient keychain fob shifts colors based on user-specified traffic information
(congestion, accidents, etc.) requested by the user, and the Ambient Pinwheel
spins to show users that "they've got (e-)mail."
Ambient's newest product, the Dashboard, uses an old-fashioned needle - like
those once found on stereo receivers - to track information such as a futures
market that weighs President Bush's re-election prospects.
At MIT, Ishii's group has a project that, like the Ambient Frame, explores the
possibilities of interpersonal communication - but through touch. Using
force-feedback technology, its "inTouch" devices let users separated by
distance interact through networked physical objects.
Other applications of tangible computing include health care, where it's being
considered as a way of monitoring weight, daily exercise or depression symptoms
from a distance.
For now, the challenge companies like Ambient Devices face is persuading
non-geeks to buy the technology, Rose acknowledged. The Orb originally cost
$300.
"The price needs to get down to sort of like the clock range before people
would have more than a few around their house," he said.
---
On the Net:
http://www.ambientdevices.com
http://tangible.media.mit.edu/
--
.
|
|
| User: "Saint Isidore of Laytonville" |
|
| Title: Re: The Glowing Orb |
17 Apr 2004 11:54:21 AM |
|
|
*a size-XXXL chicken egg and glows in color*
I have an entire box of those that glow in
the dark too. I like to use them to play
fetch with my McNabb Border collie in
the dark. The trails it makes when I throw it is really most psychedelic.
The Psychedelick Pope
Saint Isidore of Laytonville
^Ö^ Patron Saint of the Internet ^Ö^
°°^Ö^ °°
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/me
AOXOMOXOA and ENESSA QUA ONNICA
.
|
|
|
| User: "TonyZ2001" |
|
| Title: Re: The Glowing Orb |
18 Apr 2004 08:28:07 AM |
|
|
cturley2@aol.com
wrote:
I have an entire box of those that glow in
the dark too. I like to use them to play
fetch with my McNabb Border collie in
the dark. The trails it makes when I >throw it is really most psychedelic.
Seeing trails even when your off the drugs, eh?
Tony
.
|
|
|
| User: "Dani" |
|
| Title: Re: The Glowing Orb |
19 Apr 2004 01:24:51 AM |
|
|
On 18 Apr 2004 13:28:07 GMT, (TonyZ2001) wrote:
cturley2@aol.com
wrote:
I have an entire box of those that glow in
the dark too. I like to use them to play
fetch with my McNabb Border collie in
the dark. The trails it makes when I throw it is really most psychedelic.
Seeing trails even when your off the drugs, eh?
He takes Medicinal marijuana for a list of ailments, Tony.
Christ are you a hypocrite.
Dani
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
