Decius wrote:
] The idea of these devices is to be able to present information
] from computers in a way that gets burried into my environment
] in an artful way. Its a ubiquitos computing concept. You get
] home and you can tell by the color of the little globe in the
] corner whether or not you have new email. It can serve two
] purposes. The first is to reduce the amount of effort required
] to get at a particular peice of information. This can make you
] more efficient. If you are waiting for an email to come in you
] don't have to keep checking your laptop. The second is to
] force you to become aware of something you usually ignore,
] like your stock portfolio, by putting it into your environment
] in a way you cannot ignore.

[ I understand all that, but am just not all that compelled by it. As an artistic argument, I'm down with it, but as a device with much needed functionality, I'm just not seeing it. I'm never "waiting for an email" in a general sense... I am, *maybe*, waiting for a specific email. If the interface is rich enough to handle that, I guess I see it, but my inbox is essentially always marked unread because of spam, so the toggle becomes meaningless. Also, if the interface is that rich, then I have to spend time configuring it, which eliminates a lot of the point. I feel like most other potential uses for this thing also fall into that category.

I like gadgets and widgets and blinkenlites as much as the next guy -- i used to just sit and stare at the VU meter on my dad's stereo when i was young. I have a fair bit of interest in unique ways to represent data (primarily rich visualizations of audio) and when those guys developed the network Auralization project, I thought that was innovative and potentially useful. I guess mostly I'm just thinking this device falls into a dark niche between art/shiny object and useful product. I suppose, for the sake of the developers, I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not lining up for one. -k]

RE: First Look at Ambient Devices Office Dashboard - The Wireless Weblog - wireless.weblogsinc.com _