Discussion about ambient devices made the Internet rounds earlier this year, and I was reminded of them again when Gizmodo mentioned them recently. My first ambient device was the LED on my phone when I interned at Lotus Technical Support in college. The color of the LED indicated the length of the caller hold queue. I thought the color ranged from green to yellow to orange — until the day they opened up all the trunk lines as an experiment and I saw the LED turn a bright, stress-inducing red. When I saw the orb from Ambient Devices, I started envisioning many useful products, most of which I’m sure have been thought of already. A baby monitor for moms who want to do yoga in peace and quiet, a thermometer for the doneness of your roast, a pollen count indicator (perhaps partially funded and branded by an allergy medicine company), moisture indicators for plants, color feedback on your target pulse rate while exercising. Imagine having a customizable glowing light or two on your wristwatch or jewelry that you could set to indicate whatever you wished. The concept also took me back to my minimal encouters with fuzzy logic, where computing doesn’t necessarily always result in a one or a zero. Ambient Devices’ orb FAQ is a fun read. Here’s some speculation on Apple’s glowing LED case and whether it will be an ambient device. And there was a Slashdot discussion on building your own device. Ambient technology continues the evolution to make the actual computer less obvious. And think of the potential art projects!