The glowing plastic Orb gives you the information you care about by changing colours.
Ambient Devices (Cambridge, Massachusetts) began selling the Orb a year ago and so far users have programmed Orbs for an impressive array of tasks: tracking job openings, following the fluctuations of the stock market, gauging energy use in an apartment, tracking eBay auctions, notifying when a particular person is online, etc.
Ambient Devices embed information representation in everyday objects (pen, watch, walls, etc), its products reflect a trend in which data generated by computers will be increasingly expressed in objects that fit more naturally into our lives.
More in USA Today.