I’m glad Ambient built a network, because I was able to purchase one for my mother. Although I, and many people I know have broadband – we are a far cry from my mother being able to hang a barometer on the wall showing her allergy levels and have it work. Have you seen the Tivo manual for wifi setup? ugh. Additionally, I found out about ambient after reading this months Business 2.0, where it says they’ve got less than 10 employees, so clearly this is not Worldcom.

They’ve been smart about getting a technology to work for the laymen years ahead of time… that may mean it’s expensive now ($150 is -way- too much) but this is bleading edge technology my friends. Where do you think the price is going to go?

So thanks, I’m bookmarking this page and checking back in a year when the Google announcement to buy Ambient comes out.

I still don’t want one, but having found an example of people cobbling together their own ambient information, I like the concept just that much more.

As it is, there is an inclination to make data delivery from the internet to some part of the ambient world a mere version of that this data would be if displayed on one’s browser.

But the opportunity and challenge here is to say, “new medium, new codes.” We don’t want internet data of the traditional kind on ambient devices. We want something that is faster and more visual so that it can stream over us all the time and that we can take it in just in time. Ambient has got us thinking in the right direction.

Not that it matters but this is very like what happened when historians started to consult the material culture record more seriously. They consulted it for exactly the data they were looking for in the archival record. New medium, old methods. The real opportunity here was to see how objects could answer new questions, not old ones.

Thanks, Grant

My problem with Ambient isn’t even that they’re being drastic…it’s that they’re being _unnecessarily_ drastic. Much as we might laugh today at the thought of wiring up your fridge, wired appliances _are_ coming in the near future. And while they probably won’t support any interesting applications out of the box, it won’t be hard (once your fridge has a screen for diagnostics) to hack some software that’ll use that screen and the internet connection to do something like what Ambient does.

There’s no really compelling reason that the next TiVo service upgrade couldn’t support a bug on your TV screen to do the same kind of thing, as well. (Frankly that’d be a lot more useful than doing it with your fridge…and a lot less problematic than another bothersome piece of physical hardware to worry about finding a place for.)

So yeah, semi-OK idea about something the market might want, but LOUSY execution.

Undertoad, well said, I defer to the wisdom of my betters (you and Matt). However, I still believe that information wants to stream (not quite the same thing as being free) and perhaps the Ambient challenge will persuade the boys and girls at the lap to get it out of the computer into the world. Thanks, Grant

In an era when every single location is being wired (and un-wired) for permanently-on IP connectivity, someone is going to pay one hundred and forty nine dollars to follow a presidential approval rating which is mentioned routinely on all news broadcasts?

Or are they going to track more important, more dynamic variables such as stock prices… with a display as dynamic and readable as a wall barometer? “My net worth is declining and I can tell because the needle moved slightly to the left!”

Ever heard the phrase “information wants to be free”? I don’t agree with the sentiment entirely, but I do know that information does NOT want to be ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE DOLLARS.

What it really seems like they’ve found a way to do is spend mind-numbing sums of money building (and making ubiquitous) an unneeded network redundant with the networks that much larger enterprises have gone bankrupt (can you say Worldcom? I knew you could!) building, all in service of a quirky little application that _might_ sustain a small, 50-person company in profitability.

I suppose their business idea mandates that in addition to the (inexpensive) information business they also be in the (captial-intensive) hardware business and the (ruinous) network infrastructure business. But just because those crippling limitations are unavoidable in their context, doesn’t mean I’m not betting against any company that suffers from them.