You know how inscrutable your computer is? How it never reacts to you, except to give you the metaphorical finger with a blue screen of death? Well Ambient Devices is trying to change all that.

The company’s first product is the Ambient Orb, which ‘transitions between thousands of colors to show changes in the weather, the health of your stock portfolio, or if your boss or kid is on instant messenger.
‘It basically uses a wireless network to receive data which makes it glow on demand.

This concept is, of course, not a million miles away from this.