The roads I take...

What if finding out if the tree is green would not need you to go to a website in your conventional browser but actually have it sitting on your table, What f you'd have it around when you are not looking at your screen or a web browser? What if you could just take it with you and have it there in a meeting or a break, so you'd know that your checkin didn't break the tree or it's finally green so you can check in now?

Well, it could work, like this:

Or, actually, better like that:


David Rose gave a talk today here on Lift09 on multiple devices that represent information, e.g. from the Internet, outside the traditional computer screen, and actually in places where you might be interested in them more than when sitting at your computer.

Imagine an umbrella that starts to light up when rain is forecast so you don't forget to bring it with you when leaving the house. Or a scale sitting on your table that has its index pointed more to the left if the weather is bad for sailing and more to the right if it's good. Or a small screen on the wall that changes color from blue shades to red ones according to the temperature it's showing in large letters, and when you come nearer to it, the fonts will get smaller and show you more info, including the forecast for the next 48 hours?

Some of those things do already exist, built by Ambient Devices, some of those are more lab experiments or prototypes, but a lot of that is actually doable today, in the real world!

Watch David's talk on those (available at the lift video collection but unfortunately can't be directly linked due to being inside a Flash), it's really worth it!