Ambient Devices

Ambient Devices, Inc. is a privately held company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA that designs and markets various ambient devices for display of information ranging from weather to traffic reports to stock quotes. The company was founded by David L. Rose, Ben Resner, and Pritesh Gandhi, and is a spin-off from the MIT Media Lab

MIT Media Lab

The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...

. The company also maintains the Ambient Information Network, a datacasting network presently hosted by U.S.A. Mobility, a U.S. paging

Pager

A pager is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then requested to call...

 service. The service is similar to Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

's SPOT

Smart Personal Objects Technology

Smart Personal Object Technology was developed by Microsoft to personalize household electronics and other everyday devices, through "smart" software and hardware that would make their uses more versatile....

service.

Ambient's devices focus on information of interest to the local (or larger) area, such as weather and stock indices, sports scores and standings, pollen count, etc. With a subscription Ambient will provide a particular device with a personalized data feed: an individual stock or portfolio, windspeed near your boat, the weekend weather forecast at your lake house, your book's position on Amazon, firewall status, wait-times at your hospital, customer satisfaction for your bank, etc.

Products

• Ambient Orb – Mar, 2002
• Ambient Weather Beacon – 2003
• Ambient Weather Forecaster – 2004
• Ambient Dashboard – 2004
• Ambient Wireless Datacasting Kit – Mar, 2005
• Ambient 5-Day Weather Forecaster launched at Brookstone http://brookstone.com/store/product.asp?pid=532929&wid=100&cid=59&sid=625&search_type=subcategory&prodtemp=t2
• Ambient Google Clock – (in development)
• Ambient Umbrella – 2007

External links

• Official home page
• Device configuration, coverage areas, etc.
• Coopeland, Michael. How to ride the Fifth Wave, Business 2.0, 2005-07-01.
• Massachusetts Corporations Database listing
• Rubin, Ross. Switched On: Sweet dash eats cash, meets crash, Engadget, 2005-04-20, accessed 2007-03-16.
• Rubin, Ross. Switched On: The Ambient Dashboard moves the needles, Engadget, 2005-04-13, accessed 2007-03-16.
• Farivar, Cirus. Ambient Clock combines Google Calendar and analog timekeeping, Engadget, 2006-10-23, accessed 2007-03-16.
• Koprowski, Gene. Wireless without worries?, Forbes, 2004-07-30.