Saturday, April 17, 2004

Wall Street Mood Ring

Remember mood rings, the 1970’s wearable fad?  The rings supposedly changed color according to an individual’s mood, you know, kind of a barometer indicating whether someone is pissed off, depressed, sunnily disposed or what not.  They faded away, like hip huggers and bell bottoms. But, just as those have returned to assault our eyes, so have mood rings, of a sort.

“It looks like a size-XXXL chicken egg and glows in colors that change and waver in intensity as it tracks qualitative shifts in financial data from the Internet. But the white plastic Orb was designed to be far more than a barometer of the Dow Jones Industrial average, it’s programmed out-of-the-box function.

Adherents see the glowing $150 device as pioneering a movement where data generated by computers will be increasingly expressed not on video displays but in objects that fit more naturally into our lives.

Ambient Devices of Cambridge, Mass. began selling the Orb a year ago. If the Dow average is up for the day, it glows green. On a down day, the Orb reddens. The colors’ intensity reflects the extent of the swing; yellow means the market is stable.

Provided with that basic information, an Orb owner can decide whether to go online for more detail.”

Oh, I’m sure I’ll be adhering to the “Orb” as my financial counselor.  Look, the Orb is turning green, time to buy, buy, buy.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/17 at 09:45 AM
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