Ambient Devices, Inc. is a

privately held company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...

founded in 2001 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA that designs and markets various

ambient device Ambient devices are a type of consumer electronics, characterized by their ability to be perceived at-a-glance, also known as "glanceable". Ambient devices use pre-attentive processing to display information and are aimed at minimizing mental effo ...

s for display of information ranging from weather to traffic reports to stock quotes. The company was founded by

David L. Rose David L. Rose (born February 19, 1967) is a product designer and entrepreneur, and the CEO of Clearwater AR. Early life Rose was born on February 19, 1967, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina when his father, James Rose, was in medical school. Ro ...

, Ben Resner, Nabeel Hyatt and Pritesh Gandhi, and is a spin-off from the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

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

paging In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage ...

service. The service is similar to the discontinued

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

SPOT Spot or SPOT may refer to: Places * Spot, North Carolina, a community in the United States * The Spot, New South Wales, a locality in Sydney, Australia * South Pole Traverse, sometimes called the South Pole Overland Traverse People * Spot (prod ...

service.

Products

* Ambient Orb – March 2002Kirsner, Scott
Peripherals, Lite-brite style
Wired 02-2002 * Ambient Weather Beacon – 2003 * Ambient Weather Forecaster – 2004 * Ambient Dashboard – 2004 * Ambient Wireless Datacasting Kit – March 2005 * Ambient 5-Day Weather Forecaster launched at Brookstone * Ambient Google Clock – (in development) * Ambient Umbrella – 2007 * Ambient Energy Joule - 2007 * Ambient Flurry Alarm Clock - 2011

Services

Ambient Devices ran a data network called "Ambient Information Network" that sends weather, stock market activity, sport scores, energy pricing and usage using a paging network that utilizes encoded FM radio stations to send out a data broadcast signals to Ambient devices. Ambient stopped transmitting these signals in 2019, rendering devices that were dependent on them useless. They also sell forecasting services to utility companies so that customers can reduce their energy usage when utilities are encountering peak usage and need an automated way of reducing energy consumption in homes and businesses.

Controversy

Brookstone licensed and sold an Ambient device called the "Brookstone Weathercast Wireless 5-day Forecaster." Consumers who bought this weather reporting device found out in February 2018 that Ambient Devices would no longer be sending data to these devices, rendering them e-waste.

References

External links

Official home page

Device configuration, coverage areas, etc.
* Coopeland, Michael

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. * Koprowski, Gene

Forbes, 2004-07-30. {{Ambient intelligence Multimodal interaction Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts