Q:  What support is there for a developer community?

A:  We feel very strongly that the Ambient platform is an exciting place for developers to add value, and are convinced that many of our "must-have" killer apps will come from developers in the field.  Therefore, we are committed to ensuring our platform is open and accessible to developers.  We like the idea that developers can insert their own data into our network and directly control their ambient devices.

We have developed versions of both a hardware developer kit (HDK) and a web developer kit (WDK).  The HDK includes an adaptor to attach your ambient device directly to the serial port of your computer.  Also included in the HDK is full documentation for controlling your ambient device via the serial port, as well as some Java software demonstrating various features.

The web developer kit allows direct control over the orb via the Ambient website.  Users switch their orb to the "developer channel", and then can post Orb coloration data to a unique URL.  At the next periodic update, the orb will turn that color.

Q:  What is your policy on open source?

A:  We all like open source and want to do more than simply give it lip-service. We admire companies such as Jabber which have built successful commercial ventures around open source standards. We feel our personal ambitions to grow a profitable business are compatible with our desire to actively foster parallel open source development.

We know there are those that will tell us we simply need to make every last bit of code and specific open to the public. We will continue to make as much available as possible, although we are bound to protect the patents of our partners and ourselves.

To date, we have posted the schematics of our glowing orb, as well as information to help techs build their own orb. We have also posted the first draft of our Ambient Markup Language (AML) specification for controlling the orb. We hope this is considered a positive first step, and encourage supportive feedback.  

Q:  Are you afraid of giving away too much?

A:  It took a surprising amount of our resources to develop the orb schematic.  There were many different circuit topologies we looked at, as well as entirely different illumination devices such as incandescent (very hot, bulbs burn out).  But now that we've chosen a design and sell a product incorporating that design, it's going to be hard to keep it a secret.  

We look forward to a world where lots of developers are not only making their own orb, but also collaborating on open source ambient servers which scrape various free information and broadcast it according to web-based configuration rules.  Given the increasing ubiquity of 802.11, we see the emergence of home-grown wireless orbs requiring only off the shelf infrastructure.  Ambient display of information is a new concept to the mainstream, and anything which will promote this idea is good for our company.

Ambient Devices can continue to offer value in this open-source environment.  Our relationships with wireless carriers allows devices which can operate anywhere, not just within the confines of a 802.11 network or tethered to a computer.  Similarly, our relationships with content providers offers a reliability and range of copywrited data not otherwise commercially available for free.  We are investing significant resources in enterprise quality code and servers for a robust connection, which is valuable even within an 802.11 or wired environment.  Finally our technology to compress the data makes the utilization of wide-area wireless networks extremely cost effective.

While techies do have the potential to completely disintermediate us, we hope you will see the value of a highly reliable zero-configuration device which requires absolutely no local infrastructure beyond AC power.

Q:  What's next for developers and open source

A:  Currently users can insert data into our network for personal use.  We're working on an enterprise java bean framework where users can not only insert data, but install a user interface which allows general public consumption of that content.  In parallel, we're exploring a business model where content providers receive a percentage of the monthly fees collected by Ambient subscribers switched to that particular channel.

Q:  Why is the Orb so expensive?  It's just a bunch of lights.

A:  In addition to "a bunch of lights", there's also a wireless pager receiver, and hand-blown frosted glass. We currently have products ranging from $79-179, and have the most cost effective long range wireless chipsets on the market. We plant to use that cost reduction to produce wonderful products that everyone can own, as well as artisinal objects that have beauty as well as function.

Q:  Tell me more about this wireless?

A:  Wireless is actually the core of our business activity.  Making glowing lights is simply a necessity to create demand in the marketplace.  Our goal is to focus on the complex server infrastructure required to support ambient devices of all form factors.

Q:  So is the orb basically a pager with some LEDs instead of a LCD display?

A:  Well, yes.  But if that were the entire story, we'd simply be another consumer electronics company waiting to be clobbered by one of the big players as soon as we have traction in the market.

As mentioned before, the core of our business is actually the server infrastructure which powers these ambient devices.  In particular, we've found efficient ways to aggregate data for multiple ambient devices into a single wireless packet.  If you were to buy a retail pager and send it data every 5 minutes, it would quickly become prohibitively expensive.  We've negotiated deals with wireless providers, as well as engineered solutions that greatly minimize the amount of data transferred to dramatically lower the cost of wireless bandwidth.

It's important to note the orb doesn't know what type of data it is displaying.  All the orb knows is "steady red" or "slow pulse green".  The orb doesn't "know" where the data comes from.  The server performs the mapping of information to color based on web configurable preferences.  This allows us to add content and channels to the server without having to perform any firmware upgrades to the orb. 

Because the orb's display is so simple, it only takes a handful of bits (not bytes) to completely define the state of an orb.   We call this highly summarized packet "Ambient Markup Language" (AML) because it very tersely describes the state of an orb.  We combine many of these AML "micropackets" into a single packet optimally sized for wireless broadcast.  Given the overhead involved in addressing a unique device, sending just a few bytes of data is hugely inefficient.

So yes, the orb is simply a pager with LEDs.  But that discounts the terse AML protocol, the server infrastructure, as well as the content and connectivity of the Ambient infrastructure.  And of course, there's our cool logo.

Q:  Why pagers?  Why not GSM, cellular, or something else? 

A:  The fundamental value proposition of Ambient Devices is having no-configuration glanceable information for your everyday environment. we aim to make this a valuable business by utilizing our terse protocol and network management to keep the service costs of these devices incredibly low.

This is not tied to any one network protocol or wireless standard, and we expect to be launching on several new wide-area, and perhaps local-area, networks in the future. We hope to have a couple of formal announcements about these plans by the end of the year.

Q:  Do you do anything other than glowing orbs?

A:  Of course! There's the Orb, and the Beacon - and then of course the Dashboard, Forecaster, and many new products coming soon. Visit our products page for a list of some of the current products.. We are glad to see some of you excited for more, and rest assured there are several new products on their way to market.

Thanks,

Ben Resner
VP Technology
Ambient Devices