Driving With Your Eyes Closed
November 24, 2004
I once worked R&D management in a fairly large organization that did a lot of data processing. The head of operations was infatuated with the idea of “Executive Information Systems”, and kept wanting ever more “distilled down” and “rolled up” reports.
At one point, I suggested (tongue in cheek) that what he really needed was an icon on his desktop that was either Green, Yellow or Red, to indicate “all systems go”, “problems”, and “update your resume”. Much to my chagrin, he liked the idea.
He’d have loved something like this. Ambient’s newest toy “information system”, The Dashboard apparently boils down whatever information you find critical (unread e-mail, weather forecast, how much time the pool boy spends in your house, etc.) to drive a set of three rockin’ and rollin’ analog needle gauges wirelessly.
That way, if there’s a problem, you can spend some quality time trying to figure out what critical factor made your gauge flatline before you actually deal with it. Maybe with any luck, it’ll just be your P.A. causing interference by running the microwave…
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