There are some things in life that people have but hope they’ll never need, like pepper spray, accident insurance, or a copy of The Villain. But how about something that you hope will tell you you don’t need it?
Cambridge, Mass.-based Ambient Devices, whose motto is “Information everywhere� and lives up to it by producing things like Internet-connected refrigerators and colorful stock-market indicators has developed the $140 Ambient Umbrella — an umbrella with a radio receiver in the handle that gets weather data from Accuweather.com. If rain is expected in the next twelve hours, the handle glows; depending on the type of rain expected, the light pulses at different frequencies.
Now if they could just build something into the handle so I’d stop forgetting umbrellas on the train, I’d be all set.
