Is there anything that Ambient's Orb can't do? The color-changing ball is designed to clue users into information such as weather forecasts, stocks, pollen levels. We met with Ambient today, and they clued us into the fact that, thanks to the device's Developer Channel, people at companies like Apple and Google were using the glowing device to track more personalized business information.

It turns out that the thing is helping to save the world, too. According to Wired, Mark Martinez at Southern California Edison is using the ball to help people limit their power consumption. When power usage is at its lowest (and power is at its least expensive), the orb glows green. At peak hours, it's red. Martinez bought 120 of the devices, and gave them out as an experiment, hoping that the orb would succeed where phone calls and text alerts had failed.

The experiment worked like gangbusters. The glowing red ball caused users to reduce energy consumption by 40% at peak hours. After all, who would have the guts to disobey the mighty glowing Orb?