The first thing you'll want to do before buying the a ScoreCast, or any Ambient device, is make sure that you live in an area covered by their network. You can go here, plunk down your zip, and see if the device will work in your neighborhood. The company claims to have over 90% of the US population covered, so if you live near groups of other people, you should be good. But if your closest neighbor is a mountain lion, you might be out of luck.

For those unfamiliar with the Ambient Network, it streams small amounts of data (like weather forecasts, stock info, and sports scores) wirelessly, without a pesky subscription fee. You just need one of Ambient's devices in order to receive the signal. That makes the Ambient Scorecast, or any other Ambient device, a great gift for the people in your life who aren't so tech-savvy. Lets face it, if you read tech blogs, you probably get enough phone calls from frustrated friends and family, asking why their PC is so sluggish, or their phone won't play the music they just bought online.

Trust me when I say you won't get a phone call if you buy someone a ScoreCast. Take the 5-inch-by-8-inch device out of the box, snap the battery door off the back, throw in four AA batteries, and the thing just works--for months. The unit on my desk has been running for nearly four months on a set of rechargeables. To borrow a line from Ron Popeil, this really is a "set it and forget it" kind of device.

While the ScoreCast can take several hours to receive its first set of data, a smiley face lets you know the device has found its network, and the stats for your favorite team (and all the others) are on their way to your device. Once all the data has been delivered once, updates are much speedier, and occur after every quarter. Three buttons along the top of the device let the user select which team's stats are displayed on the screen, switch quickly between devisions, and toggle between a team's schedule, or their division standings.

The screen is a nice size, at around 3.5 by 4.5-inches and while it's fairly easy to read, the background is gray and the text is black, so contrast could be better. There's no backlight, so don't expect to be reading the screen at night without an external light source. But considering how long the batteries last without a light, that's probably a more-than-fair trade off.

The information on the screen is quite cleanly laid out, and should be easily understandable to anyone who's been to a game and gandered a few times at a scoreboard. A digital clock sits in the upper-left corner, next to the team whose stats are currently displayed below. Under a green line that reads "GAME SCORE" sits, you guessed it, the score of the current (or most recent) game of the team displayed, broken up by quarter, including a column for overtime, and total.Below that, the bottom half of the screen displays either the team's schedule, or their division standings, depending on which option is selected by the large, clearly labeled button on the top of the device.

During the off-season, the ScoreCast holds the team's season info, and the company claims as soon as pre-season info is announced, schedules will be sent to the device.