AdBall
While I was at Disney Imagineering R&D we acquired the coolest non-conventional display device I've ever seen (with the possible exception of the wooden mirror from Siggraph 2000). The device was called an "AdBall"; it used an array of spinning LEDs to project a glowing red afterimage on the surface of a blue sphere. Although it only contained one line of LEDs, the LEDs spun so fast that a persistent image was maintained on the glass.
My assignment was to reverse engineer the AdBall message protocol and build a CGI interface that let people send messages to the AdBall on my desk (as well as triggering effects like spinning, rotating, and blinking). It was fun to receive glowing, spinning messages at my desk.
Eventually, the plan was to use AdBalls to display the status of the Enhanced Television Web Servers. The ball would query the servers every so often and display live status reports.
Standing by the AdBall in my Enchanced Television Hat.
