The Availabot is a concept USB device that I wish had actually come out, I would have bought a dozen of them. The concept originally came out in 2006 and is a physical indicator of whether your friend is online or not. So for each of your friends you want to track at a glance, you plug in an Availabot, and when they come online, their individual Availabot will stand up. It's genius!

You don't have to have your monitor on to see if your friend is online, just look at the little bots standing on your desk to see who is online. I am always amazed when things in the online realm can change things in real life and vice versa. Looking online to see how many cans are in the coke machine before you go down to get one, web-based home security cameras with motion detection and infrared, purchasing theater tickets online, VOIP calls between a PC and a cell phone, there's just so much you can do online now that intersects with real life. As we become more and more mobile, we'll stop thinking in terms of offline and online, eventually we'll get to the point where we're always online and it ceases to be an issue. UMPCs are a big step in this direction and if we're going to see them take up 10% of the PC Market by 2010 it looks like this change will be coming more quickly than most people expect.