I'm interested in the more technical side. Years ago, I built something similar with a pic chip to tell me when someone posted a comment on my website. It was a pain because it was serial, so it needed external power and a data cable. And the PC side software was very kludgy and limited.
I've throught about remaking it with an ArduinoBT so I'd only need a wall transformer to plug it in anywhere in the room. But I'd want a lot more functionality from the PC software (ambient orb stuff like stocks, weather, etc). But web scraping scripts are so tedious to write and for the cost of an arduinoBT, I could buy an original ambient orb.
So I'd love to see what you come up with, especially on the PC end to send data to your orb.