Feedair Digital Ticker hands-on

Feedair is a USB-powered WiFi enabled digital ticker that will span emails and tweets (or anything else with an RSS Feed) to its old-school dot-matrix display. Controlled with an iOS or Android app, it's designed as an "unobtrusive display:" for those situations where you can keep a casual eye on a physical device or send messages to people who aren't au-fait with technology. Feeling it in the hand, it's machined from heavy aluminum and we could see this doubling as a paperweight for the right kind of office -- and a great way for your assistant to send you discreet messages during tedious meetings. Constructing a "vidget" (visual widget) is apparently very easy and the company's planning to court young developers to expand the capacity of the gear. Setting up the display to show Engadget's twitter feed took around 30 seconds, although in the process, the app froze out a few times, so it's not quite ready for prime-time just yet. The Feedair is expected to hit the shelves in March and cost around $50.

Dana Murph contributed to this report.