iPhone-controlled marble prototype from GearBox

This is wild -- a new startup called GearBox is working on making "smart toys," and one of their first products is a prototype rolling ball that's controlled with your iPhone (or other smartphone, of course). Not only can you move the ball around on the ground with your phone's touchscreen, but the ball has gadgetry inside that can affect and monitor its motion, so you can do things like play "Office Golf" (and the ball can notify you when it's reached the hole), try some virtual curling, or play a multi-ball game. There's lots of gadgetry inside, too, so the ball could be made to travel slower or in a strange pattern, or even glow with ambient information. It's also wirelessly connected to the iPhone (and thus to the Internet), so you could have it monitor online resources like Facebook or Twitter, and then react to that data as well.

Unfortunately, this is still just a prototype -- there's no information about a price or release date at all. But it's obviously a really intriguing idea, and depending on actual implementation, it could be a really amazing product. We'll have to keep an eye out for how GearBox eventually decides to put this together in the future.

[via TouchArcade]