It's hard to imagine something as ancient--and dead simple--as window blinds getting a full-on, 21st-century geek treatment. But here you go. Ishac Bertran [2] and Gizem Boyacioglu [3], two students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, have created La Ventana Indiscreta [4], a mechanical window shade that actually graphs the way it's been used. That barely makes sense typing it, but bear with me.

The shade has three basic settings: Open, half-open, and closed. There's also a fourth setting (pictured above), "Graph," in which each of the blind's seven strips is used to create a bar chart of how the blinds were arranged, in the last seven days.

One particularly elegant detail is the control interface--the beads on the right of the blind. The white beads are engraved with pictographs of the setting; you select the setting by lining up the tan bead on the left with the desired white bead on the right.

Bonus points: "La Ventana Indiscreta" ("Indiscreet Window") is the Spanish title for the Alfred Hitchcock classic, Rear Window. (Hence the camera set-up in the picture above.) Hit Yanko [4] for more pics and information.