Increasingly, keeping it simple is the key to many aspects of content display - and some are getting bare-bones simple. The New York Times today features the Ambient Orb, a gadget designed by Ambient Devices that can be programmed to glow specific colors based on the state of selected information - stock quotes, the proximity of the next bus home, the availability of a news alert - whatever. Kind of a lava lamp for the content generation, I suppose. Using basic visual metaphors that can be absorbed quickly and easily is a key factor in content value. At today's SLA Conference, visual metaphors are best exemplified by anacubis, a tool that allows content relationships to be displayed graphically with icons that allow someone to draw conclusions very rapidly from content supplied by a wide array of vendors and internal sources. Details are important, but being able to do something with them efficiently is far more important yet.