I realize there is supposed to be some kind of entertainment value to a plastic owl that blinks and rotates its head, but that seems like such a waste of computing potential.

ThinkGeek says this thing has just three modes: active, mellow and sleeping.

Sleeping? Is that robot slang for off?

Instead of blinking and rotating randomly, what if this little guy responded to CPU load or memory. Even better would be a monitor for network traffic and…firewall or IDS settings.

So here’s a truly killer application: security center metrics tied to animal robots like this owl. Malware detected on sensitive systems? A rooster starts to crow. Spam reaching critical levels? A pig grunts and squeals. Talk about clear indicators and fun for the whole operations team.

On the other hand, that could be far too sophisticated so I would also consider buying this thing if it were just a webcam in the form of an owl. Its eyes are certainly big enough to be a lens or two, and you would know it’s off when they are closed. This would be handy, given increasing privacy concerns around cams that have no reliable physical indicators.