Years ago, back in college, I remember rigging up a 16-foot length of LED rope lights along the sides and edge of my fixture-less closet. While it was particularly useful for finding random things (skeletons, if you will) I'd tucked into the back and off to the side, the diffuse ~3,000K glow wasn't particularly useful for distinguishing, say, my black hoodie from my navy blue one. (Solution: all black everything.)

If only I'd had the Philips LightStrips: Along with the awkwardly-named LivingColors Bloom, the recently-announced lighting solutions mark the expansion of the Dutch lighting innovators' Hue "Personal Wireless Lighting" system, which we covered when they debuted in late 2012. The introduction of the new so-called "Friends of Hue" extends the powerful app-controlled lighting system to interesting new potential applications, though the examples in the teaser vid strike me as rather uninspired:

Dubious use cases aside, there's no denying that the LightStrips and LivingColors Bloom are interesting new manifestations of indoor lighting that can be manipulated via smartphone. Although I've heard mixed things about the app itself, I'd be curious to get my hands on the Hue and try it out for myself—perhaps they can integrate the new Josef Albers-inspired Interaction of Color app for maximum polychrom-awesomeness. In the meantime, Engadget has a hands-on demo and the Verge reports that "the two products will go on sale in Apple Stores and on Apple's online store in the coming weeks."

Now can someone please come up with a way to make a popsicle into an input for IFTTT? #ThrowbackThursday:

Hat-tip to MocoLoco