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Review of the Cybiko Xtreme
Levendis23 writes: "We've just posted our latest review: the Cybiko Xtreme. Pretty slick little gadget, with RF networking and ability to set up bluetooth-like clouds so that other units can talk to each other, play games, or swap files. You can can even use another unit at as a repeater to bounce your message to another unit out of your range."
I had one of the original "classic" cybiko's. Why did I have it? Because they gave them away by the boatload in a contest on their website where everyone who signed up won one pretty much. A lot of people who got them took them right back to Best Buy/CompUSA/Staples/Toys R US etc. and got themself a $100 return credit. I wonder how many of these give-aways they're including in the "half a million" they claim they sold.
.com/tech company down the tubes. Their new one seems pretty nice though, the size was one of the kickers with the original, maybe they'll make it this time.
That aside, it was really a pretty neat toy for any one in school still. It was no PDA, but it wasn't meant to be one either. They eliminated features that you can live without in a device targeted towards school kids (touch screen, high res screen, size, etc.) and they added some really nice features (wireless networking which could chat, play games, check email, etc). It would supposedly automatically network with nearby Cybiko's so you could chat, and play games with them, and if one of them was plugged into a computer, you could use that one to access the internet to check email and stuff, though I dunno how well these things actually worked as I never met anyone with one besides me.
I was a little surprised these things didn't catch on more. I'm guessing that's why they gave so many away, because this seems like the sorta thing with a critical mass. On its own, it sucks (not much fun to chat with yourself), but the more people who have it, the better it becomes. Add in the school mentality of the more people who have it, the cooler it becomes as well, and I thought this thing had a lot of potential if they could have gotten the spark started.
But in their giveaway they screwed up big time by not including an age limit at that time, so the wrong people ended up with these things, and those people took them back to the stores, thus taking away even more sales for them! I'm surprised to see that these guys are still around, I was sure at the time after that mistake, and giving away 1000's of these things that surely they would be just another
Though this also seems like exactly the sort of thing where just as it starts to get popular, school administrators will start banning it, so I don't think they're out of the woods yet......
Specs are on the web site...
http://www.cybikoxtreme.com/support/specs.asp
http://windows.scares.us
Quite a lot of mobile phones have these features already, at least in Europe - SMS (short message service, aka text messaging) is on every phone, and many phones have two-player games over infrared and calendars. The latest phones, e.g. Ericsson T68, have colour, Bluetooth for syncing and games, and can sync over the GPRS packet network as well.
A quick perusal of their website doesn't reveal any thing that would allow someone do their own coding. Toys like this are only worth having if they are hackable :). Anyone know of any projects to hack them or provide dev. tools.
You can get the development tools and documentation from the Cybiko web site. They've been available for free right from the start.
I used to be active in the cybiko community. Here are some links:
www.cybla.com
www.cybimunk.com
www.devcybiko.com
Hope you find these useful
No you aren't. I started my computer experience on a PDP-8 with terminal and accoustically coupled modem. I think you measured the modem speed in seconds per character. A few years later, I graduated to a PDP-11. My first "home" computer was a TI-99/4A with only 16K of RAM, NO floppy drive and NO modem. It used cassette tape for storage. Note that there were many home computers that came out prior that I passed on.
But even I don't qualify for the true old fart geek. I missed punch cards in college by one year. Learning Fortran on punch card machines would have rounded out my nostalgia-geek experience.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Before you jump to any conclusions as to who "controls" Cybiko, find out all the investors, who owns what percent, and what shares have voting rights.