Slashdot Mirror
David Pogue Gushes Over the Chumby
stoolpigeon writes "IHT is running a David Pogue review of the Chumby. The Chumby is a small computer embedded in a soft case. The Chumby hardware and OS are open, and the review mentions that the device already has a large developer following, cranking out new widgets for owners. Pogue is obviously quite taken with the Chumby and gives a good introduction to a device that may be the inspiration for a new generation of hackers."
"Let us name our revolutionary new open product a name that'll be 1 letter away from 'dick'."
"Brilliant!"
Even if this thing were to completely take off, Slashdotters will still be giggling over its name.
really doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I could have sworn it said he was gushing over the "Gumby"
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
...and love it. About the only problem I have with it is the fact that in "My Streams" (an area where you can manually put in net radio stations you want the Chumby to play) long URLs simply cannot be entered in on the device itself, so I have to SSH into it and use VI to add any long URLs for streams manually. It came in a nice burlap bag (which I still use) and alternates between telling me the time, feeding me news, playing net radio, and displaying a friends photobucket account.
Developing with embedded flash as it's interface of choice, 220x240 scree, having ZERO battery life (9 volt backup only), etc... makes this a device that I would avoid for $180.00.
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
You may remember on of Bunnie Huang's previous exploits - he's the guy who hacked the XBox. He's a hardware-hacking demi-god and has a fantastic blog for electronics geeks. You can read all about getting the Chumby manufactured in China, as well as other topics.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
It's a good thing the Chumby comes in a soft fabric case if Mr. Pogue is going to go gushing over it.
There, that's at least mildly offensive. Damn ACs making the rest of us do all the work.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Earlier than that, actually. February was the official launch, meaning they had the software (Firmware/Control Panel) in what they considered to be a state which was stable and feature rich. You could buy one earlier, it was just made clear that your device was not running final software (although the update was painless).
I'm not impressed.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
It's only about twice the price of a radio alarm clock I've been darn near desperate enough to get (With a separate alarm every day), with a *lot* more features.
Cutesy - yeah. But cutesy in a reasonable way, not sickeningly so, and with a nice feature set. I may wait till it gets reviewed for the technical aspects by someone I trust like consumer reports - can it take being knocked off the bedside table, does it wear well, if you have a power outage how long does the battery last, et al.
But, if it's put together well, I'm probably going to buy this or something like it. Not till I get some other stuff paid down. But It's a good idea, all around.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
It's got a reasonable CPU, accelerometer, 2(!) USB ports, wifi, touch screen, runs an acceptable linux environment, and hacking is encouraged. Here's to hoping Pogues + /.'s coverage turns a few more folks on to it.
Out of the box, it's still kinda .9 software - I'd hoped to use it as a smart clock-radio, but the software UI just isn't as easy as a dedicated alarm clock. The good news is, someone with decent skeelz could write an excellent replacement alarm clock.
It should be noted that you can create a "virtual chumby" on the company's site to preview all the widgets 'live'.
...I am not alone when I sincerely say, "I will never, under any circumstances, say the word Chumby."
and a microphone.
The perfect sit on your desk video phone.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And I have to say its one of those impulse tech purchases I've regretted.
Its mediocre at a lot of things and not good at anything.
The alarm clock is awful, there's no timed dimming of the screen, its a massive bandwidth hog (because it has no local storage and it always redownloading things).
The streaming music is cool, but its not as good at it as a dedicated streaming music receiver.
It makes a lousy photo frame -- the colors are bad on the display and it has no local caching so its always redownloading everything.
Maybe it'll be better in the future, but honestly its sort of a waste of money right now.
Rule 37: There are no girls on the internet....ever .
perhaps you mean Rule 34?
Rule 34: If it exists there is porn of it. No exceptions.
While it has been a faithful companion, your companion cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.
The Enrichment Center is committed to the well being of all participants. Cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test. Thank you for helping us help you help us all.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
For $40 more, you can snag yourself the Nokia N800 Iternet Tablet. The N810 drove its price way down, and the only differences are a built-in GPS, slide-out keyboard, and a 2GB SD card. The rest of the hardware is identical, and you can flash the latest N810 OS on the N800. The thing is highly hackable, with as much open-source software as Ari Jaaksi, Nokia's open source director, could get them to embrace (about 2/3 of the base system). With a very bright 800x480 display, Firefox and mplayer, it renders everything almost perfectly. It's got a thriving open-source community behind it with a bunch of apt repositories and ports. It's also the nicest e-book reader I've ever used.
:)
I don't work for Nokia. I just love mine.
Consumer-oriented reviews tend to emphasize its lack of pre-installed PIM apps and synchronization, but that's not a problem for your average technophile.
To give you an idea of how hackable it is, I hacked the init scripts to set up swap and mount my home directory from an SD card's ext2 partition. I SSH into it when I want to do this kind of stuff.
Parts of the hardware (and thus some of the drivers) aren't open. If you're a purist, this might put you off. Which brings us back on topic: the Chumby is completely open. Maybe this'll push Nokia to open more. Ari Jaaksi has even said that the open source software on the N800 is of far better quality than the in-house stuff - it's just convincing the suits that embracing it is a good idea that's difficult.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
It is my personal opinion that if Chumby tries to market the thingy as a consumer product, it just might fail completely. What this product seems to be good for would be a platform product which could be sold to other OEMs, who could then use it as a platform for the development of small and smart consumer appliances. The customers of Chumby therefore would save a bunch of time and money by having to do away with the basic product design and schematics and work on the value addition via the idea. The would however would have to package a powerful development environment with their product.
If they wanted to just sell a Chumby as a standalone product I do not think that it would fit in anywhere. Neither is an internet tablet and neither is it a phone. It is not mobile. I really do not see the use for this thing as a standalone consumer product..
The Nokia tablet is ugly and does not combine with your furniture. Any furniture.
The Chumby could in theory fit nicely with how you decorate a room.
Their aims are different, the problems they solve are different, why you are comparing them is a monument to the lack of practical sense of most technical people.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Got to play with it a maker faire and bought one the same day.
She currently uses it to listen to news and music streams and get weather reports and such. I don't think she's discovered the alarm features yet.
Nice and small and is excellent for the bedside, easy to operate, comes on quick and the touchscreen size is good for its purpose. The widgets are getting better more information feeds and stuff - even slashdot articles (not reply chains though)
I too wonder what happens if the parent co goes under what would be left, though I know it is flashable, as upon first power up it downloaded and installed a system update.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield