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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."
really doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...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.
Well, the naming thing is working for Nintendo, so why not?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
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
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."
You can begin the giggling by looking at this help page entitled "Handling your Chumby". Some highlights include:
How do I clean my chumby?
Why is the squeeze sensor stuck?
I won't post the one about children handling the Chumby, because that would just be over the line.
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.
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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.
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