Cool holiday gift: the Chumby

[ggiese]

I stumbled across this in my search for holiday gifts this year, and thought I'd pass it along:

The Chumby

I've not used one yet, but I've read numerous reviews of it. It's essentially an Internet-enabled soft cased appliance.

It's an alarm clock. It's a local weather feed. It streams internet music. It can display your photos. It can give you stock quotes. You can view your eBay auctions on it. You can watch videos/webcams on it.

Basically, it does whatever you want, because you add whatever Chumby widgets you want to it, and it'll display them.

I'll let you know how the sister in law likes it... looks pretty cool though.

Oh, a CHUMBY... I thought you were bragging about your "CHUBBY"... :laugh:

Nevermind...

 

[moki]

Not a bad idea for someone who doesn't have a PDA but I can't see using it if you do. At first I thought it might be a good idea for the office but why would you use it if you are sitting at a computer?

In theory, I agree with you -- a PDA or an iPhone or such sounds like it could do what a Chumby does. The difference is twofold: context and continuity.

The context is that the Chumby is meant to permanently sit next to your computer or bedside, like an alarm clock. You always know where it is, and you know what well defined functions it is performing for you.

It is meant to be permanently located somewhere, the same way you may have wall clocks as well as having a clock on your wrist (and often on your cell phone).

The continuity is that the Chumby is always on, and always pushing media. It doesn't go to sleep, and unlike a PDA, it doesn't require your input to pull the data out, it is constantly pushing it.

You set up the widgets you want the Chumby to display -- say, the time, the weather forecast, your Facebook page, Twitter, whatever, and it's constantly rotating through these widgets to push information to you actively, rather than passively waiting for your input to pull data out.

 

[moki]

Well, the Chumby went over very well... even better than I expected. Both my sister in law and her boyfriend loved it, and didn't even want to wait until they got home to set it up and try it out.

It took about 5 minutes to register it online, connect it to the wireless network, and it was up and working, spooling in news feeds, weather, and Annie put a flip-style alarm clock on it, along with her Facebook page, and a "snow globe" that kicks up snow when you shake the Chumby.

Probably not for everyone, but I think it was a hit here!

I should add that all of the widgets you use on the Chumby are free, you just add them from the web site interface, and they automagically appear on the Chumby, you don't need to connect it to your computer at all (and you could even add widgets to your Chumby at home from your computer at work).

 

[miamipadronsmoker]

The whole family here are crazy about the chumby. The music variety is amazing. My wife loves it because it just scrolls through all of our family pictures on facebook and our friends new pictures and status. My son loves the cookoo clock widget. He presses the screen over and over making the cookoo come out. I love the Times Square cam and the fake fireplace. I subscribed to one service called animoto and I made videos out of a ton of pictures to my favorite tunes and the chumby plays through the videos. It goes through all my favorite news sites and blogs without me doing a thing. I wake up to my favorite music on the chumby too. Again the only thing its missing is the ability to read CP's RSS. This was one amazing gift, I love it.