So just what is a Chumby? Well, its a Chumby, of course: a plush ball with a touchscreen, WiFi, accelerometer, squeeze sensor, and USB ports. Any attempt to shoehorn this device into an existing category of consumer electronics will be met with at least some amount of resistance. The basic idea is to combine some of the best ideas in glanceable information and entertainment -- an alarm clock, digital picture frame, bite-sized web clippings, and an iPod dock, for example -- with an utterly unique design (whens the last time you wanted to hug your alarm clock?) and an open, hackable architecture. Like other projects of recent memory, the success of the Chumby will depend as much on the participation of the user community in creating, rating, and discussing widgets as it will depend on Chumby Industries own efforts -- not to downplay the importance of the hardware, naturally. Read on for some quick impressions.
Update: Were happy to report that Chumby Industries contacted us regarding the white specks along the Chumbys side, and like many of our commenters have reported, theyve never seen this issue before; theyre expressing a new unit our way, so we expect a pristine bezel next time around. Chumby would also like to remind everyone that the units currently being sold are being coined an "Insiders Release" for a reason -- the software isnt complete and wont be until early 08 -- so just make sure youre cool with possible bugs, incomplete features, and frequent updates if you pop for an order in the meantime (though for what its worth, weve seen zero issues so far with the software build were running)!
The darned thing comes in a pretty high quality canvas bag, how cool is that? Even the power adapter comes in a smaller canvas bag stuffed inside the big one.
Basically, the way this works is that you can buy a production quality Chumby now but with the big, fat asterisk that its running prerelease software. The company doesnt expect a gold release until early 08, so in the meanwhile, "Insiders Release" buyers get hooked up with periodic beta builds of the Chumbys Linux-based software stack. Its been rock solid for us so far; it connected to our WPA2 network effortlessly, downloaded and installed an upgrade, and a few seconds later we were up and running with some widgets we picked off the website. The widgets rotate in sequence among those selected to display in the currently configured "channel," and users can create as many channels as they like. We were a little disheartened by the number and variety of widgets available (seriously, only 26 clocks to choose from?) but again, the devices success all comes down to user-generated content as units start to proliferate among the populace.
Were less than impressed with the build and the quality of the Chumbys materials -- check out these indelible white speckles along the bezels side, for example -- but on the other hand, it does a heck of a lot for the $179 asking price (and with any luck, itll only get better with time as new widgets get created and uploaded). The object is mass production here, not necessarily perfection; were sure the company wouldve loved to have been able to offer these for $99 or even $69, but the manufacturing costs just arent there yet. Down the road, assuming these little buggers take off, we could see space in the product lineup for two or even three different models of various luxury and capability.
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