Chumby

Recently I came upon a device called the Chumby. If you haven't heard of it, the Chumby a compact computer that displays information from the web via wireless. It has a touchscreen, 2 usb 2.0 ports, an accelerometer and a squeeze sensor. Best of all, it is designed to be easily hacked both for software and hardware. Anyone can make widgets for the Chumby using Flash Lite 3.0 as well as a variety of other languages (Chumby is Linux based). The screen is 320*240 and the recommended framerate is 12fps. Looking over Chumby.com's wiki, it looks like things are very well documented with example files to download and try out.

I think the idea of the Chumby is very cool and I'm excited to try it out for myself. At $179.95 it is a little pricey but, it is exactly what could integrate the internetin new ways to affect our daily lives (especially with web 2.0 technology like RSS). Imagine having a Chumby in your kitchen, you could get recipes off the intenet, watch online video, listen to internet radio, check the weather and traffic while you have breakfast, and read the daily news. I myself would be interested in a Skype widget so I could use it like a phone.

There's a bunch of cool widgets and features already available for the Chumby at the official website: www.chumby.com.
So check it out for yourself.