Every morning, your alarm clock wakes you. Throughout the day, it tells you the time, and maybe plays some static with a little bit of music thrown in. If it's real high tech, maybe it wakes you with tunes from your mp3 player, piped through tinny-sounding speakers. When it comes down to it, an alarm clock is a lot like a toaster. It's an appliance. It is cold, and impersonal. It has no soul. And it certainly can't do what a Chumby can.
Chumby is an internet gadget disguised as an alarm clock. It's a small, potato shaped computer that plays widgets (small programs). Because "Chumby hacking" is encouraged, users having access to Flash can make widgets for their own use, or make them publicly available on the Chumby website.
We've had a chance to play with a production Chumby for about two months now. We love the little spud, in spite of the fact it wakes us up too early in the morning.
There are currently some killer widgets available for Chumby. When Chumby is "officially" released in early 2008, we expect that Flash programmers will have a field day.
