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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Features, Linux, Open Source, Beta

Chumby makes alarm clocks so last century

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.

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Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Hardware, Web services, Google

Google hands hardware business over to Dell

google search appliance to be built by dellGoogle has turned some of its focus off of hardware manufacturing, and handed production over to Dell in order to increase performance on its line of search appliances.

Google has had issues with scaling the development of the search appliance since it has proved to be such a popular device with over 7000 corporate customers. Google had to either choose to increase staff, work on the manufacturing, or look for a third party to help out. Dell's server architecture, particularly the 9G, stood out to Google as it offered leading performance in many areas including server management. Dell will now be assembling the Google enterprise search boxes from components supplied by a variety of manufacturers, and will be in charge of the shipping and receiving.

Dell has already started touting Google as a customer in ads that aim at business customers. And hey, why not. Its not every day that a company as well known and as impactful to society as Google hands over their trust in you.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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