30 comments

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  SteveTomlin

  1 year ago

  As CEO and one of the founders of Chumby (and, yes, Susan Kare is another -- our founders/employees are listed on our site by chronological order of involvement), I wanted to weigh in. First off, delighted to hear you like your chumby -- and even more delighted that, unlike some others, you correctly understand it more as a "vector" than as a "finished product." Chumby is not finished yet. For example we're adding streaming Internet radio and better alarm/event capabilities and will be sending these new feature in a free, over-the-air software update to everyone's chumby. The point is that the chumby will *never* be finished -- that's what we hope makes us an exciting and a new direction for the consumer electronics industry -- we're furiously adding features and capabilities and, now, so is our developer community. We've tried to open it up as much as we can to allow the chumby to be the Firefox of electronics, where the community keeps making it better based upon the community's needs. But we will be out of pre-release, where we are today, and into general release and more ready for prime time in early '08.
  
  BTW, Dave, maybe you didn't notice, unsurprisingly because it's currently sort of hidden functionality, that on most picture-based widgets, including flickr, you can slide pictures forward and back with your finger (the swipe); and with RSS widgets you can swipe up and down to go forward and back in reading a particular post in a feed.
  
  Chumby-on. Again I appreciate the post and am following the comments.
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  rvanderblom

  1 year ago

  when are u anticipating delivering to Europe?
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  interstar

  1 year ago

  Yeah, and Brazil ! We're getting impatient down here .. especially as exchange rates currently make buying stuff in dollars attractive ;-)
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  John Furrier

  1 year ago

  Steve,
  I really like you're chumby product
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  fredwilson

  1 year ago

  dave
  
  Chumby is great. i am a big fan of what they are doing. i think that hardware that can be "mashed up", hacked around with, and such is a great thing. i am hoping that companies like Chumby and Bug Labs will shake things up and show people that opening up devices is a good thing.
  
  fred
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  Kirk

  1 year ago

  Didn't Susan Kare work on the Chumby design?
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  dave

  1 year ago

  Yes, a quick search confirms that's right. I updated the post. Thanks..
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  dave

  1 year ago

  http://www.chumby.com/corporate/team
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  Daniel Ha

  1 year ago

  And it's awesome that they have Susan on their team. She has the most amazing track record...
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  crafterofcode

  1 year ago

  Sweet! I've got to get me one of those.
  
  Can it easy to configure your Chumby to use NTP for time synchronization out of the box? Since it's running Linux I'm guessing it's possible; I was just wondering if NTP was supported by default.
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  Robert 'Groby' Blum

  1 year ago

  I'm not sure the Qube qualifies as a "breakthrough" device..... There must be some reason why Sun has EOL'd them. I predict the same future for the Chumby. It's a rather silly name, and $180 is a tad pricey for it.
  
  Will we see some of the features in other devices? Yes. But I don't think the Chumby is going to have a big impact as it is right now.
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  Ken R

  1 year ago

  The Qube was too damn popular too damn quick, and easy-to-admin Linux Servers were rolling out the door too fast.
  Sun EOL as it was competition to its own line, and, didn't a certain large company give them a big infusion of cash behind-the-scenes, while publicly Scott McNealy was bad-mouthing said company?
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  oobeeDude

  1 year ago

  If you're looking for something much cheaper and simpler, you might be in luck in a few months:
  
  http://oobeeData.com
  
  Email me if you'd like to get on the beta test list: oobee (-at-) oobeeData.com
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  cwmac

  1 year ago

  I wish I could buy one of these here in Europe ! I bought one of the very first Nabaztag because of the interaction between the Internet and a familiar object but its vocabulary is just too limited. The Chumby is the next step. I'm looking forward to your sharing of this new toy, Dave !
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  rvanderblom

  1 year ago

  Shame indeed we can't get them overhere in Europe, got a nabaztag / tag which is the successor of the nabaztag, and i like that device unfortunately it hasn't got an LCD screen.
  
  Can the chymby read RFID tags? I haven't got it working yet on the nabaztag, but that functioanality looks promising
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  alistairc

  1 year ago

  I wanna get one and try to install a Webot player on it. Having a Chumby that could remotely access all my music and pictures across all my machines would be amazing! Good writeup; thanks.
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  Frank Arrigo

  1 year ago

  i too love my chumby. i called him LIttleFrankie
  
  i explain how cool it is to people and they just stare at me in disbelief.
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  Katherine Druckman

  1 year ago

  I am in love. I must have one.
  
  -Katherine
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  KevinCTofel

  1 year ago

  Hmm... I was on the initial list for Chumbys and got my notification of availability but held off. After getting a first hand view via the Dave-Cam, I'm thinking I should pull the trigger. I'm not much of a programmer, which is why I had second thoughts, but... thanks for the quickie vid!
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  Cliff Gerrish

  1 year ago

  Hey how about a Chumby without leather. I'm sitting here talking to a vegetarian who might consider one without leather products.
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  Gregg

  1 year ago

  Just two question? What is it for? Why would I buy it? After reading your short review and watching the video I still can't answer those two questions?
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  Nancy White

  1 year ago

  I love my Chumby - chocochumby, and you remined me I've woefully ignored her these past 10 days of meetings. My updates are downloading
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  Noel

  1 year ago

  If you really want to geek out on Chumby, you should check out Bunnie's Blog:
  http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/
  
  It covers the the production of the Chumby, including videos of the factories in China to studying manufacturing defects in returned units.
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  william

  1 year ago

  How long did it take you guys to receive your Chumby? After reading Dave's post about his, I ordered one myself :)
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  intruders.tv

  1 year ago

  You can also see some of the Chumby internals in the following interview with the founders - http://uk.intruders.tv/Andrew-bunnie-Huang-and-...
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  Andrew Tobin

  1 year ago

  I'm in the same situation - just waiting for international release so I can buy one!!
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  seabrook

  1 year ago

  I bought a Chumby for my wife to use as an alarm clock/weather/Google headlines reporter and was delighted at being able to turn on sshd and ssh in from my Linux machine at home. I teach an Intro to UNIX class and Chumby will DEFINITELY be on the topic list in the Spring. I persuaded out Chief Lab Tech to buy one for the college so I won't have to bring in my wife's Chumby for demo purposes.
  Congratulations!
  Dick S.
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  Betsson

  1 year ago

  Any more news? I'm looking for a bit information about Chumby.
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  beavis1989

  1 year ago

  You have an outstanding good and well structured site. I enjoyed browsing through it.
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  islami sohbet

  11 months ago

  I bought a Chumby for my wife to use as an alarm clock/weather/Google headlines reporter and was delighted at being able to turn on sshd and ssh in from my Linux machine at home. I teach an Intro to UNIX class and Chumby will DEFINITELY be on the topic list in the Spring. I persuaded out Chief Lab Tech to buy one for the college so I won't have to bring in my wife's Chumby for demo purposes.
  Congratulations!
  Dick S.
  
  kral oyun
  aydın kız yurdu
  reply