I have a tendency to buy Gizmos and let them sit on my desk. I’ve had some things torn apart like breadboards, multimeters, microprocessors, wires hanging out, half mounted LCD’s, and things entact but still collecting dust like PDA’s, USB sticks, iPAQ’s, scattered around my desk.
So when Ken first showed me the site chumby.com and told me what Chumby’s were all about, I was impressed and shocked at the same time. But then the sinking feeling of uh oh another gadget fell into my head. I mean spending $179 would buy me a fun weekend of skydiving (or 8 jumps — skydivers measure how much something costs by how many jumps it would buy).
The other day Ken mentioned his was shipped. Damn you Ken! I went back to the website and decided yes I too wanted to have this under my Christmas tree this holiday season.
Tonight while I was working, I came up with yet another idea I could use the Chumby for. And then I received an email stating my Chumby had been shipped! I am going to look forward to playing around with the flash interface and writing up a sample little idea I have.
I guess the one great thing about this gadget is it was made to sit where I want it to, and can do virtually anything. I eventually see my son wanting one in his bedroom as an alarm clock to wake him, then to tell him the scores of last nights sporting event he couldn’t stay up to watch. I see one in the kitchen to let my wife browse her recipes, check the weather or keep tabs on that Ebay auction while cooking, perhaps displaying an IM from me when I have locked my desktop at work for the day and am on my way home?
Thanks Ken! 
Categories: Embedded · Family · Life in general · Open Source · Technology
Tagged: chumby
Saw the Greenphone, which was announced at CES this year. Has a touch screen, runs on Linux/Qtopia, Bluetooth. The development hardware price of $695 however seems a bit steep. I’m sure it includes a lot of goodies, but I don’t see myself spending that amount of money on hardware so that I can write an application under the GNU GPL License.
Anyone want to hire me to write them an application/game they can sell for this phone? I may do it for nothing if I can keep a phone.
I would have liked to seen it with GPS. Will it penetrate the US market this year? I enjoyed using Qtopia Embedded before, the experience was very rewarding in comparison to Microsoft’s Embedded Visual C++. Good luck TrollTech!
Categories: Embedded · Linux · Programming · Technology
