Chumby ships to early orderers

The Chumby -- a squeezable wireless beanbag computer -- is finally shipping! I've been playing with one of these for months now, and I'm really impressed with them. The little beanbag is completely open -- from the flat-pattern for the bag, to the firmware for the device -- and the way it works is, you subscribe to any of hundreds of "widgets" that Chumby hackers have made and published. I use it as an alarm-clock, Archive.org video browser, weather display, Flickr browser, and all-round toy.

Though the Chumby isn't generally for sale yet, people who signed up for early notice of it are getting information for buying one today. I'm sure it'll be on sale soon.

I've been following the saga of Chumby production closely, reading about the manufacturing process on founder Bunnie Huang's blog (Bunnie is also the MIT hacker who broke the Xbox) -- and I can't wait to see these things in wide distribution. Link

Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by slawkenbergius , October 17, 2007 2:54 AM

Damn... I read Chumbly there. As in the cute/annoying robots in the old-time Doctor Who story, Galaxy 4.

#2 posted by shoe

, October 17, 2007 4:40 AM

Got my Chumby last week. I gotta say, I love this little thing. Love is irrational,sure... My husband said, "Why do you use that when your computer does more and it's twenty feet away?"

Everything is cooler on a squooshy Chumby. Heck, right now I'm streaming internet radio through it. I could lie in bed, read my rss feeds, play games, and *still* be listening to stuff.

There could be very practical sort of applications for this technology. But right now, I'm having a lot of fun.

#3 posted by Jake , October 17, 2007 7:30 AM

Does this thing use batteries or does it always need to be plugged in to the wall? I can't quite tell.

#4 posted by Hunty

, October 17, 2007 7:43 AM

If these are less than $50, I'm totally getting one. Otherwise, I'll wait for the sub-$50 knockoff.

#5 posted by Tommy

, October 17, 2007 8:01 AM

Needs to be plugged into the wall for power. Does WiFi for the networking. Costs less than $200. (Which would suggest much more than $50.

I want one real bad!

#6 posted by Simon Greenwood

, October 17, 2007 8:59 AM

I bought a Nokia N770 for cheap a few months ago. I think I'll cover it in a beanbag...

Aww, who am I kidding? I'm going to have one of those, and an Asus Eee, and a pony...

#7 posted by romulusnr

, October 17, 2007 10:24 AM

Can't use it on the bus? Can't use it at the coffee shop without leeching their AC? Meh, I'll hold out for the vaporware $200 Eee PC 2.

#8 posted by camou , November 12, 2007 4:32 AM

Check out a demo of the Chumby by its creators on intruders.tv http://uk.intruders.tv/Andrew-bunny-Huang-and-Ken-Steele-show-off-Chumby_a239.html