November 18th, 2009
Gallery: Unboxing Chumby One
Chumby Industries just released the successor to their widget-based Internet appliance, the Chumby One. The $99 device, is essentially a small touchscreen computer that grabs data from your WiFi connection and displays purpose-built widgets in a rotation.
Some liken Chumby to a Web-enabled alarm clock, but I prefer to keep one in my kitchen and bathroom to catch up on my RSS feeds while cooking and yes, brushing my teeth. (Chefs: do yourself a favor and check out the Big Oven widget).
Chumby does much more than display RSS and recipes however. Although I use mine mostly as a glorified RSS client, there are widgets for weather, time, horoscopes, Twitter, Facebook, music and games.
I previously reviewed the Chumby Classic in May 2008 and the latest model looks like a worthy successor. At only $99 it’s half the price of the original and features a hardware volume knob, snooze bar and a more, ahem, professional looking form factor that would complement any workspace.
I’ve only had it for an hour, so I’ll reserve my judgment for a future installment in these pages, but so far, it’s a worthy successor to the original, ground-breaking device.
I’ve posted some unboxing photos in this gallery, including some photos comparing Chumby One to the “classic” beanbag version.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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