Ladies and germs: the Chumby One. Hot on the heels of its soft, leathery older brother, the Chumby One goes for a more non-nonsense aesthetic with hard edges and a more clock-radio feel. As you recall, the device costs $99.95 and allows you to play back little widgets on a tiny touchscreen. It is at once banal in its simplicity and amazingly unfettered in the amount of content you can stream to the device.

Our Chumby One came pre-installed with a few widgets including our own news feed and Twitter, which lets you view your Tweets whenever the widget rolls around. I’m going to place this thing on my desk and treat it like a third screen in order to really test the value of this wee fellow. More soon.

Special note: the battery is not included and is an optional part available from Chumby.

Product Page

The original Chumby was fun and whimsical; the One is up-tight. Just look at the two next to each other. The Classic is like the over weight and funny looking party boy that can always score with the ladies. But the One on the other hand, looks more like the straight-laced, classically handsome church boy. I mean, if you’re actually going to own one of these things, don’t you want one that’s fun?

[Chumby via Engdaget]

In Communist Russia, air force makes snow fall on outskirts of town
The Flurry Alarm Clock is a luddite’s Chumby
Mega Man Drum Kit = Awesome
Wait, wait, don’t tell me. NPR has its own radio.
An in-home foot tanner for just $230!

You know the Chumby, right? It’s that bedside clock/alarm/radio/YouTube & Flickr open source thingamabob. It’s hella cool, but it’s also kind of complicated for the non-techy and requires WiFi to work. I say blah to that! Really the only extra info you need to know in the morning besides the time is the weather anyway. That’s where the Flurry Alarm Clock from Ambient Devices comes in.

This little alarm clock sports the standard alarm clock functions, but adds weather info to the mix. The AccuWeather 2-day forecast is piped in via Ambient’s free InfoCast wireless network. This means that you really could give this as a Christmas gift to your technically-challenged mother and she could use all of it’s functions with ease. I mean, look at it, there’s nothing complicated or overwhelming about it. But there’s one little thing, it’s $129 at Best Buy, which means your mom probably won’t get one for Christmas.

Greenpeace hates Apple, HP a little bit less today
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Not only was the functions innovative two years ago, but the design was as well. The pillow-like design had character and style. It was something you wouldn’t see at Target. But the new One model is made out of cold, lifeless plastic and will look right at home next to clock radios and cordless phones at Walmart – if it ever reaches that distribution channel of course. But anyway, the new model is expected to run $100 when it drops in a month or two.

UPDATE – Chumby is reporting that the Chumby One is much different from the Chumby shown here. The plot thickens.

At any rate, it’s good to see companies still plugging away at what seems like a sort of awkward tweener device, but honestly, one I might like to have around. A combination alarm clock, social media doodad, and lightweight browser — fitting somewhere on the twisted continuum between tablet computer and digital picture frame.

At $250, it won’t break the bank, but it’s not quite low enough to encourage impulse buys, either. I have my doubts about the hardware quality, but at least it’s got something going on the inside. The 7″ 800×480 resistive touchscreen stands between you and a 667MHz ARM processor, 128MB of RAM, and a gig of storage. It runs a custom Ubuntu and has a 4500mAH battery, which is good for five hours of use (not enough, but you can plug it in). I think the hacking possibilities are pretty solid for this thing. I hope at least they’ll add a little more functionality to it. Facebook and Twitter might be the 800-pound gorillas of the social web, but that doesn’t mean they’re all there is to it. AdelaVoice and other potential device-makers take note.

The voice recognition works for the demonstrator, obviously, but the question is this: do you have to speak like a robot? – or at least have a naturally robotic air? Voice Search works pretty well in Android if you’re careful about it, but I foresee some embarrassing homonym-related faux pas. You could also use Dial2Do if you’re really interested in having voice recognition in an already-available service, but I doubt you want all your friends’ updates dictated to you.

Although I’m not convinced that this particular one is the device I’d like sitting around the house with my friends’ latest updates and my latest photos on it, it seems to be on the right track. We’ll see about giving it a spin, but if my measured recommendation has made you salivate with desire for the thing, you can pre-order one now and they’re shipping on October 7th.

[via Best Tablet Review]

Now this is the type of radio a fancy gentleman would use. It’s the latest PURE Sensia, a touchscreen European radio that supports FM, DAB (and DAB+), and Internet radio. There’s also Wi-Fi and “widgets,” I guess, for sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Compare this to the old clock-radio you’ve got on your nightstand, and I think you’ll agree: this is better. It has built-in stereo speakers (but let’s be real: you’re not going to be using this to listen to your meticulously encoded FLACs now are you?) as well as a jack to hook it up to external speakers—perhaps you and your Sim friends are having a party tonight?

The best part, though, is those aforementioned widgets. You’ve got the two big guys right now in Facebook and Twitter, along with access to Picasa, Google’s take on Flickr. Then there’s things like weather widgets, news widgets, etc. It’s almost Chumby-like.

Mr. Radio is a tad on the expensive side, however, coming in at £249, or just over $400. Still, it’s a fine-looking radio, and one I wouldn’t mind using it, provided I had $400 to burn, which I don’t. What are you gonna do?

via SlashGear

I’m sorry, but we have to ban music. That’s just the way it is.
Deep Green, The Pool-Playing Robot
The GoGoStand fits in your wallet, transforms to hold your phone
Micro MP3 player fits right in your ear
Chumby now available in DIY form

Chumby, everyone’s favorite desktop and bedside companion, is now available in kit form from Maker Shed! [nerdgasm]

At only $99, they sold a bunch right off the bat, but there are still a few left if you’re one of the types that get into this sort of thing. I’ll give a thousand bonus points to whoever shoves the kit into a working toaster first. Just think about it: while you’re waiting for your morning Eggo, you can check the weather, sports scores and even watch a bit of YouTube. It’s the perfect example of convergence.

The D-Link DIR-685 Xtreme N Storage Router has a lot of features stuffed into a small, attractive package. It’s the first router I’ve ever made space for on the top of my desk and, expensive though it is at $299, it’s part router, part Chumby, part print server, part network hard drive, and more.

Features (according to D-Link):

• Powerful Award-Winning Draft N Technology
• Insert a 2.5″ SATA Hard Drive to Provide Network Storage and Freedom to Access Files over the Internet
• Use the 3.2″ Color LCD to View Photos Stored on Your Network Drive and Popular Photo Sharing Sites
• Stream Digital Content to UPnP AV Media Players Including PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
• Share a Printer or External Hard Drive with the New SharePort Technology

MSRP of $299.99

Review:

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: this is a $300 wireless router. And, as a wireless router, it works really well. It’s got a strong, reliable, fast connection and it looks nice enough to sit on your desk. That being said, plenty of wireless routers cost well under $100. So what does an extra $200 get you?

Aside from 802.11n wireless, you also get a network attached storage (NAS) device, a 3.2-inch LCD capable of displaying photos and widgets, UPnP features, direct BitTorrent downloading, two shareable USB ports, and iTunes streaming. If you think you’d take advantage of all those features, then you’ll like this router.

One of the main features that D-Link seems to be pushing with this router is the ability to display photos, billing it as “a digital photo frame.” And yes, it’s a digital photo frame in the sense that it displays digital photos, but the tiny 3.2-inch screen isn’t large or detailed enough to provide any real value as a digital photo frame. If the router is sitting in front of you on your desk, then you’ll like the photo frame feature. If you set the router up in your living room, however, you’ll barely notice the photos from across the room.

The screen is far more useful as a Chumby-like widget display. Widgets are configured and added at FrameChannel.com using a straightforward and attractive interface. You can choose from preset widget categories or add your own using RSS feeds.

You’re given a preview of what each widget looks like before you add it to the router.

So the screen itself will NOT replace a nice digital photo frame, but it acts as an acceptable replacement for a Chumby as far as displaying widgets is concerned. Aside from photos and widgets, you can also use the screen to access certain data, stats, and settings for the router, although most of the heavy lifting is still done via the standard browser administrative interface at 192.168.0.1 — the same boring interface found on most routers.

The SharePort USB-sharing utility works great. I was able to set up my printer in a matter of minutes and you can use the second USB port to connect an external hard drive or any other USB device you’d like to access from multiple computers on your network. Simply install the included SharePort software on each computer and you’re set.

The ability to mount a 2.5-inch hard drive (you provide the drive) into the router is probably one of my favorite features. I added a bunch of music and videos to it and then accessed it as a UPnP device with my Xbox 360 in the living room. Everything streamed quickly since it was all loaded up on the router itself, not another computer. The built-in iTunes server worked similarly, with the DIR-685 showing up as a shared library in iTunes and streaming music to various networked computers with ease.

The hard drive shows up as a networked computer as well as a media-streaming device. You can drag and drop files directly to it from here or set it up as a mapped network drive if you’re so inclined.

You can also download torrent files directly to the drive without using BitTorrent software on your PC. Just enter the location of the torrent file — either online or wherever you’ve saved it to your computer. It’s more cumbersome than I’d hoped since you have to log in through the router’s administrative interface first (there’s a CAPTCHA image, which slows down logging in considerably) but if you’re dead set on taking your computer out of the torrent-downloading equation, this is a pretty good alternative.

Overall, the DIR-685 represents the idea of the convergence devices wholeheartedly while flirting with the same “jack of all trades, master of none” curse that plagues most others. Everything works well but things like the too-small screen and ages-old administrative router interface ultimately hold it back somewhat.

That being said, you’d be hard pressed to find a draft-N wireless router, two-port USB sharing device, Chumby, and iTunes-compatible UPnP NAS enclosure for under $300. And if you did, you’d need plenty of space on your desk and above-average cable wrangling skills to keep it all under control. Bottom line: If you can take advantage of each and every feature that the DIR-685 offers, you’ll be very happy with it.

DIR-685 Xtreme N Storage Router [D-Link]

What do you get when a Kaossilator and a Chumby mate? How about the Thingamagoop from Bleep Labs? This little bugger has an LED, a photo-resistor, and some knobs and it makes a lot of noise. What kind of noise? Noise-rock noise, which could put a damper on my plans to add this to the woodwind section in the orchestra playing my new opus, the iPhone Sonata in D Minor.
The website has a collection of sample sounds to show you what this thing is capable of which, it turns out, is a series of piercing squawks.
But look at the cute little guy. He’s so fun looking! He’s got a little 1/4″ inch jack for audio output and I’m sure you could bitfreak him a little to mess up your guitar music or something, so why not give him a chance? You can even customize yours.
He costs $120 and is available now.

Cisco bought Flip Video. The Peek e-mail device is outselling some smartphones and launching a new version. The wi-fi-enabled media player is fighting it out with the TV for precedence in the living room and netbooks are beating down desktops at school and in the den. Are we entering an era of simple, cheap, and cool?

After a decade of unparalleled one-upmanship – the gigahertz race, the megapixel race, the storage race – we are now hitting a wall. The devices we own are small enough, fast enough, and hold enough data to suit us now until 2012, thank you, so we’ll sit this next iteration of the Intel Xaphod chip out, thank you.

I’ll admit I missed the Flip/Peek/netbook boat but once it came into dock, disembarked its passengers, and I read about its contents in the shipping news I finally figured out what was going on. We are essentially seeing the era of web services made flesh where thin clients take content and broadcast it instantly. And the web guys love it. Take Flip, for example. I was talking to a buddy at Cisco this weekend and he said that Cisco, the heavy-duty switch and server side of Cisco, loves blogs, video sharing, and the like. The more bandwidth wasted on pictures of Chet faux-kissing a hottie the better simply because it requires a heavier network backbone. Therefore, someone like Flip is a perfect testbed for streaming video as well as a nice cash cow.

Even companies like Vizio came out of left field. While everyone else was worried about LCD vs. Plasma, Vizio tore the price of a regular TV down by 50 percent. Imagine if I told you maybe two years ago that a 42-inch LCD HD TV would cost about $700. You’d put me in the loony bin! Even Eye-Fi and Chumby understand what’s going on – you make something small, cool, and very specific and the world will beat a path to your door.

So where does that leave the CE industry? Well, it’s now a race to the bottom. Video cameras that once cost $500 will now cost about $200. Digital cameras, real ones, are approaching the $100 mark. TVs will soon drop below the $500 mark for lower-end models. And, more importantly, devices like the Peek and the Flip point to a consumer focused on the creation of web content. Whereas our parents wanted to “store” information – in the form of slides, records, tapes, and the like – this generation wants to “dump” information onto YouTube, Facebook, and the cloud. This difference is important. Previously, the old rules of media applied — in a nutshell they can be summarized by that old chestnut “The medium is the message.” The message, formerly vacation snapshots or the latest Bing Crosby, was defined by the medium onto which it was impressed. Now, the message is a free-floating, amorphous thing, and the less that gets between the consumer and the message the better — hence tools that are limited in scope and function (and price) that “just work.”

The concept of dumb tech isn’t a negative thing. It is the understanding that instead of power, people want ease-of-use. Instead of the chaotic jumble of Symbian or Windows Mobile we are enamoured by shiny buttons on the iPhone and the Pre. Instead of a 12-megapixel DSLR, most of us are happy with a camera that takes an OK picture as soon as everyone in the frame is smiling. Instead of a state-of-the-art laptop we’re happy with a lumpen mini-book running Linux. Why? Because it gets the job done more than admirably.

Chalk it up to a bad economy if you want, but I think this is a backlash. For years we’ve been saddled with wonky hardware with 400-page manuals and smartphones that could open VNC connections with NASA but couldn’t save your pictures to Flickr. The tide has turned, friends, and the dumb stuff is winning.

Everyone’s favorite hacky-sack-with-a-screen, Chumby, will soon make the leap from your nightstand or desk to your TV or Blu-ray player. Future internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players containing Broadcom chips from companies such as Samsung and Sharp will feature Chumby’s web-based widgets – there are currently over 1,000 – ranging from music and video streaming to news and weather to photos and social networking platforms.

It appears that you won’t have to lay out $200 for an actual Chumby device, either, since it’d all be built into your TV, set-top box, or Blu-ray player. So that should help grow Chumby’s user base somewhat. And if you can’t find the widget you’re looking for, you can use Chumby’s open development platform to create your own.

Here’s a video demo:

Here’s the full press release:

Broadcom Extends chumby(R) Platform to Internet-Connected TVs, Set-Top Boxes and Blu-ray Disc(R) Players

Collaboration with chumby Delivers Cost Effective, High Quality and Rich Media Content to Consumer Devices Enabled by Broadcom(R) Technologies

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM) and chumby(R) today announced the integration of the chumby rich media Internet platform into Broadcom’s latest digital television (DTV), set-top box (STB) and Blu-ray Disc(R) system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions delivering cost effective, high quality and personalized user experiences to Internet-connected TVs. The collaboration will enable users to access chumby’s extensive library of entertaining, compelling and interactive Internet content across a variety of personal interest categories as well as a vast offering of Internet radio streams and podcasts. This will give users the ability to view individually customized channels of streaming Internet and personal digital content on devices enabled by Broadcom solutions, delivering an enhanced interactive consumer experience across multiple connected screens in the home.

Chumby enables users to select their favorite parts of the Internet delivered to them in a convenient, always-on, always-fresh format. Chumby content currently consists of over 1,000 widgets in 30 different categories ranging from news and entertainment to videos, music, and sports provided by leading media partners such as CBS, MTV Networks, The New York Times, Pandora, The Weather Channel Interactive, AOL’s SHOUTcast and Scripps Networks. Chumby also delivers thousands of Internet radio stations and podcasts. Chumby’s free and open content network enables individual creators to publish creative and compelling content. And chumby users themselves can share their own user-generated content, including photos, e-cards and more, with family and friends via chumby’s integral social network. Chumby is constantly expanding, bringing users new widgets, media and services, as well as the most interesting content from the Web.

Viewing Internet-based streaming video, music and other media content on household televisions is growing in use and popularity. To satisfy consumer demand, Broadcom and chumby are delivering an easy-to-use personalized Internet content experience that supports interactive multimedia widgets and Internet-based audio selections from leading online providers, major media brands and the worldwide community of chumby developers. Broadcom and chumby also are enabling social connections across devices such as DTVs, STBs and Blu-ray Disc players supported by Broadcom solutions that will enable users to share content, photos, video clips, games or messages with friends and family who own any chumby-powered device.

“Consumers want a powerful, yet simple, consistent and exciting chumby experience across multiple screens,” saidStephen Tomlin, CEO, chumby. “We are delighted to work with Broadcom to support the chumby content platform with system-on-a-chip solutions that enable personalized streams of each user’s favorite parts of the Internet for delivery to next generation Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.”

As a result of this collaboration, consumer electronics manufacturers will be able to quickly deploy chumby platform support on Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray Disc players without additional cost, external components or expensive PC hardware. As an open source Linux(R)-based platform and “cloud-based” content network with graphics that scale easily to any screen size, chumby allows users to create a complete personalized Internet experience without the need to establish a new configuration or install separate software or widgets on each device, thereby enabling new applications and content to be accessed and easily shared across all chumby-powered devices. Additionally, chumby supports an established framework with standardized tools for developers and manufacturers to create and enable consistent, high quality content.

“Broadcom and chumby are delivering a personalized Internet experience to the consumer via Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray Disc players without increasing bill-of-materials cost or complexity for Internet-enabled consumer products with chumby support,” said Dan Marotta, Senior Vice President & General Manager for Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Group. “We are very pleased to continue our collaboration with chumby as Internet-connected consumer devices herald the convergence of traditional PC-based Internet content with the comfort and convenience of living room viewing, positioning the connected TV as the information and entertainment hub of the digital home.”

Limited edition $600 hand-painted Chumby
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Is $599.95 too much to spend for a hand-painted Chumby? Maybe not if you’re a die-hard fan of artist Sara Antoinette Martin. She painted five (yes, five) Chumby devices by hand, which are now being sold in the Chumby.com store for $599.95 each.

They’re listed as “in stock” if you can believe it. Based on the results of my very informal polling, some people have argued that $199.95 is too expensive for the regular Chumby, some think it’s priced just right, and others shrug their shoulders and happily cycle through the many hilarious and/or informative widgets loaded onto the device.

Chumby Store [store.chumby.com via Engadget]

iRiver has managed to take the Chumby, add a sweet remote/phone, and throw it into a slick matte white package. This desktop touchscreen is arguably one of the hottest products at CES primarily ’cause info didn’t leak about it before hand and its a pleasant surprise in the mix of gadgets we already know about. The company expects to add a VoIP service like Skype and if they do, this would be a killer desktop companion. Pricing isn’t set in stone yet but expect it to drop around $400 when it hits Korean shelves next month and US stores in six months.

Pandora Radio is now available on the Samsung Instinct on Sprint. The application, which works much the same as its iPhone counterpart, creates your own radio station of sorts based on your musical tastes. So, if you’re into Soundgarden, Pandora will create a station around that—plenty of Alice in Chains and the like.

The application costs $2.99 per month, which is strange because the iPhone version is free as in beer. Oh, well. Just another kick in the teeth for Sprint users, I’m afraid.

via Gear Diary

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Chumby now supports Pandora Radio

A recent update to the net-connected Chumby device adds Pandora Radio as an option under the Music menu. Check out the above video for a quick demonstration of everything. It’s pretty straightforward – you’ll need to reboot your Chumby to get it to show up initially but once that’s done, you’ll find the Pandora option amongst the other available music sources.

Then, simply enter your Pandora username and password and you’ll have access to your stations. You can create new stations straight from your Chumby device and they’ll show up on Pandora.com as well.

Full release:

DISCOVER NEW MUSIC FROM PANDORA ON YOUR CHUMBY®

New content keeps music fans engaged with Pandora radio, music videos from Avot Media and news headlines from Rolling Stone

San Diego, CA – October 7, 2008 – Chumby is now giving music fans a new way to stay constantly connected to the music of their favorite artists, while also introducing them to new music they’ll love. All chumby players can now tune into personalized radio stations from Pandora accounts and have Pandora set as the audio source for custom alarm clocks. Additionally, chumby users will now be able to search and view music videos and more from a music video widget powered by tipMotion from Avot Media, Inc., and receive up-to-the-minute music news and images from RollingStone.com, all without logging onto a computer.

“We know music is a big part of people’s lives and fans want to have always-on, always-fresh access to their favorite artists,” said Stephen Tomlin, CEO of chumby. “A benefit of buying a chumby is that the product is always improving as we add new content and features through automatic upgrades. Now chumbys can be used as radios for the Pandora service at no charge, so whether you bought your chumby months ago or today – you win.”

Pandora is an Internet radio service that is now accessible through chumby. When you indicate a song or artist that you enjoy, Pandora responds by playing selections that are musically similar. You can provide feedback on the individual song choices to further refine the playlist to suit your taste. Your chumby can also wake you with your favorite Pandora station and let you listen to “personalized” radio all day.

“Chumby’s innovative connected media player is a natural fit for Pandora,” said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. “With Pandora now available on chumby, our listeners have even more ways to hear their favorite artists and discover new music.”

Also available on chumby are music videos powered by Avot Media, a video formatting and streaming solution provider. Now chumby users can watch the most popular music videos each week, and search for thousands of popular music, entertainment, news, and sports videos on the most popular search engines at the touch of a button.

Chumby music fans will also be able to receive the latest news and images of their favorite bands through updates from RollingStone.com. In addition, Wenner Media, Inc., publishers of RollingStone.com, will also showcase content from other Wenner publications such as UsMagazine.com.

The addition of music content from Pandora, music video streaming from Avot Media and music news updates from Wenner Media complements the strong music and podcast offerings already on chumby, including thousands of AOL SHOUTcast stations, music news from MTV and VH1, and dozens of great streaming stations on Radio Free Chumby.