Ever since I lost the small sony tv that woke me up gently with the news and a good morning greeting on screen I’ve been disrupted from my sleep with horrific beeping sounds from various alarm clocks. This doesn’t make for a great welcome to the day when you are in a deep sleep so I have been looking out for a replacement. I wasn’t sure what it would be but it had to be gentle and really cool and I’ve found it. It’s called a Chumby.
What makes it cool? It comes with wifi, a touchscreen, is hackable and does a hell of a lot more than just tell the time! This is just one more piece in the puzzle towards a totally networked home. People have made widgets that will not only wake you up in the morning but will also tell you your events for the day from your gmail calendar, go and fetch your mum’s holiday photos that she uploaded to flickr overnight and even get the latest blog entry from amyo is a geek. But want to know the best thing?
You can squeeze it.
Yeah baby, finally it’s ok to show the love to your gadget! It’s currently not available for purchase, won’t be on sale until 2007 and at the moment it looks like you’ll be able to get it for around $150US. They are giving away prototypes though to people who have a good enough argument to deserve one. Almost makes me wish I could develop webpages instead of html.
What excites me the most though is what this thing will be able to do in the future. We don’t know what that future will be yet, but this thing will be ready for it. It’s adapting the same idea as Konfabulator, Samurize, Apple and Microsoft have with their widget technologies but taking it off the desktop and in to your life. The second a new website or cool tool comes out this gadget will be ready with a widget to help you use that out in the real world. I can even see this as a useful work tool. Imagine millions of workers all carrying around telly”chumbies” that tell them when their next meeting is. How funny would that be. There will be “Pimp My Chumby” tv shows and new sex toys will spring up with Chumby as the face.
Next year is going to be wicked.
I showed Boo Boo this page and he went nuts. He wants one too! 🙂