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Chumby Reviewed

Most people have never heard of a Chumby, and usually think it’s something to do with (the old children’s TV show) Gumby or might even think it’s a type of dinosaur, but it’s none of the above. The Chumby is a mixture of an alarm clock and, for better words, a widget player, all enclosed in a “cute” leather pillow. At first glance the Chumby looks like a children’s toy, and it could as well be, but it has quite a bit of power for its small size.

Setting the device up easy. Turn on the Chumby, follow the on-screen steps, connect to the Internet, match the code on the Chumby website with your Chumby and then you’re ready to add widgets. To own a Chumby, you HAVE to have an Internet connection to use any of Chumby’s online widget features. Putting widgets on the Chumby requires no syncing with a computer, it’s done all through the website. When you find a widget you like (on the Chumby site) you simply add it to one of the “channels” you’ve made. In about a minute, the widget you added to the channel appears on you Chumby.

Currently, the widget selection is small, but the product isn’t on sale to the public and when it is, I expect it to grow. On my Chumby, I’m running the Chuck Norris fact widget, the PandaCam, TechCrunch feed, Google News feed, Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings, Pendulum, and Facebook. The Facebook widget, which is my favorite, simply shows status updates, pokes, notes, and friends. The Chumby also runs flash and will play online videos from sites like YouTube. I referred to the Chumby as a widget “player” because that’s what it is. I’ve yet to see a widget with the ability to input information. Want to see what my Chumby’s playing? There’s an embeddable widget for your MySpace or blog, here’s mine:

The Chumby isn’t all about the widgets, it also includes two usb ports, speakers, and even an accelerometer. The usb ports and speakers are for syncing and playing your iPod. The speakers are pretty low quality and depending on the size of your music library, it could take a while for the Chumby to recognize your iPod. The accelerometer was unknown to me until I added the Pendulum widget, which takes advantage of the hidden feature.

The Chumby team is constantly updating the gadget’s operating system with bug fixes, optimizations, and new features. A quote from the Chumblog:

“Remember, the chumby’s open for further improvement and we’ll be pushing significant new functionality to everyone’s chumby over-the-air as we go — so let us know what you want chumby to do and that will help us make it even better for you over time.”

With the hope of future updates and features, I want to see a sleep timer, easier navigation when playing music through, and the ability to input information into widgets (Pownce updates?).

The Chumby is a innovative product. The only thing that will bring it down is that it’s unheard of by most. My family and friends had never heard of Chumby and although most thought it was cool, they didn’t really understand exactly what the gadget was. The Chumby will be on sale to everyone late this year or early next year for $180.

What do you think of the Chumby? Do you want one? Leave a comment.

Want to see more pictures? Check out the unbox.

Procrastination and a looming cold have delayed this review. Sorry.