Chumby gets leaner, cheaper, and faster

The $99 Chumby One ditches the plush look of the previous model and gets a performance boost.

(Credit: Chumby Industries)

The Chumby One (which is technically Chumby No. 2) officially made its way into the manufacturer's online storefront Wednesday, priced at a tantalizing $99.

For those who didn't catch the Chumby phenomenon the first time around, the gist of the thing is a do-it-all, hardware host for Internet widgets. You can use it to check the weather, update your Facebook status, browse your photos on Flickr, tune in to Internet radio, play games, and more. The original Chumby was a blast (I still use one at home for listening to Pandora), but it was a bit of a rich-kid novelty at $179.

Chumby One represents a leaner, faster, cheaper take on the original. Aside from ditching the plush Italian leather and beanbag shape of the original for the clean lines of ABS plastic, the new Chumby benefits from a faster processor (454MHz), a built-in FM radio, a dedicated volume knob, 2GB of microSD memory, and a single USB 2.0 port. They've now made it portable, too, with an optional rechargeable lithium ion battery good for an hour of use.

Chumby One -- photos

Many features haven't changed, which is surprising when you consider the big price drop. You still get a relatively spacious 3.5-inch resistive LCD touch screen, a 3.5mm stereo output, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, accelerometer control, and an AC adapter. Let's hope you can still play Quake on it.

Also, is anybody else thinking this thing is just a camera away from working as a Skype video phone? Come on developers, there's a built-in microphone, a USB 2.0 port, a reasonably fast processor--make it happen, OK?

[eric_w]

Cool! I just placed an order. I couldn't find anything on the site, however, about the batterey.

[MLaneOR]

This looks great. I've signed up to be notified when this is available and plan to purchase one immediately (and more perhaps in the future). Unfortunately, the developer information states that the development is not .net (C# for me) but is GNU (unix) so I'm not sure that I'll bother developing for it but it looks like it has interesting possibilities.

[c|net Reader]

Using Mono (http://www.mono-project.com/), you can still write your C#.

[Jivedaddy]

Making this a Skype video phone is a great idea...

[grey-devil]

I'm actually kind of sad to see that they got rid of the beanbag design for the new version. I know it was probably to cut down on overall cost, but it was what gave the first model most of it's charm. It made it into a nice little gadget companion, i would absolutely pick this up had they kept the original look...

If someone decides to make beanbag exteriors for this i will love them forever (:

[jtara]

MLaneOR, the way you develop (at least conventionally) for Chumby is "none of the above". Chumby uses downloadable Adobe Flash widgets.

[heulenwolf]

So, is this like the alarm clock of the future? What's the killer app?