DIY-Friendly Chumby Gadget

Chumby is the gadget that wants to be loved by developers and geeky dudes who didn't have dates for Valentine's Day. Sometimes, both of those consumer demographics signify the exact same people, and they might like this one if they can get over the fact that it looks like a toy for a 12-year-old girl.
Available beginning this week, the Chumby mini-computer streams personal music channels like Pandora, checks on your favorite social networking sites for updates, and can be used as a photo frame by grabbing your pictures over-the-air from the net and streaming them on its 3.5” LCD screen.
More interesting is that it's open-source and Linux-based, with acceptable specs and user support that a good modder could use for tricks and endless enjoyment. For example, there's a Chumby Wiki support page for developers and a widget-maker page that can take advantage of the specs, with the clear hope that it will build a Chumby-friendly community.


Ever since the open gadget was announced early last year, Chumby has been wooing the Linux crowd with promises of the available user support groups and feeding ideas about how cool it would be to modify a small computer into weird formats (like the bear at right).
In addition to the LCD touchscreen, the Chumby includes two external USB 2.0 ports, a 350 Mhz ARM processor, 64 MB of SDRAM (flash), an accelerometer, and a Wi-Fi connection. And of course, it includes stereo speakers so that it function as the slightly more interesting alarm and radio that it looks like.
The Chumby is available in three difference colors for $180 (pre-tax) Chumby's Developers Page: http://www.chumby.com/developers