Lots of discussion on Chumby has been happening ( here, here, here and here).
A couple of points on Chumby are:
- An open source hardware flash player
- Schematics completely open
- Runs Linux
- The hacker that wrote Hacking the Xbox is one of the leads behind this
- Lots of O’Reilly alpha geeks seem utterly into this
- Price point at around US$150
Here’s my analysis of those points. A $150 price point isn’t bad however as a thrifty geek who has bought more than enough gizmos that run linux I’m skeptical this will really rock my world. Although I really am for companies that support open hardware designs. However, if the price can eventually be brought down to $100 I’d definitely be interested in picking one up to play with. In regards to Flash. Why a closed, proprietary format? While I understand the ubiquity of flash, without either:
- A reverse-engineered open set of creative tools
- A more open specification than the one that is available
- Adobe opening up their toolsets
Flash remains one of those formats I tolerate but do not encourage its proliferation. Chumby only seems to be aggravating the situation when I look at it. But, nonetheless it’s still a cool gadget but I’ll take a wait and see approach. Right now I’m looking at something that fits my current needs more.
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