Max Media | Mostly Mobile

Chumby first impressions

Friday, December 14th, 2007

I recently received my Chumby, an elegantly styled “latte” version, complete with chumby “charms”, little trinkets meant (I suppose) to bling up your Chumby, but which my 4 year old immediately absconded with. Setup was easy, and I’m now looking at it running happily next to my iMac, pushing rotating “widgets” of slashdot, digg, nytimes, youtube, and facebook onto its screen. The hook for us Flash Lite developers is of course that all these widgets are little Flash Lite swf’s, which are downloaded automatically to your Chumby from your My Chumby page on the main Chumby web site. An extra perk, this is Flash Lite 3! So props to the Chumby folks for getting a Flash Lite 3 device out there. Not to jump the gun, after all this is a “insider’s release” not the final release, but still a notable feat.

Having played with it for just a limited time, these are definitely “first takes” so should be taken as such. But despite the bias I have toward devices that run Flash Lite, I find myself doubting how well Chumby is going to do compared to devices like the iPhone, iTouch, or other smartphones or wifi-equipped devices that have similar capabilities, not to mention bigger corporate forces behind them. For instance, the $300 iTouch, at about an extra $100 than the Chumby, may still be what the average consumer would prefer. And with the SDK coming out sometime soon, and possible additions of Flash in the next release (this is just a guess, not based on any facts, btw), it may offer some of the same “widget” potential as the Chumby.

But here maybe is where the ergonomic, “alarm clock” form factor of the Chumby distinguishes itself. It is designed to sit on your desk and feed you “channels” of content, whether they are blog feeds, cute animations, the weather, or twitter updates. And used like this, in a passive way, I actually find it pretty compelling. It’s nice to have a small dedicated device on my desk, wrapped in a cute physical design, feeding me the latest headlines. Now on my desk may not be what Chumby had in mind, as I could just as well have this info coming to me via my desktop computer. But the chumby on my bedside table, or on the kitchen counter, may be a nice way to stay connected to your various information sources.

And because the Chumby is always cycling through your channel of widgets, it doesn’t require any input by the user to show you that content. This is compared to most other devices, like the iPhone, which can show you the same information, but require you to launch the browser, navigate your way to a site, etc.

A couple things nag at me as I use the Chumby however. One is it feels like it has a bit of an identity crisis on what it wants to be, an interactive device that lets you interact with the widget via the touchscreen, or a passive device that feeds you content without any user input needed. I tend so far to prefer the latter, as it’s a bit too bulky, not to mention constrained by a power cord, to make interacting with it ideal. Not that Dizzy Zub Zub isn’t addictive!

Another thing is that the widgets on the Chumby are only as good as the, uh, widgets. What I mean is that you only can control them as far as the widget’s developer(s) programmed them. So if the developer didn’t put in controls to let you scroll the text, well, tough. That text ain’t gonna scroll. This isn’t so much a criticism of Chumby, but it may point to some kind of production process issues, standards, quality control that Chumby may consider in the future to make sure the “widget experience” is up to snuff.

These are just some first impressions. So far my gut feeling is that it’s the passive widgets that have the most potential for making the Chumby stand out from the competition. Other devices are probably going to do interactives like games better, in a smaller, more wireless package. But more passive apps like blog feeds, facebook status updates, twitter, flickr feeds (think of those “digital picture frames” that are so popular this holiday season) to me have the most appeal on the Chumby.

Of course, from the Flash Lite point of view, it’s great to have another device out there, esp. running Flash Lite 3! Thank you Chumby! So lots of potential to play around and experiment with Flash video. Check it out at the Chumby site, order one, and make some widgets!

Posted in Flash Lite | No Comments »