Who, or what is a Chumby? (No fair looking.) Okay, it’s not brand new, but play along, kids…
- A fishing boat robot cleaning device for deck chum
- A Chia -Gumby
- A bank for chump change
- Rugby for chums
- Some kind of mutant six-legged octopus
Our favorite client at Glu, David Zemke, a regular contributor to the ever-growing Eat My Words Headscratchers list, recently told us about Chumby, a real humdinger. David said he was listening to a web radio station that was giving away a bunch of Chumby’s and the DJ couldn’t even describe what a Chumby was.
Here are some other tries at descriptions:
Engadget – If the concept of Chumby still eludes you, just imagine an almost entirely open-source device (hardware included) designed to run widgets assigned via a web interface, intended to sit somewhere useful and give at-a-sleepy-eyed glance information — probably by your bed.
Geek.Com – If you’re not familiar with the Chumby, it’s a Linux-based gadget that connects up to the internet via WiFi, and sports a squeeze sensor, accelerometer, and a 3.5″ LCD color touchscreen. The coolest part about it is that it runs Adobe Flash-based widgets so pretty much anything you can imagine is (or will be) available for it.
CNET – Unfortunately, despite the Chumby’s adaptability, there’s no one feature it can hang its hat on as a compelling default selling point. You’re either convinced that all of the Chumby’s little features add up to the final price, or you’re not.
TheBigChair.Com – If you cross an alarm clock, a picture frame and an internet radio player with a gerbil, you would get the Chumby.
A gerbil?
Chumby fails enough of the SMILE & SCRATCH Test to flunk as a good name. We love naming electronic things and will be announcing a trio of new devices we named for industry leader Altec Lansing in the near future. We are particularly excited about this because it is the start of our worldwide campaign to rid the electronic goods industry of alpha-numeric name architectures.
