This special pricing will only last through the end of November. It’s our way of thanking our chumby friends who are paying attention :^) And also a way to thank those of you willing to wait a bit and live with our current inventory situation where we’re selling chumby ones faster than we’re making them. Sorry for the queue, but more chumby ones are on the way!
Yes, the rumors are true. In October, chumby industries will be launching the new chumby one. It is every bit a chumby, but still a little different from the chumby classic that you know and love. Obviously a different look and some other differences that we will soon tell you about, for example an optional battery capability. The chumby one will only be available on chumby’s web site at www.chumby.com. The price will be $99.95 during a brief pre-order period (you heard it here first), and after we start shipping (planned for end of October), the price will be $119.95 for single orders and $99.95 each for orders of 2 or more. But don’t worry, chumby classic will not be going away, it will soon be back in stock in many colors.
So stay tuned here for more info about a new way to wake up to your internet life.
One of our favorite publications/tech blogs is MAKE Magazine. And I don’t just say this because the owner of Make, O’Reilly Media, through their involvement in OATV, is also an investor in chumby industries (but at least I got that disclosure out of the way). We like MAKE because they advocate what we advocate, i.e., for people to get more directly involved in the creation, adaptation and enhancement of their own stuff and not to be just mindless consumers of it. The original premise, still in effect, of chumby was that a chumby product should allow its owner to completely personalize it, and in every way: not just change the content on it, but even, with the tools and the talent, to alter the enabling software and modify the housing and the electronics. The marching song was “warranties are for wusses!” And some people did some amazing things. But we really didn’t make this easy for our hardware hacking and “case mod” friends: they had to purchase a chumby at full price and then deconstruct it, likely ruining parts of it in the process, in order to get to the electronics and other components needed to turn it into something else. You had to want to do this pretty badly in order to pay for the parts you didn’t want and then destroy a lot of things in the process.
Now, along with our friends at MAKE, we’ve made this process easier for those of you who want just the raw electronics of chumby for your own creations — you know who you are.
You can now go here and, for $99, which is half the price of a fully-built chumby, get yourself all of chumby’s electronic parts, okay, the “guts” of a chumby — btw, no one consulted chumby’s marketing department on that description, but …whatever. If you’re brave enough to assemble a chumby, this description won’t turn you off. Move fast, because there aren’t a lot of these kits. And please let us know what you create. Maybe you’ll even get a crazy idea like encasing all of these electronics in soft Italian leather and adding a “charm hook” for amusing rubber charms.
Hack on, and don’t forget to write.
Elizabeth Woyke from Forbes wrote a nice piece about chumby yesterday. Of course those of you who regularly read this blog have known for some time where chumby has been heading, because we told you back in January: http://chumby.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/chumby-redefined-at-ces/ . While I wouldn’t exactly call myself the mastermind (“mwaaah-hah-hah”) behind chumby-as-a-service — fortunately chumby industries has far more masterful minds than the CEO’s doing the real work — this is, and always has been, where we’ve been headed. We’re looking forward to offering you some of the cool new products we’re working on with many well-known partners. Those of you who already own a chumby shouldn’t worry — you already know how we keep improving your device, for example adding Pandora, and your chumby will only continue to get better. In fact I suspect that nothing that we’re working on will make you regret your purchase of a chumby now, so there’s still time to own “the classic,” even though we’re currently a bit thin on some of the colors. A classic chumby remains the only Italian leather-covered “squishy” personal internet media player you can buy :^)
But there are some exciting new chumby products coming, so stay tuned.
I have a confession to make: I have always hated chumby’s three standard alarm tones, i.e., those available to you when you set a “Quick Alarm” on chumby. As we were hurrying to ship chumbys in early 2008, the standard alarm tones just didn’t receive a lot of thought. We gave you a standard beep, a bugle reveille, and the most cacophonous and obnoxious klaxon horn you ever heard. It’s not like this was a horrible product flaw or anything: the tones work, some people actually like them (particularly those people who require some really loud and annoying sound in order to get out of bed), and not too many people complained. I let it go at the time because someone who wanted to wake to something nicer from chumby could always choose from thousands of streaming internet radio stations, podcasts, Pandora Radio or a whole bunch of other music choices. But we could have done better. And one of the nice things about chumby is that we can get around to improving things that need improving and then update everyone’s chumby automatically over-the-air…voila!
So we finally got around to fixing this — and now I can sleep at night :^)
I spent a bit of time and asked people (it was a fun parlor game) what they thought would be the nicest sound you could possibly wake to. One suggestion was a sexy voice saying, “Good morning, Honey, you’re so wonderful and desirable,” but I already hear that every morning (uh huh). Another almost-compelling suggestion was the sound of “frying bacon” but, without the accompanying smell (we’re still working on that), it doesn’t quite do it. Eventually it became clear. It’s birds! But which bird had the most beautiful song? Consultations with leading ornithologists (I really did have these) weren’t conclusive, but a few favorites emerged. European Blackbird, Hermit Thrush, Musician Wren. All nice, really nice. But, after listening to many of these, I decided to go with the Nightingale — just so lovely, yet still shrill enough to rouse you.
But we didn’t stop there. No, sir. There were other opinions and we listened! Someone suggested the sound of their Granny’s old chiming clock — if you’re a synesthetic, we found “the sound of chintz.” Then I saw a “zen” alarm clock that would wake you by physically striking a Tibetan gong. Cool. A bit “new agey” for my own taste, but interesting. So if you’re pining for the Lamas rather than the fjords, now there’s a chumby alarm tone for you! Goes nice with our Zen Garden widget too. Start the day with a little Samadhi before your chumby flips to the weather forecast and the horrible news headlines.
Try the new tones and let us know what you think. But if you stick with that damned Klaxon, now you have only yourself to blame.
And of course you can still go the Neil Young and Chopin route too.
And make sure you try out the sleep timer on chumby — you can fall asleep to various waves, rain, or other sleep-inducing sounds and your chumby will turn itself off after a few minutes. Stand-alone “sleep sound generators” sell for $50-$150 — your chumby throws in this capability for free! Such a deal, what are you waiting for?
Well, I have a few chumby channels, but the one I’m mostly tuned into has the following widgets on it:
Doodles – Random Face Generator
Weather by The Weather Channel
EarthCam Webcam Network (Wrigley Field!)
Yeah, that’s a lot :^)
Now that Mom is crowing about her thoughtful and treasured chumby (you did send her one for Mother’s Day, right?), you better maintain marital bliss and deliver one to dear old Dad too. We’ll make it easy on you and give you $30 off. But don’t be thinking you can drag your sorry backside over here after mid-June and still get this deal! Surely Dad taught you a bit more discipline than that: “The early bird gets the worm,” “10% inspiration, 90% perspiration” “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” “Never up, never in,” “You better get me a chumby, you worthless ingrate.” Thanks for all the wisdom, Dad!
Buy here: https://store.chumby.com/pages.php?pID=12
The Doodles – Random Face Generator
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, chumby’s development community is relentlessly amazing.
Another beaut, McConnell.
She has put up with you all these years. Doesn’t she deserve something this good?
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