Chumby’s widget developer community…

…is wonderful. Not to mention prolific.

Every single day new widgets appear on the Chumby Network that absolutely delight us. Just like every other widget system we have lots of news, weather, sports, stock quotes, etc. I guess that’s the “fiber” of the information diet. But what’s so great about the Chumby widget ecosystem is all the “dessert” that our development community is cooking up.

For example, and just in the last couple of days, the following new widgets appeared — these are not specially hand-picked, just what happened to be posted in the last day or so:

ChumbySpy — a random feed of various security webcams on the Net. Sure, it’s mostly locked metal doors and construction sites — webcams no one would ever really fire up a browser to seek out — but that’s exactly why it’s a great use for a chumby;

Washington Post Photo Gallery — essentially a “news in pictures” widget from the Washington Post. This is how news is meant to be consumed on a “photo frame” — a purely visual take on what’s happening in the world. If you were sitting at a PC you’d go to a Web site to read the news, but on a glanceable device like a chumby this is a compelling application and a nice companion to a variety of “news in headlines” widgets on Chumby;

Secret Diary of Steve Jobs — Fake Steve Jobs, that is — a snarky and imaginative take on what it must be like to be Steve. Perhaps like The Onion, another widget on Chumby, it seems more real than reality — or at least a lot funnier;

David Letterman’s Monologues — video clips of Dave’s nightly Late Show monologues for those of us who want to hear them again or who go to sleep too early — funny at any hour of the day, but also perfect while making coffee in the morning;

A whole bunch of classic British television clocks — for those of you who don’t remember, a TV set in Britain once served as a precursor to the chumby, i.e., you could glance at it to know the time, between shows anyway, and then get a whole channel of entertainment (well, the choice of one or two BBC channels of entertainment). British television was shows about sheep dogs and male comedians in women’s clothes making high-pitched shrieking sounds, but the clocks were cool — btw, widget developers, please get going on those sheep dog and Monty Python widgets ;^)

So I’m not saying these particular widgets are the reason for you to get a chumby, just like I’m not saying you should only eat chocolate pudding for dinner, but the chumby is about FUN and these are wide-ranging examples of Chumby fun. These widgets are simply nice, and purely random, examples of content from the Chumby community that is delightful and maybe only appropriate on a chumby rather than on a browser-based PC. They’re now on my Chumby channel.