Japanese Chumby Development/Hacking Book
March 27th, 2010 by scottjanousek
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I noticed that in Japan a Chumby development/hacking book has been published. I recently picked up a copy and started leafing through some of the code. Pretty cool!
In 2008, I wrote a chapter on Chumby development that was part of the AdvancED: Flash on Devices book.
I’ve also built several Flash widgets on the platform, some commercially and others just for the fun of it. Ok, so it’s Flash Lite 3.x. That’s ok. The kind of apps (well “widgets”) you build for chumby are pretty basic anyways … if not, you’re doing something wrong. 
Speaking of Chumby, I just received a Chumby One the other day, so I plan on blogging about it soon.
Rob Toole had a post not so long ago about the “newer” Chumby where he detailed what he liked about the new Chumby (e.g. new pricepoint, new rigid case, rechargeable battery option, etc).
This is how I feel about these 3 items:
- Price – a big win here!
- New Case Design – hmmm. I like the old case, personally, but I imagine this is how they lowered #1.
- Removeable Battery Option – I already hacked my chumby back in 2007 to do this, but 2 hours is 2 hours … unfortunately, it’s still DIY.
The think the biggest value add for Chumby is not necessarily the hardware (although quite impressive!), but the platform and content it offers.
If you take a look, Sony Dash and some other OEMs are now partnering with Chumby to some extend for content. Building quality content in good numbers on an open-source device is challenging, but they’ve managed to do it to a degree.
I do have to wonder what Chumby will do next if they manage to sell more units and content in the future. The Chumby Platform may get very interesting this year.
Stay tuned for my Chumby One review.