...stuff I do and things I like...

Wednesday, January 02 2008

Chumby @ 24C3

Something I really didn't expect, I found bunnie one of the guys behind Chumby at 24C3 - no surprise he was sitting together with the XBox hackers. He had a bunch of Chumbys with him so I took my chance to take a look.

I found that the Chumby is slightly smaller then I expected (nothing wrong with this). It has a nice look and feel (pictures are ok but nothing is as good as reality). The Chumby has nice leather-like skin which makes nice and squishy. Playing with it at the congress was kind of hard, since the Chumby needs a power adapter because it doesn't have a battery and power outlets are kind of hard to get at the congress. The second obstacle was getting Chumby onto the wireless network which was almost impossible (this years wireless network sucked big time). Interacting with the Chumby touchscreen worked quite nice (I didn't had much time to play with it). It didn't feel slow or anything. One particular funny part is the touchscreen calibration which has a nice different addition, a drag'n'drop test at the end.

All in all it was quite fun (much better then the Nabaztag). Also I must say I wouldn't buy a Chumby but this is not because it is not cool or functional but because I already made my own Chumby-like device (which can also play Chumby content).


[1] Chumby
[2] bunnie's blog
[3] The Nabaztag