Who are you calling an alarm clock?

I'd love to introduce you guys to my new friend Chumby. I am sure your wondering what on earth is that thing? Well hmm.. the question more is what isn't it? I've heard of Chumby being referred to as a pimped out alarm clock. I think that's selling this little linux based Internet device short! Chumby is well, whatever you want it to be.

Chumby is very tiny, not much bigger than a coffee mug. Though it may be small Chumby can do so many things, yes it will tell you the time, yes you can use it as an alarm clock, but at all times your new little Chumby friend will be connected to the Internet via a WiFi connection. Depending on which software packages you load onto it (called widgets) you really decide exactly what sort of device your Chumby will be.

My Chumby tells me the time, is my alarm clock, gives me the weather, the news highlights for the day, is my virtual picture album, gives me my myspace messages, lets me read all my Tweets (twitter), and even tells me what my facebook friends are up to. Other friends with Chumby can even send me a ecard! My Chumby even has a white board so I can leave myself a note if need be in the morning. My Chumby hangs out with me in my bedroom, so even before I get out of bed in the morning I know everything that's happening so far that morning.

The best part is all these little widgets are totally free. Once you have your Chumby you just log it in on your WiFi network, and then go on Chumby's website and register your new friend. From there you can pick which widgets are sent to your Chumby as well as you can set up different channels. Channels are particularly useful as you can tell your Chumby to do different things during different times of the day. You can change your widgets as often as you like and there are always new widgets coming out!

Controlling your Chumby is too much fun! Chumby is VERY interactive, once you have your widgets loaded you can access your Chumby's menu by tapping the top of your Chumby. Chumby sports a touch screen so all of the controls are controlled by just touching what you want. One really unusual thing you will notice about Chumby is its soft.. plush even. Instead of being a hard little box its actually squeezable, its really quite unusual and it gives Chumby a character all its own. I know Chumby is adorable and its squeezable sides will give you the impression that Chumby is a toy, but please Chumby is not a toy and rough little hands may injure your new friend.

This is my actual chumby, complete with all my widgets at the moment. Cool huh?

Along with having a great touchable screen, Chumby is equipped with a built in speaker, a motion sensor, two usb ports, and a headphone jack. You can use those USB ports to charge your USB devices such as a mp3 player, as well as play the music from your mp3 player, ipod, or even from a flash drive! For such a small little device the sound quality is actually really good as well!

Chumby is still a fairly new gadget and though my complaints are few really the only thing I can say that I'd love to see improved is the loading time on some of the larger widgets. I'd also love to see a way to flip through the widgets without having to go through the main menu.. I'm always in a hurry and sometimes I just want to see the weather right now. I honestly can't even tell you if there is a widget I'd like to see as it seems the moment I think of one I'd like to have, within days or weeks someone publishes a widget for that. I'm sure that at this point they have only broke the surface of all the things you can do with your Chumby. Who knows, maybe at some point you can watch your favorite TV shows on Chumby too.. now that seriously would be cool.

Chumby is available for purchase directly on their website!

I have a cool Chumby Tshirt and charm set! The shirt is a medium but its fairly generously sized.. so Id say it would fit a medium to large fairly easily, its the navy blue with the Chumby logo.


To enter :

• Leave a comment on this post. Check out the Chumby and check out all the cool widgets you can have on your Chumby. Come back here and tell me which widgets you would load on yours!
  
• No "i want to win" stuff without a little effort (and I do mean little!)
• Make sure there is a way for me to contact you - if your email address is not on your profile or you are not a blogger you may leave it in your comment or email it to me directly (angelaandconnor at gmail dot com) We have had to disqualify a lot of potential winners as of late as many people do not have emails available in their profiles or leave anonymous posts without any way to contact you.
• Please US entries only.
• To get extra credit :
• For an extra entry :
• Bloggers - Blog about this contest and leave me the link on your comment, or add me to your sidebar and let me know its there.
• Non Bloggers (or bloggers) subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed and earn another entry!
• One extra credit per person. Please post your extra credit in a separate post.
• This contest will end July 3rd at midnight!