The Chumby arrived safe-and-sound today, after a long trip. From Hong Kong, to Korea, to Alaska, to Kentucky, and finally in Austin. It came in a small box, with some really nice packaging. Take a look:

 
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As you can see, it comes in it’s own little cloth sack, with the power pack in its own sack. Some little do-dads (to the right) come along, too. The actual Chumby is that black bean-bag looking thing in the middle. It’s about four inches across, has an LCD touch screen, and a leather “body”. It’s really quite an impressive presentation.

When you first plug it in and turn it on you get a welcome movie. It has to calibrate the touch screen and set up the network settings (it has WiFi built in). You then go to their site, register the Chumby, and start choosing your Widgets.

The Chumby displays Widgets, which are little Flash-based programs. You can select stuff like Weather, Word-Of-The-Day, Clocks, eBay listings, and so on. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and more being added. Think of it as an RSS feed without the PC.

It’s actually pretty handy, as it can display useful information without taking up screen space on your PC. And since it’s wireless, it can sit anywhere in your home. Right now I have it at my desk, as you can see below:

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Some initial impressions:

• The touch screen is nice, but it doesn’t work the greatest with the fingertips. I use a GameBoy stylus and it works perfectly. (You don’t need to access the screen much. Once you have your widgets set up, it’s set-and-forget.)
• The network setup was a little annoying, as most setups are. Though it was mostly due to “user error” on my part. Once I converted by passphase from ASCII to HEX it worked fine. (I’m running an older D-Link router.)
• It seems to respond a little sluggishly now and then, but I think a lot of that was due to it not reading the touches properly. The stylus fixed that. (They should include one, and have a little hole in the Chumby to store it.)
• There are lots of sensors in it, but I haven’t seen many used yet. For example, there’s a speaker in there, a mic, a tilt sensor of some sort, etc. It will be interesting to see what they do with that stuff. (I know some alarm clock Widgets use the speaker.)
• I’d like to see a widget transition, or a widget style sheet. Some of the Widgets have white backgrounds, some dark. When it transitions it’s a bit annoying. It either needs a smooth (fade-in-out) setup, or a way to get all widgets to use the same stylesheet / color combo.
• I think it would be too bright in the bedroom (the screen is quite bright); though you can change it to “night mode” which is much-much dimmer.

It is nice to see that the technology has caught up with the concept. (Remember the ill-fated 3COM Audrey?) With wireless everywhere, these sorts of always-on internet-enabled devices will really come of their own.

Update: While it does has a 9V battery snap hidden inside, it’s supposed to run plugged in. This makes sense, because it’s always on (and driving a big, bright, display). However, it’s size is perfect for moving around, and the cord makes that process a hassle. I wish Tesla were alive today, so he could give me the wireless power sources we need.

Oddly, some of the most interesting Widgets are the Animal Cams. (You get sick of looking at the same weather report over and over.) Right now I’ve got the Shamu Cam running (yes, the whale). And look there–there are actually two whales in the tank.