The Chumby: Biggest waste of VC funding I’ve ever seen
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 3:36 PM PST In Ideas and rants
I’ve often held back my thoughts on the Chumby because I thought people would soon come to their senses and realize that it was the biggest waste of invention ever to be created. Sadly via Read Write Web, one of my favorite blogs on the net, I find out that the people behind this decrepit attempt at an internet device just scored $12.5 million in VC funding.
Some back story for those not familiar with the Chumby concept:
A Chumby is a $180 device with WiFi, a 3.5 inch touch screen, 350 MHz ARM processor, stereo speakers, accelerometer and a “squeeze” sensor. The Chumby connects to the net and grabs information which is displayed in the form of widgets created in Flash Lite 3.
That $180 is better put to use buying a new mobile phone or getting a data plan for the device already in your pocket.
Someone please tell me what the point of a Chumby is and why people are paying this company to build such a product. Your mobile phone is with you no matter where you are, it is always connected to the internet, if it is fairly decent then it has WiFi, stereo speakers, a full HTML web browser and with the ability to accept external storage, such as the 8 GB microSDHC card in my Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N82, then it can even replace your MP3 player.
My generation has already replaced their desk side alarm clock with a mobile phone and we’re increasingly getting internet access on our handsets as well. What is the value add of a Chumby? I’m dying to know!
The Chumby has a “Linux-based, open-source platform” proclaims Sarah Perez, that’s fantastic, but open source is not a feature to attract mainstream users.
The Chumby is “showcase for your talents” as a widget creator, which again is fantastic, but there are already more than half a billion mobile phones on this planet that have Flash Lite, just like the Chumby. As an artist why would you not want to seek a larger install base to showcase your work?
The Chumy is “made for tinkerers,” so then what do you call people who buy stickers for their phone or phone charms or phone covers or fancy cases or any other sort of accessory that enables a human being to personalize their device?
“The Chumby is designed so that the core electronics can be easily removed from its casing, letting you create your own look for Chumby without having to write code.” You got me there Sarah, but I doubt people are going to buy a Chumby just to take it apart and slap it in some spray painted wooden case that might give you tetanus in the morning when you slam the snooze button on this over priced alarm clock with an IP address.
Update: Video of the Chumy UI via Center Networks.
This is not a mainstream device. It will never be a mainstream device. Its a geek toy that caters to a very niche audience. An audience much smaller than the Nokia Internet Tablets.
I dont know a thing about programming, so I find no use for it. But I’ve seen demos of the Chumby. Its definitely for enthusiasts who know what they are doing.
A buddy of mine has one he bought recently. He loves it. It *is* a geek toy. And I want one…
ceo
Well .. Chumby IS useless. I am a programmer and I still dont see how any money spent on the Chumby is useful. If you do want a programmable device and have a bit of money, consider buying a new phone or an Nokia tablet or a GP2X or even simply a old PDA from ebay or something.
That thing is definitely ugly and clunky looking. No way I would buy this thing and I doubt enough people will buy enough to make that $12.5 mil back.
I agree. But it is a lot cheaper than an N82 ….
I can at least understand why some people would like it. It’s relatively inexpensive, provides a decent amount of entertainment, and it’s fixed at being easy to use and customize. I can see someone grabbing one to just have it sit on their desk next to their computer and run through all of its widgets like a physical Sidebar that scrolls.
Of course, none of that matters since you can run the entire Chumby platform with all of the appropriate widgets on the Nokia Internet Tablets with an application called Grumby.
I’ve found it useful for a lot of things. Tracking packages, watching the live cams from around the country, having a huge clock display on my nightstand when I go to sleep, reading the quick headlines from a couple different sites, watching My eBay, and I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER is probably my favorite.
This is the kinda thing I want, some over-simplified interface touch-screen tablet thing that can access the web and can sit in my living room. I’d love a light-weight touch-screen tablet that lives in my living room and can be chucked around like I do with my remotes, just something simple to check the TV listings with or Wikipedia, or just read the news while the adverts are on.
The N8xx look too complicated, the screen’s are too small and I don’t want to have to use a stylus. Not to mention they’re ugly and I don’t want them in my living room. I just want something like the a large iPhone. Sleek, mostly screen and minimal buttons, simple to use interface, etc. Hope Apple come up with something though, this looks like something I’d expect to find in Toys’r'us.
I have a Chumby and love it.
Put it this way, I don’t have my net-enabled mobile phone on display in the kitchen.
Chumby != Mobile Phone
It is kind of like complaining that the iPod Shuffle is a terrible idea because it lacks a screen, clock, and on-the-fly programmable playlists.
What I like about the Chumby is what it isn’t.
Actually some of us do not believe in paying for overpriced mobile services, when we have wifi in our homes.. Chumby can play streaming audio, give you the news and weather, and even track your UPS package and watch your auction on ebay, and see whats for sale on woot.. as well as keep tabs on your flickr account and incoming email headers (still a work in progress)Its relatively nonthreatening.. Think of it as an advanced, ubiquitious computing device.. Like the stuff from Ambient, but instead of being a one trick pony its open for interpretation.. and the fact that what you see is NOT what you get, down the road, but they are willing to work with it, not like some vendors products where what you see *IS* all you get including the Iscam (er Iphone)..To get new features on the Iphone, you have to *pay* for some upgrades… Not so with the chumby.. It also discourages DRM content… Its not just the geek audience…. your grandmother can use it, or the geek can mould it into something more…
Hilarious. “I’m a contract Nokia evangelist and I think anything that costs as much as an entry level phone that isn’t an entry level phone is inferior to an entry level phone!”
My generation gave your generation wedgies. Prepare for another:
“Someone please tell me what the point of a Chumby is”
- It’s a clock radio from hell. I’ll bet you’ve seen one even if you don’t own one. It tells time. It plays music. It does other things. All without requiring a 2-year commitment and seven kinds of taxes.
“and why people are paying this company to build such a product.”
- because once you spent $150 for the parts you’d have a hard time finding anyone skilled enough to assemble them into something functional and you’d have a harder time finding anyone foolish enough to do it for thirty bucks.
“Your mobile phone is with you no matter where you are,”
- which is why I own one. And when I bought it, I didn’t look for a squishy leather one the size of a grapefruit.
“it is always connected to the internet,”
-and, interestingly, so’s my laptop. Not that that matters. Mostly I use my phone for, you know, calling people.
“if it is fairly decent then it has WiFi,”
-’cuz that internet connection, if it’s EDGE, kinda sucks. Just sayin’.
“stereo speakers,”
- and ’tis truly a sparkling stereophonic image you get out of 4mm piezo drivers spaced an inch apart, ain’t it? Not that Martin Logan has anything to fear from the Chumby. It is, however, the best-sounding clock radio I’ve ever owned *and* I can plug it into my stereo. And then I can leave it there. ‘cuz I have smaller, more expensive things to carry around than a plush wi fi alarm clock.
“a full HTML web browser”
- and ain’t it grand surfing the web on your phone? I wonder why I bought this laptop in the first place…
“and with the ability to accept external storage, such as the 8 GB microSDHC card in my Nokia N82, then it can even replace your MP3 player.”
- Symbian, after all, is an *awesome* way to listen to your toonz. In case you missed it, a Chumby has three USB ports, can tune internet Radio, and will act as a Slimserver client.
***
Look, dude. I’m not going to hold a gun to your head and demand you buy one. It’s certainly not something everybody needs… but out of the box, it’s a pretty perfect li’l internet appliance. Great to have in the kitchen, great to have on your desk at work, great to have on the nightstand in the bedroom. I haven’t tweaked mine one iota, nor am I likely to. I’m rather pleased that the developers are freely available to me (without having to go through an uppity “ambassador” like yourself), that the operating system is being constantly improved, and that the widgets available to me increase daily. I’ve spent $180 on a good meal; I spend $130 a *month* on my cell phone. I’m really pleased with my value-per-dollar out of the silly little thing. Now me? I have no idea why anyone would want a Nokia N72… but I’m not going to get all ad hominem on someone who does.
‘cuz I’m a grownup.
“Mostly I use my phone for, you know, calling people.”
Precisely why the rant I pitched makes no sense to you, at all.
What makes this internet appliance different from all the other ones? More importantly name one internet appliance that was successful.
Stefan,
Your rant makes no sense because you’re not representing anything close to a mainstream audience. To most folks, a mobile phone isn’t the end-all be-all. It basically sucks at everything except being a phone.
I don’t use my phone as an alarm clock. I have to reach over and grab it to read it and the display is still too small to read easily with blurry night eyes.
Nor do I use my Nokia tablet all that often. Yeah, it’s cool. But it crashes all the friggin’ time. It’s been replaced by my Chumby for catching up on things in the morning and by an Asus Eee for anything harder than email/RSS. It’s not that my Nokia doesn’t do a load of things, but it just doesn’t do any of those well.
That leaves plenty of room for hunks-o-hardware that do other things well. The Chumby does what it does really well.
As to successful internet appliances, can’t think of any. But that was once true of laptops and even desktops at one time. The Chumby may well fail, but it’s got the best shot at being a successful internet appliance that I’ve seen. And I’m geekier than you are. (Unless you have an Altair within reach right now. I do.)
I’m not going to comment on the perceived level of geekdom being rated by owning various pieces of property.
While I may appear far from the mainstream to you, Europe is a totally different ballgame. The first thing people touch when they way up is their mobile phone to silence the alarm which they set before sleeping. A mobile phone is a persons portal to the world, here at least.
This isn’t about the alarm clock however, it is about the “plenty of room for hunks-o-hardware that do other things well” argument. Either your a separatist or a convergionist, meaning you want dedicated hardware for certain tasks or you want one device to rule them all.
You fall in the first category, I fall in the second. My rant makes no sense to you in much the same way that your purchase decisions make no sense to me.
“What makes this internet appliance different from all the other ones? ”
Dunno. I never had any interest in buying any other “internet appliances.”
What makes the iPod different from all other MP3 players?
Dunno. But they sure have sold a lot of them. And iPods don’t even have radios.
I’ve owned touchscreen smartphones since 2002 (five of them – not a one of them Nokia. Feel the burn, punk!). I’m all about convergence… but sometimes it doesn’t make sense. For starters, the Chumby’s screen is bigger than something I’d want to carry around anyway. For another thing, nobody mentioned Europe. A tiny company with $12m in 2nd round VC funding isn’t exactly geared to take over the world one time zone at a time. Finally, I see two dozen third party apps up on the S60’s site… and I see two dozen new third party widgets up on Chumby’s site since FEBRUARY. Best get evengelizin’, holmes. I’d maybe work on the people skills a tad – frankly, your rant makes no sense to me because you use words like “convergionist” and think they actually mean something. And when you use arguments like “if you were continental like me, you’d see truth, you Ugly American.”
Good grief. This ISN’T a mobile phone. Will hopefully never be and has never been touted as one.
Yes, it’s a geeky device and I got one as an interesting gadget but since then the number of widgets has exploded and the ability to ‘hack’ the hardware makes it something many people would find good on their desk.
Even my wife now uses it for checking email, calendars, listening to the radio and so much more. And she’s NO geek – trust me.
OK, I fully understand that you don’t like the idea of being grounded to the power (you’re obviously live mobile phones judging by your profile) but most people find they are only useful for making calls after a month or two (I have many friends with expensive Nokias that ONLY make calls these days).
BUT, what I don’t understand is that if you’re a techno geek (more than just mobiles) you don’t see what the Chumby is trying to and not to be.
I’ve never bought a phone that browses well etc but I understand why they are still good gadgets etc.
It isn’t cool is what I’m trying to point out. It’s a blob with a screen and that money could have been put forth toward something better and more useful.
As for Seth, I’m not going to dignify the anti American comments, I lived there for over 15 years and only recently, as in last July, left for Finland. I’m pointing out the difference in usage models and if you can’t see that … I don’t know what to tell you.
No, what you’re trying to point out is that it’s the “Biggest waste of VC funding I’ve ever seen” because “That $180 is better put to use buying a new mobile phone or getting a data plan for the device already in your pocket.” You even bolded that.
Your argument is essentially “Anyone who would spend $300 on a snowblower would be much better off spending $300 on an attachment for their existing lawnmower because having more than one power tool in your shed is what losers do.” Which is exactly the argument someone who has never shoveled a driveway would make.
They would, however, likely stop short of condemning the snowblower industry.
As to “anti American comments”… I’m not the one who said “Europe is a totally different ballgame. The first thing people touch when they way up is their mobile phone to silence the alarm which they set before sleeping. A mobile phone is a persons portal to the world, here at least.” My argument wasn’t anti-American, pro-American or anywhere in between. My argument was that insisting things conform to your worldview when your worldview isn’t the one being marketed to is… childish.
I’m sensing a theme.
You’re the one who said the following:
“And when you use arguments like “if you were continental like me, you’d see truth, you Ugly American.”"
Not me. I’m not calling anyone an ugly American, just pointing out two different [EU vs US] markets have two totally different usage patterns.
Oh guys… Cant we all just get along?
I found out about the Chumby recently and almost instantly ordered one. I LOVE being able to wake up to any combination of MP3s, streaming music, or various types of alarms. It’s great to see the local weather forecast first thing in the morning, and I like the fact that I can choose from a huge variety of Widgets that will display my own personal content or are just plain fun. I’ve even started learning Flash so I can create my own Widgets. I took mine to work earlier this week, and everyone who saw it was amazed.
I can’t image keeping a mobile phone on all night and propping it up so I can see the time. I’m sure being awakened in the middle of the night by a wrong number would be a joy… I don’t think comparing a Chumby to a mobile phone makes any sense. A Chumby is a Chumby–there’s nothing else like it to even compare to.
This is another gadget for people who like gadgets – I just ordered one because I like toys. I can’t at all see a comparison to a cell phone…a data plan would set me back 60.00 a month so the Chumby is paid for in 3 months, plus it would access a slow data network. I wanted a very cool clock radio, and that is what a Chumby is – I want to wake up to a Hawaiian radio station, etc and see the rotating channels. I know a lot of people who think laptops are a total waste of money. As far as “open source” I am not much of a programmer, so that part does not do much for me, but as a user, I know thousands of widgets will be available.
Chumby rocks! I saw a review of it on CNN and immediately bought one. I am a mobile web developer and the author of Tera-WURFL, software designed to help mobile site developers detected mobile phones, but I have to say – the Chumby is awesome. It’s not meant to be a personal, always accessible interactive device. The Chumby fills a gap between statically displayed information (like paintings and sculptures) and dynamically presented information (like radios and digital picture frames). When I want to listen to a particular song I go and listen to it, but when I want to listen to the radio, I want to *be entertained* by the device without being forced to pay attention to it. That’s the point of the Chumby. (plus the fact that you can make your own widgets for it if you happen to be a Flash developer like me
)
Also, I don’t agree that it’s a waste of money (if you have money for luxury items). I paid $250 USD for a Sirius Sattelite radio (in dash receiver) and $13/month for the last 4 years just to get dynamically presented information – why don’t I just get a bluetooth receiver and adapt it to play the audio from my HTC Shadow (smartphone) on shuffle? because I don’t want to mess around with all that crap just to tie up my phone and get me into an accident while trying to change tracks!
Even to be compared with anything of any nature, I still agree with Stefan. Yeah lets wake up to a whole list of mp3s. Sure but you really only need one song to help you wake up, not a whole set list. Like to see the weather forcast once you wake up? Turn on the tv, or get “on demand” on ur phone. Widgets are just as effect as applications for your phone or laptop. I can see why someone with money would buy this even if its to say they got a Chumby (can be used as a sexual joke, lol
) But for those of us who like to buy things that are actually useful and worth the money, I’m sure I speak for all of us like that when I say We Pass!
But even so, Stefan, You could have avoided the headache caused by Seth if you would have just highlighted the device and then posted your opinion by form of comment. Then you would have justified the device and allowed others to make their own statement acordingly while still getting your point across. Even though i totally agree with you on this one, you could have taken a different aproach.
I’m an expat in Europe-Germany to be exact. I found your review while looking for wireless Internet radios for my bathroom. The Blackberry just doesn’t sound too good while showering. I wanted to thank you for allowing all the feedback to your post. I’m ordering my Chumby today! It does exactly what I want it to do (stream Internet radio) and I get the added bonus of getting local weather! With the Euro so high, since I can order from the US direct, it’s the cheapest Internet radio on the market!
Stefan,
In the future, you should actually use a device before you decide to post a review or an opinion of that device. I am a recent Chumby owner (and a gadget fanatic, but NOT a programmer or hacker) and I have to say that the device is an amazing and very useful little invention. I have an iPhone, a Nokia internet tablet, a laptop, I’ve owned more PDAs than I care to remember, I just ordered a UMPC…and on and on…
Chumby is not meant to replace a cell phone, and no cell phone can do what Chumby does. It is a brilliant, inexpensive, easily configured, and endlessly entertaining gadget. My chumby wakes me up every morning with my favorite streaming internet radio station, and then for an hour displays the widgets in my “good morning channel.” I can see at a glance the weather in my town, the appointments on my calendar, the to dos on my to do list, the word of the day, a configurable countdown timer (set to my next vacation/holiday), and the headlines for the top news stories. After an hour, it switches to my “information” channel, with more news, tech news, calendar and to do, etc. At mid-day, it changes channels again so I can see more media and entertainment type widgets, like astronomy picture of the day, webcams from interesting places, articles from the onion, etc. It will change back to the “information” channel late afternoon, then at 9:00pm it switches to “night mode” where it looks and behaves just like a clock radio, waiting for he morning alarm to re-start the cycle.
And at any time, regardless of the channel that is playing, I can stream music from the internet or my media server, plug my iPod into ine of the USB ports and stream from it, or play games on the screen.
My 9 year old son has asked for one for his birthday!
You should ask (nicely) if the folks at Chumby will loan you one to play with. Then maybe you can write a real review or at least have a more formed opinion.
Wow, glad I didn’t heed the advise of the so called “writer.” I bought one today and absolutely love it!
I have one because I can. It’s an elite little device that functions the same way as a digital photo frame.. only with ten times the amount of display options. When I wake up in the morning I like the ability to look at a 3.5″ screen displaying news headlines and weather… not to mention streaming pandora and my iTunes library. I’m pretty sure that your cell phone would die after a few hours of streaming pandora… and that it wouldn’t have the necessary gain to push sound out through a surround sound system. The Chumby is for people who have the money, and want a 3.5″ touch screen bad-ass device. It’s definitely unnecessary… but so are most things we use every day.
My wife loves her chumby and she is definitely not a gadget geek. She reads the People magazine widget, checks the weather, and sets various alarms for different mornings depending on whether or not goes to the gym that day. I’ve never seen a more versatile alarm clock. Maybe the first model was overpriced. But at $99 for chumby one, the next generation, it is a steal.