Chumby, Meet Facebook - Facebook, Meet Chumby

All my friends know I love gadgets and so it will come as no surprise that Jennifer gave me a very, very cool gadget for my birthday called a 'Chumby'.

What is a Chumby? Well it kind of looks like a little bean bag with a LCD screen. The real question is what can you do with a Chumby or more importanly what can a Chumby do for you?

Wired magazine dubbed chumby one of the cool gadgets of 2008, praising it for bringing "the friendlier face of the Internet into our homes...it did it while disguised as a teddy bear for the 21st century".

The first thing my Chumby did on being brought to life was to show the time in San Diego and stream snippets of late night American chat shows. Impressive but not useful. However after a short time my Chumby, renamed Scuby, was showing my Facebook updates and streaming my favourite podcast at Killer Innovations.

So a Chumby is a WiFi multi-media marvel in a bean bag. It will sit on your desk, the mantelpiece or by the side of your bed and do what ever you want it to do. Just install the widgets you like or roll your own as it is fully 'open source'.

Until the next post, take care out there and keep playing with gadgets ( if that's what you do! ) ...Robert