An Appeal to Chumby Industries

So what is Wired News raving about?

I’m not too sure. I know that it’s big. Bigger than its 5 1/2″ wide, 4 1/4″ tall, 3 1/4″ deep dimensions.

It’s not unlike Twitter in some respects – and Twitter is still in the midst of its own identity crisis. This may take years to figure out.

In fact, by bringing a new form factor into the mix, the Chumby is a completely quixotic effort. The dudes at Chumby don’t need to hear it from Paul Jacobs  (Qualcomm CEO, my former soccer coach) that they’re foolish for trying to stake it out with their own hardware.

Chumby Industries will take this foolishness all the way to the bank.

But - and it’s a big but - they’re first going to need to assemble a militia of talented young bucks to – no, not exactly to do what’s expected of them. The biggest successes on the Chumby platform will be things that never occured to the device’s creators. 

 Chumby Industries needs to find developers who are looking for a new platform for creative expression, being rewarded for taking the unexpected path, and in a few cases, directly profiting from their hard work.

But, err, you need to have Macromedia Flash on your desktop to be a part of the club…..doing it wrong much?

Chumby Industries,

On behalf of all other the college students who use at least two or three desktops and a laptop throughout the day, I’d like to formally request that you show how I can make widgets with SproutBuilder or any other web-based flash development GUI.

I still won’t know what a Chumby is. But I’ll be better equipped to help figure that out.