The Chumby — a squeezable wireless beanbag computer — is finally shipping! I've been playing with one of these for months now, and I'm really impressed with them. The little beanbag is completely open — from the flat-pattern for the bag, to the firmware for the device — and the way it works is, you subscribe to any of hundreds of "widgets" that Chumby hackers have made and published. I use it as an alarm-clock, Archive.org video browser, weather display, Flickr browser, and all-round toy.
Though the Chumby isn't generally for sale yet, people who signed up for early notice of it are getting information for buying one today. I'm sure it'll be on sale soon.
I've been following the saga of Chumby production closely, reading about the manufacturing process on founder Bunnie Huang's blog (Bunnie is also the MIT hacker who broke the Xbox) — and I can't wait to see these things in wide distribution.
See also:
Chumby chairman interview: squeezable, open bean-bag computer
Bunnie Huang's blog-series on Chinese manufacturing
China's manufacturing cities – photo gallery
Master Chao: Chinese virtuouso flat-pattern designer
