The Chumby was, at its core, an Internet radio and alarm clock with a touch screen. Not quite a consumer product, yet not quite a hobbyist platform, its design now seems rather quaint compared to today’s smart phones. After Chumby ceased operation I assumed that my Chumby One would be nothing more than a clock forever, so I turned it off and put it on a shelf. But then, last year, it was announced that the Chumby servers were coming back online.
I haven’t subscribed to the fully reborn Chumby service, so I don’t have any of the apps that are offered, but my Chumby One lives again as a radio for background sound while I’m reading, and it does a good job of it. I have the URL’s of about ten different Internet radio stations entered, it works with my Pandora account, and I gave it a USB drive holding MP3’s of the complete Beatles and Beach Boys catalogs. Viva le Chum!