Chumby launches - internet gizmo you can customize using widgets

Chumby is cute, positioned as an internet device for your home, designed to sit on your desk and serve as an alarm clock and stream stuff from the internet that can vary based on your personal preferences based on the widgets you add to its dashboard. Chumby is small, doesn’t run on batteries and therefore isn’t exactly mobile (you have to plug it in), but does use WI FI to access the ‘Net. I’d classify this device with the Nokia N810 or the ASUS Eee PC. These are a dynamite way to get some but not all the features/functionality of a full-fledged computer and to access selective websites. Like them, this device runs on LINUX to keep costs down which means that it’s development environment is open. Of the three devices mentioned Chumby is the lowest cost device available with - for now - the fewest number of widgets, but I’m sure this will change over time. After all, Chumby just started to ship. There’s a discussion of how they handled their beta program on their blog that is of interest to marketing types like myself, in terms of managing interest and excitement around the launch of a new hardware platform. Note that the discussion of widget development seems to require skills at Flash to develop them. Too me, this is too bad ... as developing in Flash requires “real programming skills” versus developing in PHP or Javascript where typically I can muddle through by copying somebody’s else’s code, so long as the task at hand is simple. Adobe’s Flash is one of those “virtual standards” ... not exactly open ... but so ubiquitous you can almost consider it to be an open standard. It will be interesting to see how the Chumby ecosystem fares and whether the need to develop widgets in Flash limits the number of widgets available or not.
A brief note on terminology. Chumby, Apple, and Opera calls the small, focused, single-purpose applications that plug into their dashboard or browser “widgets”, which is the term I prefer. Google calls them gadgets ... for better alliteration I guess