While the world fixates on E Ink, an LISNews reader points out to me the glories of the lowly Chumby, the endlessly configurable, linux-powered gizmo with a 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen color display. See YouTube video I just found.
Nope, with a 320-by-240-res screen, the $180 Chumby isn’t as good as some machines for e-reading. But Shoe sees plenty else there. He listens to podcasts on it, for example, uses it as an alarm clock, and gets weather updates.
The library angle
Now here’s the library angle: “E-books might not be for the Chumby, but I still maintain they could be a great tool in libraries. Take their guts out of the beanbag potato sack, and mount them on a shelf or some other not-easily-walked-off-with bit of furniture.”
Suppose, says Shoe, a library patron could enter a Dewey number into a Chumby and see a map of the library showing where the book was, and maybe even the place on the shelf.
“Guess it’d depend on how big your library is.” he says. “Damn, though, it’d be pretty cool.”
Your beanbag thoughts?
Shoe—and apologies if it’s a she—is definitely onto something. Hello, Jeff Scott? What do you think? Other folks? Especially librarians.
Chumby for audiobooks: Shoe correctly envisions the Chumby as an audiobook player—with the important caveat that eBabel and DRM can get in the way of a linux device. That’s one more reason, of course, for Amazon and other audiobook outlets to ditch DRM ASAP.
Related: Earlier TeleBlog posts on the Chumby, inlcuding the e-book angle, plus David Pogue’s New York Times column that Bibiofuture linked to from LISNews.
