Chumby grows up, dates Samsung

Chumby gets framed by Samsung.

(Credit: Chumby)

The cute little beanbag-encased, open-source Chumby (my review), an internet display device, is growing up through a partnership with Samsung. The original Chumby software makes the device into a good digital photo frame functionally, but the hardware is too small and bulky to compete with other dedicated frames. This partnership will get the Chumby software into more consumer-friendly hardware -- eventually.

The Samsung product is a reference design, not a shipping item. I do hope we see Chumby-powered full-sized photo frames this year. The Chumby architecture makes it easy to upload photos to your device from a photo sharing site like Picasa Web or flicker, as all the work is done on a PC in a browser, and updates go to the display device over a home's WiFi.

The Chumby platform can also deliver other widgets to a display device: Weather forecasts, RSS feeds, and so on.