Chumby is the name of a small device that displays “web widgets.” It connects wirelessly to the internet to display a rotation of user-selected content. It’s still in the testing stages, but supposedly will be on sale this summer, and will cost less than $200. But you can create your own “Virtual Chumby” now by establishing an account on www.chumby.com
Here’s the Virtual Chumby I created just a few minutes ago…
There may be some aspects of Chumby that could be useful in my sabbatical project (to create a prototype “textbook in an iPod”). The touchscreen interface and Flash playback is promising, although at the moment it doesn’t appear able to support streaming video.