Topic: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

In just the last couple of months, the Twitter widget, the Stock Market widget, and the NPR news widget stopped functioning.  There's also another bug where the 8" devices need to be restarted each day to refresh the information being displayed by many of the widgets (eg, news stories in RSS feeds don't update).

Months go by and these are not resolved.

If you can't get NPR news, Twitter, or US Stock Market charts, that's a lot of the utility of the Chumby down the drain right there.

I seem to be removing failing widgets more than adding new ones!

Has this gizmo reached an inflection point?

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

Wel, these are all failing for different reasons - with so many widgets, at any given time, some fraction are going to fail.  The problem at this point is that several high-profile ones have gone dark at the same time.

Int he case of Twitter, we were using Google AppEngine to to the authentication step.  Unfortunately, Google lowered their caps and raised their prices to the point where using their service is uneconomic.  We're looking for another way to do this without incurring high costs.

In the case of NPR news, the widget was removed at the request of NPR in order to replace the branding.

The Stock Markets widget appears to be failing due to a server configuration issue - we recently moved some of our content services to a new location, and some of them are still stuttering a bit.  The "Stock Quotes (Classic)" widget should still be working fine since it uses a different data feed.  We may have to switch the main widget to the secondary feed.

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

Thanks for the detailed response ... I'm wondering if there is a way to update the widget details/notes to state that they are currently being refactored/reworked?  Maybe that's already being done?

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

We're not as good about notification about those sorts of things as we probably should be.  At this point, all we can do is take them down with a rather cryptic message, which can be misleading, and people end up removing them from their channels.  I don't now if that's better or worse than leaving them up and trying to fix them.

The other issue with many widgets, particularly those based on RSS feeds is that many site operators seem to have a pathological need to change the URL or feed format on some random basis.  Several of my widgets need pretty much constant monitoring since they bounce around constantly. This isn't a problem unique to Chumby - it's true for any RSS reader application.

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

I'm very sad to see NPR unavailable.  I hope it gets restored.

Is there a twitter client that does not require logging in?  I don't have a twitter account and don't want one.

Also, I want to monitor twitter accounts in Japanese.

Can a twitter client be written to use Oauth or some other authentication that does not require a third party service, for those who do want to be logged in?

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

We've fixed the Twitter widget.

Yes, the Twitter widget requires OAuth, which means that it needs to support SHA-1 hashing. Unfortunately, SHA-1 is not directly supported in Flash, so it must be written in Actionscript.  However, it's a complicated algorithm, which means it takes an inordinate amount of time (2-3 seconds) to compute a hash.  We found a better implementation, which is what we use in the new one.

I'm working on the NPR widget.  It should be back relatively soon.

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

Duane wrote:

We've fixed the Twitter widget.

...snip...

I'm working on the NPR widget.  It should be back relatively soon.

Thanks for the effort Duane   smile

Brian, #1 Joan Jett Fan

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

Well, I can't take credit for most of these things - there are a bunch of guys that work on this constantly. "gmcbay" is the one that fixed Twitter.

By the way, let us know if the Stocks widgets is still having problems - as far as we can tell it's operating normally.

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

Stock widget (default one?!) has been working since day one for me.

Twitter, however, isn't working right now. sad Just tried the morning of 12/13 - not sure if there was a volume issue?

Re: Is this still a viable platform? So many things don't work!

Hmmm, reboot your device and see if it's still busted.  The original issue was fixed, but perhaps another one showed up sad