I like the idea of having the widgets via peer-2-peer (bittorrent!?), to reduce the traffic on the central servers. In this distributed world it would be possible for chumby to have a long life.

Just having effective caching on the device for things like the control panel with effective HTTP "if-modified-since" support would go a long way to reducing that cost.  Some of that's tied to the network stack of Flash Lite (I implemented that once at Palm, and it's not much fun), but it could be done.

While it would be nice to have, on device caching should be looked into carefully since as far as I understand the devices were never meant to hold much offline data. In major change carries the risk of unforseen consequences. If it is possible to implement without too much of a hassle it would make a great addition.

Bringing low-bandwidth services online first might or might not work depending on what are the popular features(and their bandwidth usage) as well as how much background traffic there exists to run the whole system. If the latter causes the bulk of the load,  the services cannot really be run in a low-bandwidth mode. I suggested the ability to run public/private proxies so that if I want to use some more resource intensive feature I can do so without pushing too much cost onto Duane. It also gives something to the portion of the userbase wishing for an offline solution to avoid a repeat of the closing down scenario. It would not be exactly what they wanted but at least they could keep running their devices independently with some level of functionality. I am a widget person myself.

Going from 5000$/month to 200$/month is a big drop. I really hope that a drastic reduction in operating costs is feasible as without it keeping the service run will probably be very difficult. In terms of paying user base, I feel 10% is on the (very) optimistic side. It´s not that a couple of dollars per year is a big deal for most people who can afford Chumbies but rather that the big jump is from free to non-free. That´s a much bigger barrier than a yearly fee of 10$ versus 5$. Furthermore, you need to consider to what extent the small paying minority will be subsidising the service of the non-paying users. True believers will probably be willing to pay a decent amount for their service but might not want to fork out for others. On the flipside, shutting out the majority of the userbase is likely a bad idea as well. Tricky situation.

If you want to look at user statistics for the forum you can go here http://forum.chumby.com/userlist.php and filter by registration date.

I'm also a widget rather than a radio user. With just the calendar widget on the stub server my Chumby has essentially become useless to me, so I've currently got it switched off (no point adding to Duane's bandwidth costs right now).

My suggestion would be to concentrate on getting a subscription model up and running as a priority over reducing bandwidth. That would allow users who desperately want their functionality back to put their money where their mouth is. Then the task of reducing bandwidth can begin in earnest, with a corresponding reduction in the subscription pricing over time.

For example, I would be happy to pay $50 tomorrow to get my Chumby running again, with its widgets, for the next 12 months. By the time that subscription is over, I would hope that the next year would only cost $25, or even $10.

Above all I think it's important to get a second widget on the stub server to tell users what's happening. Otherwise there will be a lot of users who just give up and put their Chumby in the "drawer of obsolete tech". Although reducing the number of users means a reduction in bandwidth and hosting costs, it also means that the remaining users are paying a larger proportion of the fixed costs. If too many users leave the system in the short term, it could potentially affect the longer term pricing.

I've been using a subscription service for my MythTV schedules for several years, since the free XML TV schedules service did a Chumby like dump. Several people not wanting to see the service die bought the code and started a non-profit organization to maintain the TV schedules and charge $25/year for the service. I use one subscription to the service on all of my MythTV based DVRs and it works very well.

Here is a short blurb from the ShedulesDirect website main page:

Schedules Direct is a non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the benefits of Open Source Software and other free software, provide support functions for such software, and provide funding for research that facilitates the improvement or creation of Open Source Software and other free software for the benefit of the public at large.

Maybe they could help in this situation

Thank you Duane.

For now, radio remains key for me.  Shoutcast would be great, am I correct the manual add station option is still alive (I'll try this weekend).

In future, a stripped bare early Android rom running from USB that doesn't touch the firmware, ala Nook Color N2A, would be nice, even if all it supports is really simple apps.  I have a rooted Virgin Mobile Venture with a same-resolution screen, and it is fine for the various clock, radio and streaming apps.  From the interwebs:

•The absolute minimum requirements for Android were originally a 200 MHz processor, 32 MB of RAM, and 32 MB of storage.
•Out of the box, Android is incompatible with ARMv4 or lower; ARMv5 or higher is needed to run native code without modifications.

1.6 spec: 
http://static.googleusercontent.com/ext … .6-cdd.pdf

I wholeheartedly agree with all who proposed a subscription model. I am a kind of "serial startupper" and therefore quite familiar with various business models (this guy is a myth): I believe that, reading the many forum posts, it should be more than feasible to have a limited group of "early supporters" who are willing to pay a little bit more.

Some kind of freemium model could also be used: all who're happy with just a few widgets can continue use their Chumbies the way they're now, others will pay a yearly subscription.
Of course some smart a** out there will have to run a few figures on this, but it's true that it should happen before the existing user base starts throwing its chumbies to eBay... Then it would be too late.

Again: I am fairly new to your effort, but thank you, Duane. It's not every day that somebody keeps alive such a project :-)

Whilst I understand the goodwill behind suggestions for kickstarter or similar campaigns, I have some reservations about them. To some extent, I feel that their potential for causing unhappiness may outweigh their fundraising benefits.
Kickstarter has a tendency to lead to unhappiness because at least some contributors seem to see it as a shop. They pay their money, so they want their fully-functional thing, and they want it delivered on time. Their tolerance for the delays, glitches and bugs that are an almost inevitable part of startups is minimal.
At this time, there is nothing that Blue Octy can deliver in return for contributions, other than the possibility of a new service. I am concerned that for every rusted-on Chumby fan who understands this and just wants to make a contribution in order to get the ball rolling, there will be two or three or ten less-informed Chumby owners who think that paying into Kickstarter will get them a service. When that service doesn't eventuate as quickly as they would like, they will become angry and resentful and start brooding about their 'lost' ten dollars.
By the time there is a subscription model service ready to go, these people won't want to pay for it because they will have convinced themselves that somehow they have been cheated. Furthermore, they will go online and whine about it, which may alarm other potential subscribers and make them reluctant to sign up.
Thus, my concern is that taking contributions now may actually reduce the number of people prepared to sign up for a sustainable subscription model in the future.

Thanks for setting up the Stub service. I knew Chumby had closed it's store awhile ago, but had no idea all employees were laid off in 2011 until seeing the lone Star Clock on my Insignia Chumby clone and visiting chumby.com. I had about 40 widgets running on device, and would like the ability to see them again. Understanding it was very expensive to host this service, my first suggestion is to have advertising run every few minutes on the device. If that doesn't generate enough revenue, I wouldn't mind spending up to $1 per month to display widgets on the device. Anything more, and I think you will alienate a lot of users.