I used to listen to the radio at bedtime, but got fed up with all the filler and commercial interruptions, so I wanted something that could play Internet radio and MP3 files stored on removable media.  Chumby was pretty much the only option, so I got one a little over a year ago and am generally happy with it. 

During the past year I've thought of a few things that would markedly improve the Chumby for this task and I wanted to take a moment to share them with the hope that they'll be implemented in the future:

1.  WiFi reception is poor, making it hard to listen to streaming audio
This is my only real complaint and the only significant hardware improvement that I'd really like to see.  I have several laptops and they are all able to pick up a strong signal from my wireless access point.  Specifically, Internet radio (either across the net or from a Icecast server I have on my LAN) comes in just fine on these systems, but on the Chumby it drops out and skips quite frequently.  Although it's not feasible for me to move either my wireless access point or the Chumby, perhaps this could be worked around if the Chumby's streaming audio widget could buffer a few seconds of audio so that it can gracefully handle sporadic drops in the signal.  If there's not enough RAM to support this, maybe it could use USB storage (if attached) as virtual memory. 

2.  Support folders or tags for audio files
Because of the above problem, I mostly listen to MP3s from attached USB thumb drives instead of Internet radio.  Since high-capacity USB thumb drives are cheap, it's easy to get a couple of hundred podcasts onto the Chumby.  While I can have them nicely tagged and even organized into folders on the drive, the Chumby seems to ignore all of this and gives me no option to listen to all episodes of just a certain podcast or even just a specific genre.   It's not clear to me what determines the order they appear in the Chumby playlist, but I'd prefer that I could easily set it (via naming convention, tagging convention, directory structure or something else).  I'd also like to see the MP3's tags on the screen -- it's tedious to hit the Next or Previous button and listen to the start of each one to identify the podcast when you have a few hundred of them.

3.  Skip and rewind buttons for audio files
This would be very helpful, especially if it's not possible to make the other improvements I've listed.  Since I can't identify the MP3 files through tags, I have to listen to each one.  Many of the podcasts I listen to have an intro or theme song that's the same for every episode and lasts 10-30 seconds.  Consequently, I have to listen to that before I can find that it's not the episode I was looking for.  I'd really love it if the UI for playing audio files could be enhanced with a button that lets me skip ahead 10 seconds each time it's pressed (similar to what Tivo can do).  Likewise, I sometimes miss something important, so I'd love to have a corresponding button that skips back in the current file by 5 or 10 seconds.

Finally, I really appreciate the openness of the device and how the Chumby staff goes out of their way to help others use the devices in new and interesting ways.