I've been really getting back into my Chumby lately, coding a few things to get it doing what I want it to (which seems to be a never ending list in my head at the moment).

One thing I've been thinking of is using it as an alerting device. There are numerous widgets out there that show alerts (public transport times, national security, disaster response, email etc. and even configurable ones like status.simple) however, you have to wait until they're showing in order to see it. And given I have about 27 widgets in my default channel, the alert doesn't really get much face time.

It would be great if there were 'alerters' as well as widgets. These alerters would regularly check in the background to see if there are any new alerts, and if there are, notify the control panel which would overlay the currently showing widget with the alert message and a dismiss button. Sound should be an option too. (Alternately, it could be done like the Palm Pre, which I quite like ).

(I wonder if it is possible to hook into the alarm system to do this...)

Some use cases would be new email in my gmail tagged with my 'follow up' tag, or internet usage quota nearing 80%, torrent completed on NAS, caller ID, and so on.

Comments, plans, ideas?

Is it possible somehow to load a third flash movie on top of the currently showing widget? Alternately I could write a daemon that looks for alerts, and when one comes in, kill the control panel, start another flash movie showing the alert, then when the alert is dismissed, restart the control panel, but that feels and will look crap.