That's a very well thought out plan.  I like the idea that there's the option for people to continue the free service should they want to and at the same time there's a tiered level of service for those who opt to pay.  I, for one, wouldn't mind paying for the "Site" plan to keep my two CCs and one CO happy.  That would also allow to pick up a C8 off eBay at some time in the future.

I could perhaps see at least the stub service being free, with expanded widget functionality being available to "subscribers".  Perhaps even throw in an extra widget or two (maybe weather), or offer the few extra widgets but embed ads in any additional channels for non-subscribers (so they appear between each widget in the channel, or something like that) -- effectively offering a "free" option and a "pay" option.

Well I was figuring the server would simply decide, based on the device ID (and its associated account) whether a given device has access to X widgets and whether it should be ad-supplemented.

I have to admit, the "Duane pays" option sounds extremely appealing

But assuming that even Duane's resources are somewhat limited, I suspect the advertising option is much more realistic.

I have followed the evolution of Leo Laporte's TWIT network for several years, from the days when he said his salary would be paid entirely based on contributions, to abandoning that and now taking his income from TWIT's general revenues. Similarly, at least according to my local public radio station's announcements at fund raising time that less than 5% of listeners actually contribute anything.

As much as I would like to believe otherwise, I suspect it will be a very hard sell to actually get enough contributions to fully pay for the service, plus generate enough of a profit to justify Duane's time.

However, I have been very impressed by the growth of advertising in the podcast world and I suspect that there could be enough money in Chumby-based advertising. (Back in the olden days, about the only advertisers around were all tech oriented. That is definitely changing. For example, Audible now sponsors lots of podcasts produced by many different companies. Netflix also throws a lot of money into podcast advertising. On TWIT, over the holidays, there were jewelry advertisements. And within the last couple of weeks, an underwear supplier is now running ads. Seriously.)

It seems like a very large number of Chumby users use their Chumbys to access internet radio streams and podcasts.

If a better player than btplay could be incorporated to provide more features, such as a "Pause" function, as well as interstitial ads showing on the Chumby screen while streams are playing, there may be enough revenue to keep Blue Octy in business.

Perhaps if our Chumbys were repositioned as portals to Pandora or iHeartRadio, money from Pandora or Clear Channel would be available to support the Chumby administrative structure.

I understand that the bottom line is that even with the new server structure, there are still expenses that need to be covered by some revenue source. And as much as I might dislike it, advertising seems to be the most realistic way to get that revenue.

I get long-winded.  Sorry folks.  Won't blame you if you skim past.

As a long time (but silent) Chumby fan, I've been following developments on and off since the 'end' approached.  Gotta start by saying I truly appreciate all the time, effort and money the hardcore folks (esp Duane and the Dok) have put in, over the last year and especially the last 2 months.

Couple of thoughts.  First I respect Duane's comments early on about not wasting donations too early before a plan had been developed - a responsible call.  But I agree with philhu's last comment, maybe we need to gauge true level of commitment, be that by allowing donations or setting up a "pledge" system (which perhaps is barely better than us all saying "I'd pay").

Aside from that, I'd argue that Duane has already had to commit non-trivial time and money.  While I agree with ehertz, (I too like the personal financial benefits of "Duane pays") I would invite Duane to set up a donation mechanism that is nothing more than a tip jar.  No strings attached, no future expectation, just "thanks for your effort."  I'm *not* made of money, but I like to pay for things I value.  I can say thanks now and subscribe later.

All that said, I'd pay a monthly/yearly subscription to have functionality comparable to before.  I have two Chumbies in my house (with a 3rd in a box waiting to be plugged in, and a Sony Dash).  They have eyeballs on them perhaps only 10 minutes a day.  But I was sad at the prospect of their possible demise, and thrilled at the prospect of their possible continued life.  I like the idea of the Chumby.  In general, I don't often commit money to an idea, but this is an exception.

Done wrong ads are annoying, done right ads are fine.  Sometimes they even bring your attention to a product/service that's relevant.  I think many of us today understand that free usually means ad-supported.  Subscribers should have the option of turning off ads, or dialing them back.  But in some cases,  I might even let them stay.  My daughter would be unfazed by ads [unobtrusively placed] on the Chumby in her room.  As long as they weren't inappropriate, I'd be fine leaving them on with a paid subscription.

Finally, I don't want to get [more] off-track with discussion of what the future Chumby service should look like, but I think it should retain *an aspect* of the server-centralized approach but should be overhauled to drastically reduce how much and with what frequency the Chumbies phone home (in order to reduce costs) to get data that could be gotten elsewhere or stored locally.

The newest Control Panel are designed to have a very light load on the servers - the problem is that not everyone is running the latest stuff, and there are a lot of devices and other things that are hitting the systems that shouldn't be.

There's basically a constant 2Mbps "hum" of transactions to the current systems that are not due to the supported devices.

For instance, it appears that a *lot* of dashes are hitting these systems when they should be hitting Sony's.  Unfortunately, the subdomains they're hitting are also used by the current Control Panels, and the User Agent matches, so it's hard to filter them out. 

I will be issuing new Control Panels over the next week or so to move the music and content services to new individual subdomains and adding some basic challenge/response security to validate that these devices are *supposed* to be hitting these new subdomains, then shutting down the old subdomains.

There are also still some leechers that are hitting the servers for various things, and even 404'ing them costs resources - they will also get axed since it's unlikely they'll follow the subdomain migration.

I considered that, but I don't want to end up blocking devices in a "mixed" household - i.e. dashes *and* chumbys.

Being as *I'm* one of those households myself, that would be bad.

Not paying for you any more - BANNED.

*like*

So new hosts file looks like (new entries + alpha sort):

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost chumby.com config.chumby.com content.chumby.com files.chumby.com insignia.chumby.com music.chumby.com pandora.chumby.com ping.chumby.com proxy.chumby.com update.chumby.com widgets.chumby.com www.chumby.com xapi.chumby.com xml.chumby.com       

192.231.203.132 time.chumby.com ntp.on.net

I'll take this for a spin later today. Thanks!

Hi @ all,

first i would like to thank Duane for all the work that is done.

I am from Germany, Berlin and my english is not so good, please be kind.

I think that advertising is not a good way, specialy because the different countrys all over the world where the chumby is used. Also the revenue, as Duane explaind, is bad.

I would prefer the donate and/or monthly paid option. So for me its no problem to paid 10$ a Year. With some benefits (T-Shirt or so) i think 50$ are ok.

I like soma FM and they live some years with mergendising and donation, perhaps that would be fine for chumby to.

Please dont use ads, the world is full of them and they sucks. Keep the chumby clean

Ihr Deutsch ist doch sehr gut, weiter so.

Optimizing the bandwith for the system would be the right way. I think Duane did it right.

So dont wait to long till you start the donation think. There are many people who would like to give, dont miss it.