Topic: New widgets anyone?

OK, sounds a little crazy, but has anyone thought about making new widgets for our Chumbys? In the old days the forums would often have a post from a guy who made some simple little widget that just told time and temperature, which seemed insignificant at the time. But if we had a dozen or so simple widgets that were up to date and worked well, (and without license to Chumby) we might be able to put together a nice little channel or two. I bet there's a lot of authors out there now "sitting on" widgets they might like to share. Of course, they would not be distributed by the old Chumby system. This would free Blue Octy from protecting the rights of the old authors. And I know some folks could put together a simple structure to run them, a la nathanm/Christian and others before them. Maybe even a simple method for plugging in factors like location for temperatures, etc. New widgets could just be offered through the forum, not the lovely old system we remember. Of course some folks like zurk have already made complex os's for Chumbys, ignoring the questions about authors' rights. But it would be nice to do it the right way. I also fear zurkware has gotten pretty complicated for running simple widgets. It's so far from what the Chumby was designed for, I'm concerned about recent bugs I read about, like the clocks not keeping the right time.

@Duane, do you think it might be time to "release" restrictions of the use of widgets made by you and other Chumby-employed authors? That might help start a resurgence in new ways to run our Chumbys. I strongly support authors' rights, be it a widget or a photo. But I think by now zurk's Octopus has kind of won that battle, for better or worse. At least here we would continue to credit contributors.

I believe there would be a "market" for any new system that expanded on the LCARS clock. Judging from downloads, I'd guess several hundred people are using zurkware. But it seems thousands more must be happily staring at their Star Trek clock, because it's still the best alarm clock around, as well as a web radio player. I think those folks would love to have a simple download-to-a-usb that would give them more variety without any tech skills needed. Remember how zurk and others predicted that by now Chumbys would be selling by the thousands on eBay for $5? Well, those Chumbys are still out there working. A month ago I fought off the desire to buy another Chumby, but finally gave in this week. May be time for a resurgence. We may be the Amiga fans of the future. Have you seen how active that community still is after all these years?

http://www.amiga.org/

2 (edited by Materdaddy 2013-11-19 00:10:57)

Re: New widgets anyone?

I've acquired a few more chumbies too.  I even recently completed the collection and got my first C8.  It's the only device I didn't have (I don't count the dash).  2 Prototype Chumbies, a couple CCs, a few C1s, a couple I3.5 and a few I8s and finally a C8.

Some sort of crazy addiction.  I need to stop, although of late, the rudimentary FM radio music source on the C1s has helped me with it's RDS display.  I regret nothing!

Unfortunately the basic FM support only displays the PS data but not the RT data.  It is still convenient for basic verification of something I'm working on.

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker

Re: New widgets anyone?

If the community made a few widgets to download, I'd be happy to make a Community Edition version of NathanWare for the occasion.