Topic: Chumby is sad

It's been weeks since any new apps have been added. Looks like Chumby is dead. You were ahead of your time, Chumby. Way back in your early development, too bad you didn't pay attention to touch-anywhere touchscreens.

Re: Chumby is sad

Chumby closed down last December.

Re: Chumby is sad

Duane wrote:

Chumby closed down last December.

After all the support you received from Chumby fans. The people who purchased Chumbys (I have two), you didn't have the courtesy to send an email announcement about going out of business.
Furthermore, there's nothing on http://www.chumby.com about "closing down". So you continue to have people believe Chumby still exists. You've fooled me for 8 months. It's corporate attitudes like yours that cause people to mistrust companies. Remember all the attitude and hype at the beginning of the Chumby? How cool and innovative you were? But in the end, we see it was all a facade.

Re: Chumby is sad

I was terminated along with all of the other employees.

Since then, I have been an unpaid volunteer keeping the systems up and running on my own time, and handling customer support and warranty issues.

The company itself has been in the hands of a third-party trustee since December. *They* chose not to send anything out about it - nobody from Chumby, including me, had any choice in the matter.  Believe me, we tried.

5 (edited by bobsz 2012-08-12 23:03:34)

Re: Chumby is sad

@Tokyo1st-Chum With all due respect, most of us think that a few people like Duane and other community members have done a great job keeping our Chumbys from bricking. Many tech companies have just walked away and left folks with useless hardware. The same think could have happened here, but the users kept the product working even without an actual "company" functioning. Just the fact that this Forum is still here 8 months after liquidation is a testimonial to the strength of the users and the platform itself. There have been few new widgets, but a lot of adapting and re-purposing the original stuff. There's a back-up USB offline firmware now, which users had hoped for, for years. You might want to look over that stuff, some of it's pretty innovative.

Sorry, but I don't think anyone could care less about trying to "fool" you. How could a non-existent company email you? The closure wasn't exactly a secret. I guess you must have skipped the forum for a couple of years, because there was frantic talk about it here. And it was covered in every online tech magazine. A search for "Chumby closing" on Google returns 12,400,000 hits. Too bad you didn't happen on to any of them. If you search for "Chumby" it gives you a 2nd hit from Wikipedia which starts, "The Chumby is a consumer electronics product formerly made by Chumby Industries..."  Now some companies like Sony, for example, really have just walked away from a lot of *major* platforms.

Chumby itself lasted a lot longer than some things since 2006. The iPhone hadn't come out until after Chumby. Look at how long WebOS lasted compared to Chumby!  There were no tablets. Chumby's 6th birthday is coming up soon. That's a pretty good life span these days.

I'd say stick around and see that things are much better than they seem. On the other hand, if you'd like to sell one of your Chumbys, please mention it here, and then you sure won't get stuck with your unwanted annoying devices. We'll take them off your hands. Glad you came back to the forums.

Re: Chumby is sad

This is another opportunity to thank Duane and the others who have kept things going in spite of no support from Chumby Inc.  Unforntunately some newbys (I was one once) who did not get the message until after purchasing the device. I appreciate my cute little buddy next to my bed giving me music and apps and the time of day.

Owner of 3 Sony Dash, 2 Info 8.