I don't think anything's been decided there just yet.

We don't want to go out of business, so there will have to be *some* sort of revenue coming into the company.

Chumbys will probably be put out there pretty much at cost, so that's not going to cover it.

Current thinking -- as with everything at Chumby, certainly subject to change at any time -- is that you will get some widgets for free when you buy a chumby, i.e., basic information such as news headlines, weather, horoscope, some RSS feeds, etc., but that there will also be some clever widgets interspersed that may be sponsored or may promote a product (AKA ads).  Of course we will try to set the bar high so that they are entertaining and reasonably "targeted" (so not likely to be inappropriate for you).  The ads basically cover the cost of allowing Chumby to stream widgets to you and, as Duane said, because we're trying to keep the cost way down on the hardware, we have to stay in business somehow.  My idea of an ad for *some* people (and based upon the other types of widgets that someone selects that might indicate that they would be amused by this) is something like the pretend "Fruity Oaty Bar" ad: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid … 5471634315 -- okay, maybe this one doesn't thrill you , but, again, the idea is to make them clever and viral and appropriate.

Current plan, though, is also to enable someone to subscribe to the Chumby Network at a reasonable annual fee in order to get many more widgets and share widgets and content across the Chumby Network (see a widget you like and share it with your friends).  Subscribers would also be able to opt out of ads -- though of course we'll try like heck to make the ads so interesting and entertaining that no one would every want to miss them, even if they could

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Maybe you could also make the ad's relavant to what widget you have. Like lets say you have a MAKE widget, maybe it would have an ad for the magazine on the side. Or a receipe widget would have a food channel ad. Almost like battle.net and their ads for gaming gear. Target audience for the porduct. I think this would be nice, and would be the most efficient and non intrusive ad deployment IMHO.

definitely video ads would be extremely cool.

and sort of fun game ads. not like "click the monkey" or anything, but like the nissan car game advert thingy.

I know some people will not like this one but...

What about some type of small monthly or yearly fee so commercials can be turned off.  I would be willing to pay something on a monthly or yearly basis not to see any commercials but still produce revenue for the company.  Being a Tivo user my tolerance for TV commercials has become pretty low.  If I start seeing video advertising I would get rid of the Chumby.

I think ads would push the hacking community to create alternatives of their own so the device would not have to connect to the chumby network to get content.  People would write their own alternative linux mod os and widgets.

I don't think I've seen any type of advertising, interactive or not on the web that was something I would want to see on the Chumby.

Thanks,

Are you saying that some widgets that we are now using, we might have to pay for in the future?