Chumby One, world's best connected alarm clock and a lot more

To call the Chumby One an alarm clock is the understatement of the year. This pint-sized internet-connected gem with its bright, sharp and responsive touchscreen goes way beyond that. It connects to your Wi-Fi network, hooking you up to hundreds of widgets that give you live weather updates, show you video, give you access to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, connects you to your e-mail, and does over a thousand other things. That's no exaggeration — there's an enormous list of 1,298 applications that have already been created for it. And if you're into clocks, there are 201 faces to choose from, with more on the way.

Chumby One is the second iteration of this astonishingly useful little gadget, and because of its lower price, it's a lot more appealing. At $100 (compared to the $200 of the original Chumby), it's within reach of a whole lot more users.

This pint-sized internet-connected gem with its bright, sharp and responsive touchscreen goes way beyond that. It connects to your Wi-Fi network, hooking you up to hundreds of widgets that give you live weather updates, show you video, give you access to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, connects you to your e-mail, and does over a thousand other things.

Why would you ever get out of bed?

I gave my brother a Chumby last year for Christmas, or possibly the year before, at his request.

I need an alarm clock. My laptop's screen won't reliably go dark and my stereo alarm is just annoying to turn off for the weekend. I'm assuming Chumby knows and cares what day it is, right?

you can program it to wake you up just on weekdays

Whoo! If only I could justify the cost.

I have a cheapie radio alarm that has a M-F setting.

I have a cheapie radio alarm that has a M-F setting.

I know, I know. But Chumby looks cool, doesn't he? I wonder if he does WPA2 encryption. Huh. Looks like he does. Really not helping. Maybe for my Christmas present to me.

My christmas present to me happened a little early this year. I have an Xbox 360 pro with 120 gb hard drive and hdmi output sitting at home right now. Just came today.

Just about $200 from Geeks.com, though it took a couple of tries. The first couple of attempts wound up not going through. They sell out their console deals quickly.

I needed a new wireless mouse for the mini so I splurged on the Apple Magic Mouse. But I must be dense because I can't figure out how to make it do anything other than what a normal mouse does. How does the scrolling/swiping work? I thought it was simply a matter of dragging my finger(s) across the top of it. No?

Nebbermind. I think it's a software issue. I'm updating to 10.6.2 as I write this.

Yep. That did the trick.