I’ve just wrapped my head around the Chumby as sort of a clock radio with a brain and now they want to add games? Albino Blacksheep and Everybody Panic! are offering accelerometer-based “casual games” for the Chumby. When they come around on the screen you pick up the Chumby and swing it around, moving balls and whatever else you need to manipulate on screen.

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Chumby is a small, wifi-enabled linux hardware device is designed to be hacked and changed by its owners. The device has a 350MHz ARM controller, 32MB SDRAM, 64 MB Nand Flash Rom, a 320×240 3.5 inch touch LCD screen, two speakers, audio output, a microphone, and two USB ports. Chumby also has a squeeze sensor. All of this is housed within a soft, sqeezable shell about the size of a coconut.

It was announced a year ago at Foo camp, and the company gave out about 500 of the first generation devices. Users register the device on the Chumby home page and connect the device to their network via wifi. Once registered, content widgets are added – so the Chumby may include a news widget, flickr widget, etc.

Now, a year later, the company has made upgrades to the hardware and sofware that makes up the device, and say they will make it available for sale in a couple of months. The biggest change is that Chumby now runs Flash Lite 3, which is the first mobile version of Flash to support streaming audio and video. Users can now run music or video over the Internet and play it on the Chumby. The Chumby will be sold for $179.95, fully delivered.

The company has 23 employees and is headquartered in San Diego. They raised just over $5 million from OATV, Avalon Ventures and Masthead Venture Partners in December 2006.

The founders of Chumby wanted to create a new device that begs to be hacked. Yesterday, they introduced a prototype of their new gadget to 100 or so attendees of Foo Camp in Sebastopol, California. I was lucky enough to get one.

Chumby is a small, wifi enabled, touch screen information device. When you take it out of the box and plug it in it is essentially a glorified alarm clock. But when you take a moment and register your particular Chumby at their website, it can become just about anything you like. A number of widgets are available now and can be enabled on Chumby with a click. And Since Chumby is completely open source and has made a HDK and SDK available for developers, expect modifications to come quickly.

I enabled a few of the available widgets, and my Chumby now shows pictures from my flickr account as well as Google News headlines. Other Foo attendees have new Digg front page stories, Google Calendar and Slashdot stories on their Chumby.

The device has a 266MHz ARM controller, 32MB SDRAM, a 320×240 3.5 inch touch LCD screen, two speakers, audio output, microphone input functionality and a USB port. Chumby also has a squeeze sensor. All of this is housed within a soft, sqeezable shell about the size of a coconut.

Don’t like somthing about your Chumby? Hack it. The founders not only allow it but are actively encouraging modifications, even leading a number of hack sessions here at Foo. The hardware can easily be ripped out of the shell and put inside something else. The hardware itself can be hacked, or developers can use the tools available on the Chumby site to simply create new widgets.

The examples are limitless. Use the USB port to take a thumb drive with MP3s and build a music player widget, for example. Or a divx player. Or use Chumby to control the air conditioning in your house. Or as a remote control for your television. Etc.

Chumby will not be generally available for purchase until March 2007, but developers can request one now on the Chumby home page. Tell them why you want it, and they may send you one. When it does eventually go on sale, the target price point is $150. The basic service is free, and Chumby may add paid premium services over time.

Most of the Chumby team, including Ken Steele, Bunnie Huang Joe Grand, and Duane Maxwell, is here at Foo demo’ing the product. They are pictured below leading a Chumby hack session.

More on the Chumby site and at CrunchGear.