FOO

I had a fabulous time at FOO camp this weekend. What a great event for getting the creative juices going. Among lots of interesting projects, a few that stood out to me: the Chumby was previewed at the camp and sure looks like it will be a hit. Aside from a great name (a chummy gumby?) and great logo/design (by Susan Kare, I believe), the device empowers its users to really make it their own – both hardware and software. In a time of proprietary iPod’s and locked down cell phones, the Chumby is a breath of fresh air. Another product that impressed me is Dabble DB, a web-based database/spreadsheet app. While not brand new, I saw it for the first time when Avi, one of its creators, gave me a demo. I loaded Automattic’s Paypal data into Dabble DB and was immediately able to slice, dice and analyze it in much more useful ways than Paypal lets me. The Geo Explorer table by Onomy Labs is an incredible device. It displays satellite imagery of the Earth, you tilt the table to move around the globe and then spin it to fluidly zoom in and out of locations. Very addictive. Finally, I was glad to learn that O’Reilly is thinking about putting on an alternative energy conference. It’s a topic that greatly excites me, and I’d love to see ways for the tech/blogging community to get more involved with it.