So is there a market for a super-dumb LCD that can have information pushed to it over WiFi? Forget the touchscreen, forget the storage. Why aren't we hacking photo frames to do this?
Conceivably with a USB remote you could even control the computer from the wall. I have three iBooks from my last job and a few old Windows laptops that I want to try out when I get a chance.
Ideally I'd like to create a dashboard with a bunch of data points that I'd be interested in so that I can scan it all while I'm eating breakfast or something. At the very least it would make a nice digital wall clock.
"very modest sales” of the Revue were exceeded by returns of the product, CEO Gerald P. Quindlen is leaving and the Revue itself is being slashed below cost to just $99 — a move that’s costing Logitech some $34m in one-time charges. "
I'd wager that it's toast.
I know Qt is very easy to run on the Chumby hardware, so making a widget w/WebKit that just loads a web page over and over would be a snap.
Seriously, other than the rare eBay auction, can you even buy these modules on the open market? Who salvages these things from old installations?
Here it is in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goQFce5cqLs
Also hitches onto a website to allow for real-time messaging. The day it hit Reddit's front page in 2009, oh god.