As you may know, I’m a bit of a gadget freak. I haven’t gotten around to blogging about my Nokia 770 internet tablet (which I got cheap last year and happily use to check e-mail and listen to internet radio via radioten.com) or my little wifi-enabled Nikon S51c digital camera, but last week I acquired two new friends in my office, a Nabaztag and a Chumby.
The Nabaztag is a wifi enabled “rabbit”, that can read out text and RSS feeds, plays music, displays lights to represent different conditions (e.g. weather, new mail), and it has an RFID reader in its ears which can enable the detection of different objects (e.g. it could read an RFID-enabled book to you if you wave it by the ears of the rabbit). While some aren’t happy, I think it’s a cool device with many applications for those who may not want or need a video interface. My Nabaztag is called Babbitty.
The Chumby has been touted as an Internet alarm clock, but it’s much more than that. It has a touch screen which displays and allows you to interact with a set of multimedia widgets which can be grouped into channels. For example, my default channel shows my Flickr photos, tweets from my Twitter contacts, an NHK-style clock, and news from the BBC and the Onion. There’s even a talking Tim O’Reilly widget in there somewhere! I got it from international-orders.com, and named it after me (Cloud)!
You can see them both above. I haven’t gotten them to talk to each other yet, but many things are now possible…
Cloud 
I had a Nabaztag for a brief period while I was testing for a review. Because he looked so cute I decided to give him an evil name – Dr Death. He used to get bored and make strange noises which annoyed everyone in the office. I want a Chumby!
If it’s truly an internet alarm clock you may be interested in, then I humbly suggest you please check out http://onlinealarmclock.net
Our site’s designed to be just he world’s simplest online alarm clock…and we think it’s cool. Use it to remind yourself of upcoming meetings. Or, if you’re on the road with your laptop, use it to wake yourself up in the morning.
Excellent. An evil version that verbally abused people as they walked past would be really great… like a desk guardian… only people that really needed to would drop by to distract you!