OStatic

The world of open source is structured to invite unusual, often downright quirky contributions from people with unusual skills, and that inevitably leads to offbeat inventions. On the Linux front, especially because of easily executed embedded Linux concepts, both hardware and software inventions of the quirky type appear regularly. Some of them are quite useful, some of them are fun, and some are both. Here are five products and inventions based on Linux that Rube Goldberg might have been envious of.

Recently I've come to really like Pandora, the free, automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. If you haven't tried it, it does an uncanny job of serving up artists and songs you may not have heard of, based on similarities to artists and songs that it already knows you like. Pandora's skill at this is based on how the Music Genome Project indexes over 400 attributes of songs in its database, relying on analyses from human musicians and on algorithms. Now, Livio has a $150 Linux-based Internet radio (shown) that plays back both personalized streams from Pandora, and streams from over 11,000 other stations. Especially for those who like Pandora, this radio looks appealing.

Though 2009 has only just begun, it looks like this year's going to be a busy one for Chumby Industries. The makers of the hackable, completely open, Linux-based, internet-enabled, so-much-more-than-an-alarm-clock -- well, alarm clock -- have announced a number of partnerships since January's Consumer Electronics Show.

The first two partnerships, with Samsung and Marvell, bring the widget-based Chumby platform to digital photo frames and similar embedded devices. The latest partnership, with Broadcom Corporation, aims to bring the Chumby platform to internet-enabled televisions, set top boxes, and Blu-Ray players.

Earlier this year I wrote about the Chumby internet appliance/open source alarm clock. Though Chumbys have been available in the US for a little over a year now, Chumby Industries hasn't been able to officially sell these products internationally.

Chumby Industries intended all along to open sales outside the US, but electronics standards (and approval procedures) vary from country to country, and it's been time consuming. Some international users turned to friends in the States or third party shippers, but now, at least in a few countries, this is no longer necessary. Chumby is available at select retailers in Japan, and a Japanese language Chumby portal was launched last month.