OStatic

If you've got a great Web site and want to give visitors a nudge about which parts they shouldn't miss, have a look at Amberjack. It's a handy open source widget that acts as a tour guide for your site.

There's no need to spend hours creating screencasts or hassling with screenshots, just open the wizard and add the URLs of the pages you want highlighted. Amberjack generates HTML code you can drop right into your site.

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.