I’m a big fan of instant gratification: the Polaroid camera, scratch tickets and my little friend, Chumby. He’s a cuddly, compact computer that’s easy enough to set up right out of the box. Basically, Chumby can display all of my news, no matter how crucial (weather) or trivial (Britney), right by my bedside. It uses widgets, which are small computer programs that can be found on the company’s web site. Each widget tells Chumby the key to my Internet-enabled heartstrings. So when I finally log off from my PC each night—and it’s usually pretty late—I can still check scores, eBay auctions and everything else on the Internet that I hold dear.
