To find this out, I called Apple customer service, navigated through their short and surprisingly effective interactive voice response system (that actually worked!), then spoke to a customer service rep who I could understand, who didn't thank me for every word I uttered, and who, once she knew I had a clue, didn't slavishly follow a script for handling n00bs. She asked me to hold for a minute, came back on, and told me to go to my local Apple store where it would be replaced. Amazing!

This was some of the very best customer service I've had for a long time. Well done Apple for seriously exceeding my expectations!

So, I'm impressed with Apple customer service but disappointed that my new iPod Touch is a gorgeous brick. Perhaps I can be impressed with some other piece of hardware …

OK, remember the ? There was a lot of hoo-ha about this little wireless device for running widgets when it appeared in 2006 at O'Reilly's invitation-only hacker event. The original incarnation of Chumby was eccentric to say the least: It was embedded in a beanbag.

While the hardware schematics and software were made freely available and developers were actively encouraged to create software, the design was never released under true open source license terms. Even so, a lot of enthusiasm revolved around the platform.