Slim Devices acquired

Slim Devices, one of my favorite new companies (I’ll have a write-up of their Squeezebox music player in the next edition of Forbes) has been acquired by Logitech. I hope this means good things for Slim Devices — like more money for R&D and new product development. The Squeezebox is a fantastic gizmo. Streams music from your computer via WiFi and pumps it into your stereo. No more dealing with CDs. It costs $300 and the sound quality is as good as a lot of fairly high end CD players. Best of all, the company open-sourced its SlimServer software, so they’ve cultivated a huge ecosystem of hackers who’ve created add-ons and extra features, some of which Slim Devices actually incorporates back into their core offering. It’s the true promise of open source brought to life: cool features, a company in constant touch with its customers, turning enthusiasts into partners and developers. I’ve recently had the opportunity to spend some time with the company’s new Transporter device. Does the same job as Squeezebox but uses a high-end DAC and better power supply, and costs $2,000. The sound quality is amazing, even on our modest home stereo. Sadly, I am mailing the demo unit back to the company today.

Squeezebox and TiVo are my two favorite consumer devices. And both use open source software. Hmmm.