Rupert Hirst writes, “I decided it was time to build my own version with the features that should have been in the official hardware”:
LCD Smartie is open-source (cough!) software which allows a character LCD display to be used as an auxiliary display device for a PC. The program has built in support for many systems statistics (i.e. CPU Load, Network utilization, free Disk space…), downloading RSS feeds, Winamp integration and support for several other popular applications. To support less common applications LCD Smartie uses a powerful plugin system.”
After being totally unimpressed by the overpriced, under featured & uninspiring “Official LCD Smartie Hardware.