Hello World
I spent an hour at Sun Microsystems in Menlo Park up there and got a look at the new Version E SunSpots. These are amazing little microcontrollers with lots of gusto — they pack tons of functionality, making them effective for prototyping real stuff, but their remarkably legible — not a huge learning curve. They park themselves firmly into the DIY world, but without the requirement that you be an alpha programmer or hardware hacker. One of the goals was to have a package that would be immediately friendly and accessible. (Dang..wish I had taken a picture of what Angel Lin, a design intern from Art Center, and Rob created in collboration for the out-of-the-box experience. It's this great, completely legible iconography.)
Here's a video of the very cool "Hello World" application — a runner of LEDs that you can "spill" from device to device.