I just wish they were .netmf based
http://gizmodo.com/electric-imp/
They should be pretty easy to interface to though.
-Eric
That is a cool design. Very interesting.
So, one still needs an Arduino/FEZ/whatever MCU, but now you also need a $25 “Imp”, a wifi network, and a subscription to a “cloud” service.
I’m skeptical of anything with “cloud” in its description, but I’m a curmudgeon, so take my opinions with a truck-sized block of salt 
Imp has M3 inside of it. Card’s pins are IOs.
Slick.
Is there any way to get at more of the I/Os?
SD card form factor is the main limitation. I am sure there are some more available IOs, but I don’t think you will be able to achive that in an elegant way.
The list of drawbacks in the first post at SparkFun is pertinent:
[ul]must buy a specific chip with an embedded serial number and incorporate it into your hardware design
must get permission from cloud before you can program this thing (bless the imp)
must load code only through their cloud (imp controlled servers?)
must use this C-like language (because every new widget must create yet another new language?)
must put this thing on your network
cannot turn off the network access when programming is done[/ul]
One wonders what they’re up to. If they could produce a simple WiFi module for this kind of price, why not just do that? What’s the endgame? A subscription service something like pachube/cosm?
The endgame is that they’d have control over the whole world, controlling everyones lights and sockets 
“ALL lights OFF”, “ALL lights ON”, … how fun would that be?
Sounds like trouble for the energy company. Well, at least if the whole world’s lights blinked at the same time
Chris
@ Chris Walker - They have that issue in this country when all the Poms’s make tea at half time during big football matches 
Yeah, and in my country the electricity supplier will force your gadgets off between 8am and 8pm…
@ GMod(Errol) - ripple control on hot water cylinders etc?
Got my Imp today with matching shield from SparkFun. So far, so fun. Easy to setup unless you have a phone that is on the blacklist (as I did w/DroidX). It uses an interesting optical technique to literally flash the WiFi setup info from an Android or iOS app by making the entire screen blink some secret code. The online dev experience is still rough, but the wiki lists known issues. Got my first Hello World nut (the file extension used on their Squirrel based language) synched in no time. I’m a happy rodent.
Keep us updated if you find good use for it.
Our local maker group has a weather micro-climate project that uses XBee Pros to gather data from up to 4 stations. We demo’d it at our mini maker faire this weekend using tethered weather balloons. I had a Windows console app collecting and displaying the data and sending it up to COSM, and am planning to replace the laptop data relay piece with the Imp shield on a DuinoProto hooked to a Spider w/display. I’m curious if the Imp and XBee Pro signals will behave right next to each other. I’m also curious what the range is on this tiny little thing.
Reminds me of the Timex DataLink watch I used to own…worked the same way, transferring data from PC to watch via blinking patterns on screen. Only worked with CRT monitors though. Was the height of geekiness back in the 90s.