I do agree that Arduino hasn't really kept up with the competition. There are tons of alternatives doing interesting things - Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, Tessel,

I do agree that Arduino hasn't really kept up with the competition. There are tons of alternatives doing interesting things - Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, Tessel, spark.io, Teensy, mBed. My personal favorite has to be Teensy product line. Hard to beat an ARM Cortex-MO+ for $11 http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensyLC.html http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensyLC.html