There are plenty of interesting electronic technologies offering programmability at a reasonable price : Xmos is offering low cost microcontroller family where

There are plenty of interesting electronic technologies offering programmability at a reasonable price : Xmos is offering low cost microcontroller family where you can program your digital peripherals in c. So are others. Cypress is offering programmable analog chips. Very versatile. There are extremely low cost fpgas. To is offering an mcu with programmable wireless protocols, currently only by them but maybe there's hope. For users interfaces, the phone offers a great users interface, if made accessible like simblee promises. So basically there are lots of option available but what is missing is ease of use and maybe options to combine them together.