I’m getting excited to see embedded Linux showing up in so many places. The reason I think it’s cool is because very often it can be hacked to do something far cooler than the original intent. By hack, I mean disassembled, modified or improved in some unexpected way.

The Kindle is an expensive e-book reader that has an innovative screen and form factor. It also has a cellular data connection so that you can download books and apparently surf some websites. I did not realize that it is [based on Linux](http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/hacking-kindle-part-2-bootloader-and.html).

I’ve been playing with the Arduino board. I’m going to write an article for an electronics mag (already talked to the editor and he gave the go-ahead). No guarantees anything will get published of course. It’s a fun system, but I really wish I could get my hands on an embedded Linux system that was compact and had some free GPIO’s. The [NGW100](http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=4102) is nice and I’ll probably get one, but I could see wanting a USB host controller and/or the ability to use wifi.

If the kindle were truly hackable it’d be a pretty slick system. Except that it costs $399 of course. In the grand scheme of things, I’d probably wanna hack the iphone before the kindle I guess. (And before that an android phone).