Wiimote control

Yesterday, in the technology section of BBC Breakfast, I watched as Rory Cellan-Jones talked to Bill Gates at a Las Vegas Techno-Fair. Gates (of Hell) was demonstrating a new, and sickenly clever table top touch screen computer, the 'Microsoft Surface' which he confidently claims, millions of punters will have bought over the next 5 years. He's probably right, I thought, and there goes a few billion more dollars into Mr Gate's already obscenely bulging trouser pockets (priced at around $10,000 a piece, it wouldn't be long...)

Then, lo and behold, the angel of heaven descended, and brought us great tidings of joy (I know, I know ..... that was last month...). A wizz kid called Jimmy Chung Lee has just created a hardware hack on... wait for it... the Nintendo Wii. Using nothing more than a few simple ballpoint pens, he replaced the guts with Infra Red lights. Because the Wii works by tracking IR lights, any surface, whether a projector screen, an LCD screen, or even a coffee table top can be turned into a multi-touch screen similar to the iPod Touch or Microsoft Surface. And what's more, the software can be downloaded for free. Hooray! So is that hard cheese for Microsoft? Wii hope so....