Welp, they're a 80mhz CPU, with at least 512k flash memory, built in Wifi, are flashed with a serial connection and they cost about $4-5.

For the last week I've been working on sudo-clock (http://github.com/morganrallen/sudo-clock) with the ESP8266 at its core. Robb was surprised to find out that not only are these Wifi modules that can be used with a separate micro, but can have custom firmware loaded on them.

Soo.... yeah. If you are interesting in checking these nifty things out come hack with us tonight! I'll have 2-3 devices available, bring a USB->serial adapter if you have one but I should have enough.

Check out the wiki here for info on getting the software toolchain setup. It is fairly straight forward if the instruction in the Toolchain section are followed.