The new Balance Board from Nintendo has managed to gather a lot of publicity (small sign of envy), but I am not convinced that it will really allow people to exercise in a meaningful way, and I think for many, the novelty will wear of quickly c.f. all those exercise bikes rusting in garages.
I think that there are some interesting things that could be done with it – I am thinking of things like weight balancing in tai chi, or possible gait analysis for sports fitness – it will be interesting to see what the hackers come up with – see here for some interesting things to do with the Wii remote.
It also brings to mind an interesting phenomenon that I noticed with our LifeFitness cross-trainer. If one has a glass of water in the drinks holder, and one is not exercising in a balanced way, the water will rotate in one direction – and if one changes the weight more to the other side of the body, it spins the other way. How about that!