Eee Stick from ASUS

Eee Stick with ThumbstickEee Stick with buttons

Apparently ASUS was inspired by the success of the controls for Nintendo's Wii and couldn't help releasing something very similar. While Engadget is reporting these will sell for $70 the demo I got indicated they would be part of a bundle with the new Eee PC 901 and sell for a combined price just under $1000. I tried playing first-person shooter game Stalker with the Eee Stick and and while I found it hard to get used to moving my arm to aim at things, I think ASUS is on to something in bringing this type of controller experience to PCs Non-game applications like navigating Google Maps might also benefit from using hand gestures rather than the current click-and-drag approach. I'm not sure the motivation for bundling them with a computer, since most of us already have one of those and the Eee Stick definitely benefits from a bigger screen size rather than the tiny screen of the Eee PC. Either way, it's nice to see some innovation around PC user interfaces since we haven't seen any real change beyond keyboard and mouse in years.