How revolutionary is this? I feel like I've seen stuff like this before.
It depends on what you want on chip, if you need it broken out and if you value documentation, vendor support and community development.
I was researching this yesterday for part of a personal project.
"I can't see what the fuss is; you can, of course, get equivalently/more powerful and cheaper devices yadee yadda"
but it's never actually with a name, supplier, URL or price.
Last time it was the new Raspberry Pi.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm interested so show me the goods :)
I've used DAVE modules in the past, PHYTEC also makes some great modules for different Silicon vendors: http://phytec.com/products/system-on-modules/
Good break-down here: http://elinux.org/Computer-on-Module
As far as power goes, it's basically a cheap home router without the plastic case. Don't expect too much from a 133Mhz MIPS chip. The most obvious use case for something like this would be a home grown IoT sensor or automation. Or you could make it a super tiny wireless bridge (but then you'll need to buy that overpriced breakout board or wire up your own ethernet jack), however the built-in WiFi is probably going to suck pretty bad thanks to having a super tiny antenna and being cheap as hell.
The Xport for example: http://www.lantronix.com/products/xport/
Now that's not as great a CPU, but it is pretty much invisible.