The BeagleBone Black at $45 is one the of the more exciting things I have picked up in that price range.  Every cool new feature is like a present all in itself.  Adafruit included a nice Quick start insert that worked perfectly and got me going in mere minutes.  It is even better than the online getting started guide (http://beagleboard.org/Getting+Started)... odd, but it is much simpler.  Since I could not find it on the web, I am reproducing here:

Tethered to a PC:

1. Connect the USB min cable (B) to BeagleBone Black (cable included with purchase from Adafruit)
2. Connect the other end of the USB cable to the PC (in my case Ubuntu Linux PC)
3. Look for a new mass storage drive to appear on the PC
4. Open the drive and click on START.htm (I did open with chrome)
5. Follow the instructions on the PC ( this was a really nice feature bringing up the html docs - kudos) 

This worked great, the only odd thing was when I tried to use the GateOne ssh client in the browser.  It gave me nothing, but a black screen.  No big deal.  I then just brought up a terminal on my PC and ssh into the machine via root with empty password

$ ssh This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .7.2 

 and bam we have a terminal - just beautiful.

Standalone with a keyboard, mouse and monitor

My only quibble here was the hdmi port is way to close to the USB port which made it difficult to use some usb hubs.
*  Ok one more - those blue lights are BRIGHT!!!! 

1. Connect a keyboard and mouse to the USB host port 
2. Connect an HDMI cable to the board
3. Connect the HDMI cable to an HDMI monitor (sadly I only have 1)
4. Plug in a 5V 1A DC power supply (The 2A adafruit one worked great and recommend if you want wifi)
5. Board will boot.  No need to enter any passwords (wait 10 seconds or so if switching input on monitor)
6. Desktop will appear on the monitor

* This prevented me from booting the BBB so something went wrong and I had to reload the image through the SD card - about 45 minutes :(  Anyway will try again later.

AX-12 Dynamixel motors 

This was surprisingly easy as the Linux kernel detected the usb2ax and we tested the Dynamixel Linux sdk and using the given example we were off and running moving the motor and reading the positions!  The usb2ax is really nice since it is soooo small.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_EMc5umdDw&feature=youtu.be

Random lego mindstorm install for nqc-3.1.r6.  

 So nqc needed a small modification to build from source, edit  compiler/lexer.cpp and add this to top of file

 #include <unistd.h>

 this fixes the error about:   undefined reference to `isatty(int)'

Interfacing with Hardware, GPIO, PWM, etc.

http://www.phys-x.org/rbots/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=46:beaglebone-black&layout=blog&Itemid=81&layout=default