Can you help me with the Wii Homebrew channel?

Gaming geeks, nintendo freaks, hackers and modders, i’m looking at you… A friend of mine is soft-modding my Wii, and putting Homebrew on the system. It’s a first-generation Wii, so I’m told it can play DVD’s after the mod.

But can you tell me what else it can do? What devices and networking I can implement to maximize new tools and benefits of Homebrew? What all can Homebrew do? When I get it back after the upgrade, what are some things I should know?

Also… my Wii auto-connects to my wi-fi when I power it up, and I don’t know if my friend will have disabled that while he does his thing. Is that going to be a problem?