An Australian developer and technical director has gone overboard with automation of his home. Not to say that does not have a geeky coolness, but connecting his curtains to ethernet (to control their opening and closing of course) is maybe a little over the top.
Taking it to the real extreme though is his RFID controlled door. The idea of a door controlled like this is all well and good. I cringe a little at the idea of embedding a RFID pet ID tag under my skin though!
A lot of his automation is enabled through the Arduino open source microcontroller, which allows a wide range of inputs to be used as initiation, and also has a range of options for what it can initiate. It can also connect through ethernet, USB, serial or Bluetooth. A pretty cool device in itself.