A friend on Twitter drew my attention to a very promising project: ioBridge. This simple set of hardware modules makes it possible to control physical equipment from the computer. The big plus of ioBridge are its simplicity (you get some javascript widgets that make controlling the equipment really easy) and the price (for $100.- you can get started).
Some time ago, I was impressed by the Roomware project, an open-source initiative by a company called Alchemyst in Amsterdam.
The idea is to augment the reality of a room with virtual and digital stuff: Display the avatars of all people in the room, interact with the music being played by adding your wish or get information about the objects in the room by scanning your RFID-enabled phone along the objects.
The roomware server makes it easy to integrate the existing technologies and creating all kinds of interactions.
