In college, I would often drink out of the same pot of coffee all day long. The challenge that I was that while I would have nice hot coffee in the morning, by the afternoon, the coffee maker had automatically turned off, and as such, my coffee was cold. If I was running home between classes to get a cup of coffee, I would have to either sit at home waiting for the coffee to get hot again, or actually microwave the coffee (yes, I did this) so that it was hot again. I longed for a way to send a text message to my coffee maker towards the end of my class, so that by the time I got home, it would be hot again.
I actually spent hours upon hours researching home automation and such, attempting to figure this out. Eventually I graduated and gave up, but I’ve still always wanted to have this functionality. Nowadays, with Arduino, it’s possible, and Instructables has it as a nice easy set of instructions so that any idiot (read: me) can get it up and running. You just need an Arduino and a few other bits and pieces. Luckily, I work at RadioShack, and we carry Arduino (I actually have an Arduino Uno in my drawer at work that I’ve been trying to find something to do with), so I’m totally going to build this. I’ll make a video, but in the meantime, here’s a demonstration:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y-F9Zdk_qM
This is freakin brilliant. What else would you like to be able to tweet and have it turn on?
Ricky Cadden 
This is ingenious. I can imagine so many other uses for it as well, such as warming the oven up right before you get home. Technology at it’s best