Check out this MSDN article on how to impliment an Always Up To Date type system using the .NET Compact framework and Web Services. I can already think of interesting things to get this to do, like watching stock prices, monitoring snail mail at home (which would require some sort of hardware solution to tell the web service there is mail) and some other interesting things. I have to get back into programming weird and wonderfull things! now all i need is time!