Once upon a time, my house was alive. It would wake me up with an hour-long procedure of ramping up the lights and using a zen chime at increasing intervals. Once the hour was up, it would check to see if I had opened the bathroom door yet and, if not, scold me with increasing levels of profanity for sleeping too late. It would read me the weather and top headlines while I brushed my teeth. It would turn lights on and off as I moved through the house. It had everything but an omnipresent, glowing red eye.
And it was grand, until a series of events (that I can now look back at and laugh) resulted in the PC it was all running on devouring itself and the connected backup drive. Now, in addition to an offsite backup system, I've got a lot of switches, sensors, motion detectors and the like and haven't had the heart to build the system again. But here I am with an extra Mini, and Perceptive Automation just released a new version of Indigo. My inner geek is just itching to restore my home to its former blinking, talking, almost-sentient glory.
We here at TUAW are big fans of 
