Turn your iPod into a universal remote

[Jason]

I thought this was pretty interesting.  Probably not worth the trouble of doing unless you had a lot of free time, but cool nonetheless.   

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2004/10/28/ipoditunes_hcks.html

small excerpt:

We're going to take an iPod and turn it into a universal infrared (IR) remote control, which can be used to control all your home electronic equipment, or just about anything that uses a remote control. For example, in my home, my iPod controls my TV, DVD player, Direct TV, Ultimate TV PVR, Media Center PC, Xbox, XM Satellite Radio, Roomba, and a few other random things, such as a robot. Figure 1-14 shows a variety of remotes your iPod can replace.

To do this, we are going to "record" the "sounds" an infrared remote makes on a PC and then put them on an iPod as songs. Adding a special sound-to- IR converter then turns those sounds back to IR and allows you to use your iPod as a remote control. As an added bonus, it works from up to 100 feet away. It's a slick all-in-one unit, and you'll never go back to using multiple remotes again.

[Mark]

Wow! Yeah, if I had the free time I would do this with mine, but I don't so I won't