I made this last night.
Use case:
I often get up early at the weekends and pop into town for coffee, while everyone else in the house is asleep. On the way back I wonder if Anne would like me to fetch her a coffee. She might still be asleep, though, so I can't call or text her to ask, because that would wake her up.
Solution:
When I press a button on my phone the sign lights up. So, if she's awake she'll see it and text me and say yes. If still asleep she can slumber undisturbed.
Technology:
No cleverness on my part. Just a Belkin WeMo, a Habitat picture frame and a small string of Christmas lights. A massively overexpensive solution for such a trivial problem.
But that is not the point.
The point is that - once the bridging/programming/installing problem is solved, hopefully by something like the BERG cloud - people are going to want this kind of stuff. It's the decorative, furniturey, not exactly useful, certainly not to do with work stuff that people buy in the nicer sort of garden centres. If I was a better designer, or cutter-out of paper it might start to be like Matt's Mujicomp.
Look, for instance, at the latest designs of the Good Night Lamp and tell me they won't be popular. This is going to be a thing.