This may not be directly related to home automation, but sure as hell save a lot of mouse miles a year…

Launchy allows you to launch programs quickly, by pressing ALT+Spacebar, and typing the first few characters of the program you’re trying to launch. It can be skinned, you can add all kinds of extensions to the index (think mp3’s or avi’s - quickly launch your music or movies!), and is available for Windows, Linux and OSX.