Cheap, low-power wireless and IP
So Cypress has a new Wireless USB technology. I'm not sure how this relates to the whole batch of current wireless standards operating in 2.4 GHz (which includes Bluetooth, the WiFi family and various other consumer electronics devices), but it's yet another choice in the "getting devices to talk" game.
Likewise, I think that it's really cool that Maxim/Dallas Semiconductor have created an embedded processor with a TCP/IP stack built into it. Granted, Java chips have probably had this kind of thing for a while, but having a single, small chip with an IP stack (called TINI ) is pretty nifty.
I can imagine how the combination of these types of technologies--cheap low-power IP-enabled chips plus cheap low-power wireless communication (the key words being cheap and low-power in both cases, since this stuff exists in all kinds of more expensive/higher-power formats already) could enable some interesting new applications.