Lantronix has released two interesting products for the embedded hardware market, the WiPort and the Xport. These are tiny Ethernet transceivers (one wireless, the other not) that add connectivity to devices without requiring a whole lot of knowledge about how the connectivity works. Each one has a complete "TCP/IP network stack and OS" and, most usefully, "an embedded web server that can be used to remotely configure, monitor, or troubleshoot the attached device." In the case of the Xport, all of this is in a package barely bigger than the 10BaseT connector that fits into it (not that 10BaseT is going to be meaningful for consumer products for much longer, but it's a cool hack).
It's clear to me that as the market for embedded intelligence matures, plug and play modules like these are going to become more popular, which will further increase the speed at which embedded communicate and intelligence appears in consumer products. I can envision a point, oh say five years from now, when not having some kind of embedded communication in devices will be bad design. There's probably going to be all kinds of interference and interoperability issues at that point, but everything will likely be able to talk on the Net. I'm excited!
These gizmos rock. Everything should have an IP address. Depending on your needs for wired projects (e.g. you don't want an integrated RJ-45 connector/filter cuz you're doing power-over-ethernet), the Netmedia SitePlayer http://siteplayer.com/ may be a better fit.