Who has seen and / or f of Iron Man (here, better known as Iron Man) should remember J.A.R.V.I.S., your personal personal assistant. Inspired by it, Chad Barraford, a former Apple employee, decided to create his own and used a Mac mini in his project.
The idea of Project Jarvis is constantly evolving that he not only recognizes Chad, but performs a series of automated tasks, such as bringing reminder notes, tracking movie rentals on Netflix, updating social networks, etc. It can be fully controlled remotely, even by voice.
Unfortunately the project does not have its code open at least for now and Chad has no plans to market it, but he is willing to share ideas with other developers of similar systems.
(tip from Silas Klein, via TUAW)