Crestron, the company that makes crazy high-end home automation equipment that lets you turn off your lights by just breathing loudly, just announced Windows Sideshow support. You remember Windows Sideshow, right? The Windows Vista feature that lets you feed Vista's Gadgets onto an external device. Crestron's including this on all Crestron touchpanels and 2-way devices that support dynamic text. Not only does it read data, you can even send control information back to Windows to change a song or turn off your BitTorrent downloads because you're about to play some Xbox Live.

ROCKLEIGH, NJ, April 16, 2008 — Crestron announced today its touchpanels and control systems now support Windows® SideShow™, providing access to a wide-range of PC and Web-based content such as news feeds, sports scores, stock tickers, weather alerts, media guides, email messages, and appointment notifications all through a simple network connection to a Windows Vista™ computer. SideShow content can be viewed on all Crestron touchpanels and 2-way devices that support dynamic text such as the APAD wall mount controller and MLX-2 handheld remote. Windows® SideShow™ is a new technology in Windows Vista that supports a secondary display screen to view flight reservations, news, weather, sports or read email even if the laptop is "off" or in "sleep mode." Crestron now provides support through its SIMPL Windows program to also deliver SideShow data to its touchpanels and controllers, including the APAD and MLX-2. Crestron control systems retrieve SideShow data from any mobile or desktop PC running Vista via basic Ethernet communication. SideShow sends data from the SideShow gadget displaying text information and even providing some control functionality. For example, Crestron SideShow-enabled controllers can access the Windows Media Player gadget to allow users to browse song lists and play selections directly from touchpanels. Crestron support of Windows SideShow delivers information from your computer to Crestron devices. Windows SideShow is available in Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate.