My Winter Project
I had an epiphany this morning on the train as I was thinking about an idea for a useful project that I could do in my free time (about 15 minutes a week) that would not only teach me something new, but be something useful that I could use on a regular basis.
At home I have large number of mp3’s that are hosted on one of the computers I have on the network. This works out great for my wife and I since we can share all our songs and listen to anything we want from any computer in the house (and you can listen to them at work too). Ever since I started listening to mp3’s and realizing how convenient they are I have always imagined a way to somehow get this same collection of music accessible to the main AV system in the house. Getting the computer hooked up to the AV system is a trivial task, but finding a convenient way to select, start, and stop tracks has always been the challenge (the computers aren’t anywhere near the AV system so running back and forth, while it would keep me in shape, wasn’t a good solution). 2 technologies have evolved since I last thought about this idea that has helped solve this problem. The first is wireless networks, and the second is the pocket pc. The wireless networks allow me to control the host pc from anywhere in the house… the pocket pc puts the remote control in the palm of my hand. So I am going to spend the next several months working on a remote controller for my mp3’s that will allow me to pick and play a song, or series of songs on my main AV system. This is actually an idea that is similar to the one Eric Gunnerson is using in his remoting example on MSDN, except I am going to use web services from the PPC instead of sockets (since I already did my time with sockets and ppc.. bleh). I’m more interested in a service approach to this application since it has better support on the ppc and I want to explore more with working with disconnected data on spotty connections.
So the project is set… now all we have to do is find that little thing called free-time. 
I’m actually building something very close to what you are planning.
The problems with web services are that they are very slow compared to sockets, and they aren’t peer-to-peer. If that’s okay, then they’re fairly easy to use.