Rudolph, the email reading reindeer, uses a Propeller Platform USB to announce when you’ve got a new email and who sent it.  Gadget Gangster writes…

How’s it work?
Rudolph regularly connects to your email server via POP, logs in, and checks the number of emails in your inbox.  If you’ve got a new email, it triggers an animation on the stuffed animal, retrieves the name of the sender and plays it back.

A Propeller Platform USB runs everything, using an E-Net module to handle the Internet connection.  The ‘Text-to-Speech’ engine also runs on the Propeller; It’s really a text-to-phoneme engine, but works well enough to read the name of the sender.

What about reading something other than email?
Rudolph can tell you the weather, read a sports score, or blink when you get a tweet!  I’ll show you how to use any data that’s available on a webpage in your own project.

Assembly instructions and code on their site.  Instructions also include a cool Umbrella Alarm.