Controlling the outlets remotely with a smartphone or other device is a very useful. However it can be dangerous to work with mains current. Therefore one popular method is to use the inexpensive wireless power points that are controlled with inexpensive wireless data transmitters, and a great method of doing so has been documented by Stephen Arthur.
In his project, an W5100 powered Arduino Ethernet board is used and connected to an inexpensive wireless data transmitter that matches the frequency of the receiver in the wireless power points. Then they can be controlled over the LAN with URL commands – and to simplify this Stephen has written an Android app for his device to create a neat GUI, as shown in the following video:
Visit his website to learn more and for all the code.