I'm no expert in these fields and I'm not sure you want to know what vendors like Sun are doing, but Java Desktop System (JDS) has a mechanism to do something like that.. (it's not free...)

http://www.sun.com/software/controlstation/

news worthy not long ago:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5006457753.html

Hope that's interesting if its not particularly helpful...