one thing that would be excellent is the ability to group devices, variables and actions by zone - for example, "living room" would have actions,variables and devices listed beneath. is that possible? if so, how?

This isn't currently possible. You can, however, create custom Web Control Pages that have whatever Devices, Variables, Actions, etc. you want. So you could create a "Living Room" Control Page, or a "Downstairs" Control Page with whatever controls are appropriate for those areas.

Regards,
Matt

i like the possibility, but the current way control pages are implemented is a bit heavy for my needs. load times are far too slow! i'm hopeful that the dev crew will consider jquery for control pages in a future version - much lighter!

I don't believe the bottleneck is in the AJAX technique used, so jquery isn't going to speed it up. The native iPhone application should be much faster though...

Regards,
Matt