Following on from the first commercial space flight on Branson's Virgin Galactic, there's further democratisation of space by Google and Facebook.
Google's YouTube Spacelab will allow users to effectively pitch for their experiments to be carried out and streamed live from the International Space Station http://bit.ly/qN4m80
Better still was the Facebook hosted competition for the UK Space Agency http://bit.ly/qu2Ryp. A competition to create a use for a smart phone enabled Satellite. The winner took inspiration from the film Alien, "In space, no one can hear you scream". Allowing users to upload videos of themselves screaming to the Satellite.
Controlling a smart phone in Space is taking simple off the shelf technology, and giving mortals a chance to be closer to the stars.