As a followup, here are the physical pieces you'll need on your end:

• A machine that can be always on (or nearly so), can host a small webserver, and can accept a connection from the webserver whenever that link is hit, and has a spare serial port.
• The FireCracker 4-Piece starter kit (Actually, all you really need from that is the computer interface and tranceiver)
• An X10 chime module, such as this one. (I've found other places selling them for about 5 bucks cheaper, if you really want to hunt around)

Then, check out ControlX10::CM17 for a perl module that will let you send an "on" signal with a small bit of perl code. Then, write a CGI script on the local machine that sends an on signal to the chime module. As you'll almost certainly have problems if more than one instance is trying to ring the bell at a time, check out merlyn's column on how to have only one instance of a CGI running at a time.

Once you can ring the bell from inside the office by visiting that CGI locally, make your webserver fire off a connection to that cgi script whenever someone follows that particular link.

Update: It just occurred to me that there's a nice bonus to blowing $100 on this idea of your boss's: with just a little bit more invested for two lava lamps, you have all the physical resources you need for those snazzy red and green build status lava lamps.

@/=map{[/./g]}qw/.h_nJ Xapou cets krht ele_ r_ra/;
map{y/X_/\n /;print}map{pop@$_}@/for@/
[download]