Linked by David Adams on Wed 21st Jan 2004 22:52 UTC
If all goes well, this summer I'll be building a new house. I've owned a few houses before, some of them built in the 1920s and 30s, and full of all the charm and quirks of an old house, and a couple that were pretty new, with the lack of craftsmanship and imagination that's typical in most new construction in the USA today. But this time I'm building a custom home, just to my specifications, so I can have whatever features I want, limited only by my imagination (and budget). I'd like to integrate some home automation features into the house, and include wiring for future expansion. 
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Having been down this road and taking lessons learned from my first custom home to my second...
1) Run CAT6E everywhere and *make sure* all ends are terminated to a patch panel. Many will run the cable, but not punch them down or test them.
2) If you go with a wiring closet, make sure it has room for a hub/switch, maybe a router, and definitely an 100V AC outlet that, at minimun, can have a 6 outlet surge protected plugged and allow all doors to close.
3) Make sure every port is labeled properly and tell the builder to get the newer faceplates that have 2 100V AC + 2 RJ45 and 2 RJ11 outlets. That way, everywhere you have power, you also have data and phone (don't cheat by mixing and trying phone over power or power of data... they suck).
4) If you're feeling like spending a bit extra... have a power and data drop put into the ceilings as well for ceiling mounted WiFi APs.
5) For home audio, have fiber and standard RCA run throughout any room you *might* have an entertainment system in (think 10 years in the future) all tied back to a common area. This will allow for surround sound, remote speakers, etc.
6) And it truly pays to have your cable (cable company) run in advance, with at least one outlet per room, though I ususally put one per wall and integrate it with my AC/data/phone faceplates.
7) *big suggestion* after having done some post-build cable runs... have all you cables run through 1'' PVC pipe. This leaves room for snaking new cables in.
8) many installers like to terminate unused data pairs at each junction. Make sure all are continuously wired.
9) if you plan on an alarm system, run separate CAT6 just for it.
I could say a lot more, but these are things that I did wrong on my first house and did right on the second.