There are lots of Nerd Kits project examples available. Josh Davis used the LED Array Sign project and added a cool option for the sign to display voice messages left with the help of a Google voice to text service. Josh has documented the project here and has made the code available.

Via: Make

"On the software side of things, there are two python scripts that make everything happen.  The one called voice2led.py is a script that reads a text file and prints whatever is in it to the sign. The other python script, named checkvoicemail.py is where all the cool stuff happens.  Using the PyGoogleVoice module of python, this script checks my Google Voice account for voicemails."