i've been using sshfs for some time now....
also there are some more cool filesystems based on fuse like smbfuse, which gives u 'Network Places' like access to a windows network ....
but i stoped using that at work cuz the admin complained that my linux box was accessing other peoples shares periodically (it uses a sort of... network caching algo) ... guess that made him nervous ...
check out the fuse home page ... there's some really interesting stuff there. gmailfs
Steven