Control Arduino over LAN from Joystick plugged into Mac.

Hi,

I am new to Arduino and programming in general. I have an RC car that I would like to control from my Mac over LAN (I will plug an WIFI access point into this later) using joystick input. I have the Arduino setup as a Telnet server (using Steve Lentz' code here: http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,8533.0.html) and am able to send commands to turn on/off an LED or move a servo using an SSH client on my Mac but I don't know where to go from there. I guess I need some piece of software to map the joystick buttons to telnet commands and send them to the Arduino or maybe there is a better way to do it? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!