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A stripped down, links-only HouseHacker.com.

HouseHacker is sort of dedicated to bringing you the goods on home improvement, household gadgetry, DIY, cool furniture, yada, yada...




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Funny home cut out stickers.

Those salt and pepper shakers you've had your eye on are on sale. They've knocked $800 off!

iTable. These guys have made a touch-screen table that attaches to an iPhone (basically, the table becomes a giant iPhone).

Hungry, but not sure what to make? Check out photograzing! Browse a boatload of quality food pics to find the perfect meal.

Sandwich coasters that you can set your Brass knuckles coffee mug on.

Cold + Pillow = Chillow. Chillow is fun to say. Chillow.

A lightbulb storage solution to a problem we didn't know we had!

Nice magnetic doorstops Via KK's Cool Tools

Do I really need this thing? Ask yourself these questions while attempting to de-clutter the house.

NY Times articles on the tools you really need to maintain your home.

Pumpkin launchers should enjoy this collection of trebuchet/catapult designs.

NOTICE: Large moosehead wall lights have finally been invented.

360 Modern is a real estate firm in the Pacific Northwest U.S. that specializes in modern homes. Beautiful stuff.

Handy way to skip all the intro crap on DVDs that is usually forced on you when you throw a disc in your player. Apparently the chapters on DVDs that you can't skip (FBI warnings, copyright stuff, etc.) are flagged, on the disc, as UOP, or User Operation Prohibited. This site lists some of the techniques you can try to skip the ennui.

This colour coordinated bookshelf looks cool, but you might have a hard time finding a particular title.

For chewie edge lovers or corner brownie fans - it's the Edge Brownie Pan. All edges, all the time. Via BoingBoing

Puzzle carpet.

This to That is a handy site that will tell you what adhesive to use when attempting to glue various objects together.

Super creative bathroom tiles.

Skinny house in Brazil.

Apparently there are many LED lightbulbs available already. Via TreeHugger

WiiRoomba. YouTube of a guy controlling his Roomba with a Wii remote.

Hardcore Lost fans have a party and repackage the snacks and beer as Dharma Initiative rations. Make your own with the PDFs that they've so generously shared.

Here's a nice set of home improvement videos with the energetic and snappy Eric Stromer.

Faucet Fountain turns your regular faucet into a drinking fountain.

Kids and the Home Office. Here's a list of tips for the parent that works from home.

Save the Internet.

Great Pac-Man bathroom tile work.

Crazy toaster from the future TODAY!

Here is a nice napkin folding howto site with clean pictures and straightforward instructions. I think the shirt's my favourite.

DIY T-Shirt Rack via Instructables.

Stainless steel paint.

Onion goggles.

Batman-esque underground garage with hydraulic lift.

Microsoft to unveil a home server at CES this week in Vegas? This article at Arstechnica discusses the possibility of a machine focused on home automation and entertainment centralization.

Here's a blog full of interesting gifts for under 10 bucks.

WikiHow has a DriCore installation howto available for your edification.

Here is an energy saving tips post from last winter.

The USB humping dog you asked for is in.

Unique DIY photo ornaments.

A table that walks. Finally!

Twist and grow table. Amazing.

Roller toaster.

Make a nice 3D paper snowflake.

Tiny houses from the Tumbleweed Tiny House company.

Post-it note wallpaper made up of four different grey tones which, over time, reveals a usage driven design.

Sweet mug that comes with convenient built-in cookie chamber. Here's a great review of the mug in use.

Great unique gift idea and store thread on Ask Metafilter.

This is one massive bed that measures 12 feet by 10 feet.

Build your very own bottomless pit with this howto (heads up: there is some embedded audio on the site).

Laundry chute turned Cat chute.

PacMan arcade cabinet Halloween costume.

Crazy awesome self assembling robotic chair. Amazing.

DIY Bean bag sofa and/or bed from Instructables.

Another site on transforming household items into other useful (??) household items. Thanks for the tip Paul!

Environmentally friendly home cleaning service. I hadn't realized that there were companies that will clean your home using only animal and environmentally friendly products. This particular company is in the UK, but a quick googling pulls up similar companies in North America as well.

Here are some very unique hand made leaded glass doors, produced using the lead came method, a method in use since the middle ages.

Pumpkin carving. This site has some seriously impressive pumpkin carvings as well as a tutorial, which, although informative, still looks like it requires a lot of artistic ability. Worth a shot though - it's just pumpkin.

Another declutter your home tip page. This one's by FlyLady.net.

USB twister hub with Rubik's cube-like rotating ports.

An outdoor pizza oven party would be a cool alternative to summer barbeques.

Skeeter Bag is a bag that attaches to box fans to catch mosquitos by the thousands.

Lego ice cube tray.

Turn maple leaves into roses with the help of this photo tutorial. Very autumn/thanksgiving.

Interesting Alton Brown video on knife sharpening and maintenance. Instructables also has a step-by-step sharpening howto.

CNN Money article: Middle-class families in worse shape than ever.

Nice and clean magnetic tool rack from Instructables. The nice thing about this organizer is that the actual tool holders can be positioned and rearranged (on the fly) on the metallic backboard.

Designer wood computers handmade in Canada.

Humanoid shaped shelves. Kind of looks like James the doorstop.

How to find a good neighbourhood. MSN article, via Lifehacker.

How to make clear ice cubes.

Use your PC and webcam as a motion activated security camera.

This Old House has made available a very large fall home inspection checklist for your downloading pleasure.

Mike Jagger of Provident security has been on the scene of thousands of residential burglaries and has put together this interesting walkthrough of a typical break-in.

Concrete countertops on Flickr.

This is pretty damn clever. Sizeasy is an online tool that helps you visualize the size of something you're reading about or considering buying online. Punch in your dimensions and see your widget along side things like a deck of cards or a piece of paper.

Here's the skinny on upgrading your home network to Gigabit ethernet. It's probably worth doing simply because "gigabit ethernet" just sounds cool and not at all nerdly.

Greenpeace is getting on Apple's case about their use of certain hazardous chemicals in iPods, iBooks and the like. Greenpeace claims that other manufacturers have discontinued the use of some of the chemicals that are still found in Apple products.

De-Clutter your home to sell it faster. Here's a page with a lot of ways to do just that.

Consumer Reports: 20 Free Ways to Save Energy is a nice list of things you can do, mostly around the house, to save energy and of course, as the two go hand in hand, cash.







Househacker/tags/electronics

Watts Up Electricity Consumption Tracker

Like the popular Kill-a-Watt, the Watts-Up electricity monitor sits between the device whose energy you would like to track and a wall outlet. Both devices present you with a handy display of power comsumption, but the Watts-Up Pro (not the standard) has a USB interface, which allows you to download the stored data onto your PC for further analysis. The data can also be exported to Word or Excel. Conveniently, the Watts-Up displays the cost, in dollars and cents, on the unit's LCD screen.

See also:

Watts-Up and Kill-a-Watt at Amazon.com
The Gadgeteer's review of the Kill-a-Watt

Find a Home Theatre Projector with this Exhaustive Database

ProjectorCentral has a large projector database with an extensive criteria filter that enables you to find the projector that works best in your space. If you're planning a home theatre setup, you'll want to know which projectors will work with your available real estate. Feed the site the distance the projector will be from the wall as well as the desired image size and you'll receive a list of suitable units. There is a plethora of other filtering options available too; price, brightness, HDTV compatibility, PC card reader and so forth. Also worth checking out is the site's top 20 overall projectors.
       



DIY Wireless Music Player

Like many, you've probably got a sizable collection of music on a computer in one room, and a home audio system in another. Unfortunately for us, however, these two pieces of electronics have been giving each other the silent treatment for some time now, leaving us caught in the middle of their petty spat, like powerless, innocent bystanders. Over the last couple of years, devices have come along that tried to remedy the situation - and with some success. However, if you're not interested in buying a ready made wireless music player, you can build your own out of some off the shelf (the shelf being ebay, usually) parts and some shell scripts, as Nathan True did. Luckily for us, Nathan has provided a nice step-by-step walk through of the process. If you're not afraid of some hardware work and elastic bands(!), then give it a go and help bring some harmony back to your home audio world.

via Engadget

Possibly the World's Most Connected House

This is quite possibly the most wired, monitored, internet enabled home ever. Obviously privacy isn't too much of a concern with 9 webcams (some with nice pan and tilt action) and endless stats available openly and publicly over the net, including real time data on water usage, electricity usage, gas usage, doorbell rings, incoming phone calls with caller ID (and playable messages), alarm status, fridge door status, toilet flush count, washer/dryer monitor, temperature, rainfall, wind speed/direction and on and on. The amount of available data from so many different sources is staggering and must have taken a serious amount of time and a herculean effort to complete.

via Metafilter

PowerSquid Electrical Outlet Multiplier

Put this one in the "Why didn't I think of that and have tens of thousands of dollars to pursue the idea assuming I had sufficient motivation to actually follow through with something for once in my life?" file.

The PowerSquid is a power bar that will actually allow you to utilise all 5 of its outlets, regardless of the size of any attached power adapters, thanks to its unique, power distributing tentacles. Pure genius for like $12.99.

Extend the Range of your Garage Door Opener

If you have a garage door remote so weak that your garage door opener doesn't respond until your vehicle is practically on the driveway, forcing you to wait while the slow moving door opens, then this hack's for you. A little solder and some patience worked for this guy, although he tested his remote against a thick wall that was previously impenetrable and not by measuring distance. Still might be worth a shot, however.

via digg

Make Your Own Skype Phone Adapter

If you've not already wired up your pre-existing POTS system to your VOIP system, you may be interested in this DIY project that walks you through the creation of a telephone-to-VOIP adapter for your wired or cordless phones. From the site:

Just imagine: You can walk with your wireless phone chatting with Skype friends for free, you can make free call to your mom if she is connected to the Internet...Skype wireless phones are expensive, VoIP adapters cost ~$60, but you can make it for free if your have details.. from old TV, Radio or other electronics.


KillaWatt Energy Consumption Meter

Get a grip on the amount of electricity that your myriad of electronic devices use with the Kill-A-Watt (heh) electricity meter. Plug in any piece of equipment and allow it to project the cost of running the device for up to a year. Until smart energy meters get a foothold in municipalities, devices like this will have to do.

Electronic House Products of the Year Gallery

Electronic House has a nice slideshow of their product of the year picks. Selections include a nice variety of HDTVs, audio components, projectors and home automation toys. The Electronic House guys sure seem to know how to live.

Recent stuff from HouseHacker: