House & Home

 Oakland, Calif.-based Edyn started selling a new, smart gardening device this week: an Internet-connected water valve that lets users irrigate their gardens or lawns automatically. The Edyn Water Valve uses data from the company’s Edyn Garden Sensor, a soil sensor, along with local weather systems, to adjust the moisture levels in the soil. If a user wants, they...

 An experimental solar cell created by MIT researchers could massively increase the amount of power generated by a given area of panels, while simultaneously reducing the amount of waste heat. Even better, it sounds super cool when scientists talk about it: “with our own unoptimized geometry, we in fact could break the Shockley-Queisser limit.”...

 Building Robotics Inc., better known as Comfy, raised $12 million in Series B funding for building automation software that helps companies save energy on office air conditioning while gathering employee-contributed data about the use and occupancy of a workspace. Emergence Capital led the investment, joined by real estate services company CBRE and Microsoft Ventures. According to...

KitchenAid Mini, $280Owning a KitchenAid is a rite of passage for anyone that likes to cook and bake, but if you don’t have a ton of counter space to spare, they can take up more space than they’re worth. Luckily, a new, smaller KitchenAid model recently hit the market, and Amazon’s offering the first...

Cleaning windows is a pain, especially if you live somewhere that gets a lot of rain. The “Blue Rain” window cleaning method will keep your windows nice and clear in three steps.With this graphic from Rebecca Hill at Clera Windows, you’ll learn how to keep windows streak-free inside and out. All you need is...

If you turned on a radio at any point in the 90s—and you probably did since Pandora hadn’t been invented yet—you’ll know some of the songs on this guilty pleasures playlist. Even if you want to pretend you don’t.This playlist, from Spotify user Patrick Mahan, features over a hundred earworms from the 90s, from...

Crescent 170-Piece Tool Set, $80Mechanics tool sets rarely dip below $.50 per piece, but today’s Amazon Gold Box offers up a 170-piece kit from Crescent Mechanics for just $80. This would obviously make a great Father’s Day gift, but if you don’t already own a kit like this yourself, you’d be hard pressed to...

Making your own screen for backyard movie viewings saves you money over buying an expensive screen, and makes warm weather entertaining easy. Here’s how to put your own together with just a couple hours of work and a few supplies.http://lifehacker.com/5815462/this-d...This movie screen and frame is meant to be easy to disassemble for storage or...

shropshirestar.comLudlow's 'hobbit house' appeal lostshropshirestar.comAn appeal to build a cutting-edge “hobbit house” eco-home into a steep bank in a Shropshire town has been lost. The planned 'eco house'. 9. Comments. The “earth-sheltered” house, planned for the Linney, Ludlow, was hoped to be built as an example of an ...

The Globe and Mail (subscription)$1.84-million 'Hobbit' home in Canmore seeks eccentric buyerThe Globe and Mail (subscription)The result is an eco-home with a six-foot fall line on one side and a 40-foot fall line on the other, with the lowest of its three storeys, including the living, dining and deck areas, spilling out in front...