Dressing Your Home

Smart Metering Meets Social Networking In A Competitive Game [Future Of Gaming]

In our research for The Future Of Gaming report our consulting team noticed that a mechanic driving in-game participation was One-Upsmanship. One example of this trend is Greenpocket- a company that has developed a smartphone application that connects smart energy metering with social networking sites to create friendly competition with the positive result of less energy being used by everyone involved. The app keeps track of a user’s carbon footprint and broadcasts it to Facebook pushing notifications in a way that inform customers on how well they are doing compared to their friends. The app also creates weekly energy efficiency contests allowing players to compete regularly while keeping the real issue front-of-mind.

   TOPICS: Environmental / Green Future of Gaming Home & Garden Web & Technology Work & Business TAGS: carbon footprint compete contests energy efficiency Facebook greenpocket smart energy metering smart metering social networking sites About the author of this article Tim Ryan: Tim is a Brooklyn-based writer and regular contributor to PSFK. A grad Read more…

Tags: Future Gaming, Gaming

5 Simple Kitchen Updates

Some people at one point or the other simply get bored with the interiors of their kitchen and would love a change. You don’t have to dig a hole in your pocket before you can achieve that magical effect in your kitchen. Listed below are 5 simple kitchen updates you can engage in to keep your kitchen up to date. They include but are not limited to the following:   Paint the Cabinets: You can agree with me that the kitchen cabinets are assaulted daily by cooking grease and grimy hands which makes them lose their shine after an extended period of usage. You can bring back that shine by painting the cabinets. If you decide to go for this, it would then interest you to know that there are various paint finishes you can choose from including stenciled looks, paint strips, glazes, crackle paint methods and more. If you are the type that likes to go bold, choose a vivid accent color of your choice. Adding a new coat of paint is sure to transform your drab kitchen.  

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Tags: Kitchen, Kitchen Updates

Storing Garden Equipment and Tools

Storage of garden tools and garden equipment in a precise fashion helps keep them in good working order, and saves you time in locating them.

A tool house 36 feet can take care of a great deal of equipment. Because tools are usually kept in unlighted places, and often not wiped off after use, rust is the major enemy.

One way to safeguard against rust is to keep vulnerable tools away from air when not in use, storing them in a box of sand saturated with crank-case oil. Avoid having so much oil that it makes the tools greasy and hard to handle, and do not put the working parts of the tools, such as the pivot part of shears, in the sand. The garden hose is often badly taken care of. Besides using a reel, you can preserve the life of your hose by not letting it kink while water is running through it. Dont leave it in the hot summer sun (especially if it is a plastic hose). Coil it loosely on your reel or rack made on the exposed studding of your garage.

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Tags: Garden Equipment, Tools

Home Ownership: How To Play The Home Buying Game

Beyond the rising costs of buying a home, another barrier to home ownership is plain, old-fashioned inexperience. There are many stages in the process of buying a home, but when youve never engaged in that process before, its hard to know what the steps actually are when youre just starting out. Even if you have gone through the process, the goal of home ownership can seem like a tangled garden for many.

Luckily, there is a path through that garden.

Take a look at this graphic that traces that path from end to end, to help orient the new would-be homeowner to a new life in a home of their own.

So, thats a pretty broad swath cut through the undergrowth of the home buying process. There are of course a number of details and hitches that can occur, not covered in this graphic.  Any important process in life is like that as weve all discovered.

But, what are some of your stories? Was the goal of home ownership and the process of home buying pretty easy for you?

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Tags: Buying, Home Ownership