PaintSwatches app from Aquariform Designs. Photo: crunchbase.com
There’s a special place in my heart for apps that help match paint colors. PaintSwatches (from Aquariform Designs) allows you to do so with a minimum of fuss.
This $1.99 iPhone app is elegant and flexible—high praise for any bit of software—and it’s relatively simple to navigate and use. In contrast with other similar tools, PaintSwatches isn’t weighed down with unnecessary functions; it’s light and quick and useful.
Most of the mandatory bases are covered, and I’ll get to those features in a minute. What I particularly like is the ability to import a photo and create a color scheme based on it. If I were so inclined, I could use this tool to create a room of colors inspired by the view I snapped at the top of a ski run in the Rockies, or by a shot of my daughters plowing through autumn leaves in the front yard.
The app enables you to pick colors from several paint makers, including C2, Sherwin-Williams, and Glidden. You can scroll through swatches, type a tint’s name and/or number, or search paint names for words like “silver”, “frost”, or “pepper”.
Chosen swatches are collected in a bar at the top of the screen, and you can pull each one down to see how they play together. You can create notes about the project or send all of the paint info (though not the swatches themselves) via email to your family, contractor, or neighbors (to tweak their noses).
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Locating Air Leaks: Black & Decker’s Thermal Heat Detector
It was 99 degrees last night in Chicago and everyone, everyone, was wondering when the power grid would succumb to the demands of so many chillers, air conditioners, heat exchangers and fans.
That moment could be forestalled—and many residences could be that much more efficiently cooled—if everyone used a leak finder like Black & Decker’s $40.99 Thermal Heat Detector.
A Star Trek engineer might mistake this handheld and battery-powered device for an interdimensional three-core phase disrupter. It’s sleek, points like a triggerless weapon, has tiny controls and shines a colored light at targets. If only there were sounds….
The Thermal Heat Detector isn’t much different from similar devices used to gauge meat temperature on the grill. Point either at your target and it will remotely measure the surface infrared heat of that point.
You could buy a detector and run around documenting temperature deviations of every joint, jamb, and joist in your home (driving yourself nuts in the process). Or you could get Black & Decker’s tool, which is specially designed to find temperature differences along household surfaces.
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Quenching the Thirst for DIY
Photo: CNNHealth.com
Working on a job site through a scorching, dusty summer day requires pacing and hydration, and now, perhaps for the first time, you can get help with both from a package hanging off one of your biceps. Kenmark Sports has created an arm-slung holder for both a 16-ounce aluminum water bottle and a smart phone/MP3 player the size of an iPhone.
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