With the winter holidays rapidly approaching, it is time to think about what you can do with sending out the annual greeting cards.

Sure you can head to the store and buy some generic Christmas cards, but why settle for something just anyone can purchase?  With printers getting fancier, and cheaper, why not print out your own?  Yes, they will have fronts that anyone can purchase, but all of the wording can be 100% your creation.

By using companies such as Paper Direct, you can order blank cards that you can customize to your heart’s content by using templates they provide you with for your computer.  As color inkjet and laser printers have gotten cheaper, you can print cards that are barely discernible from pre-printed ones that you buy in the store.

The other bonus to going with this method is that you can print just as many cards as you need, saving the blanks for future years or other purposes.  If you buy three or four different designs, you can cycle through them for years, rotating through them.  (Bonus note: buy more cards after Christmas as they will be heavily discounted and you can be ready for next year.)

You can do this not just with Christmas cards, but postcards, birthday cards, Valentines Day and so on.  Make your printer in to a personal print shop, it’s not nearly as difficult as you may think.

Ever wanted to control your thermostat from any computer in the world? Well, now you can.

The popular site Ars Technica brought this to our attention a few days ago, and it was just too cool not to research more on our own.  The Ecobee thermostat features a nice touchscreen interface that is easy to read and use, but the true uniuqeness comes in the fact it can also talk to your Wi-Fi network.

Why in the world would you want your thermostat connected to the Internet?  Well, once you buy the Ecobee, you register it with the company and you get a personalized web portal to log into and you can change any of the settings just as if you were standing in front of the physical control.  You can set dates you’ll be on vacation, turned on preset “QuickSave” settings and more.  Imagine an iPhone app for this and it really would be like you were living in the future.

If you wonder why this is noteworthy, think about the implications for what else you could be controlling in the future if something like this takes off.  You could turn your lights on and off while on vacation.  Leave the house and forget to turn off the stove?  We are slowly creeping towards everything in the home using Wi-Fi to give you on the go control, and if you add in cell phone applications, you could be coming home to a house that has turned on the lights and drawn your bath for you.  Sure it may have taken longer than futurists envisioned, but the remote controlled house seems to be inching towards reality.