(Image: Shanghoon)
The new Nest thermostat is brilliant, in a HAL from 2001 kind of way. Not only does it adhere to commands sent from your smart phone, it also learns your patterns and adjusts to your schedule in real time, as you use it, no programming required. It knows when you usually get up, when you go to work, when you come home, when you go to bed. It can give you digital readouts of energy usage and automatically adjust to make you both comfortable and economically efficient. There’s good reason this thermostat—a normally boring appliance if ever there was one—is so cool. It was developed by Tony Fadell, the man who oversaw the iPod and iPhone divisions at Apple. A few years ago he jumped ship to tackle home temperature control, and amassed a Silicon Valley dream team of designers and thinkers who defected from Apple, Google and other tech industry powerhouses to help him do it. The results are nothing short of revolutionary. The only thing it doesn’t do is play music. Yet. $250. nest.com
Anyone who has felt the stomach-lurching anguish of dropping an iPhone and shattering the screen can appreciate the value of a well-made protective case. Happily, swift-moving retailers have already released a range of whimsical, stylish and sleek options for the iPhone 5—and, given that Apple’s latest starts at a whopping $700, we imagine demand is high. Here are our favourites, which range from 
Research in Motion’s 
Good food comes at a price. For dedicated kitchen design geeks, that price is $18,000, which is what it costs to own Aga’s newest cooker, a 970-pound cast-iron behemoth dubbed Total Control. It operates like a traditional Aga—using stored, radiant heat to produce constant cooking temperatures and therefore tastier, juicier food—with a high-tech twist. This one can be switched on and off in a matter of minutes or programmed to turn on automatically at a certain time. And if that doesn’t make your mouth water, this will: an iPhone app for long-distance preheating is in the works. The Aga Shop @ Grange Toronto, 150–154 King St. E., 416-943-0242.
The last couple of years have been fantastic for Toronto diners. The city has experienced an explosion of hole-in-the-wall masterpieces, opened by people you’ve probably never heard of, doing inventive, surprising things with small kitchens. They often don’t care much about decor, and the rooms are usually noisy, but the places are packed night after night. A few weeks ago, on a Monday, I called one such restaurant to book a table for the following Thursday, and the man on the other end of the line laughed at me. He said he had an opening on a Thursday—six weeks from the day I had in mind. Other terrific restaurants don’t even take reservations. If you want a table, plan to wear comfortable shoes, because you’ll likely wait in line. At about 7 p.m. toward the end of the week, Dundas West and Queen West and East are the sidewalk gathering places of curious foodies in from Mississauga and Lawrence Park, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to rack up points on their credit cards. (That is, if the low-tech restaurant in question takes credit cards.) 
