apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Yesterday while visiting a loft for a house tour for our city sister site, Apartment Therapy Los Angeles, the person whose homes I was photographing and I began discussing the issue of accumulating things...things we need vs. the things we want. The conversation mostly revolved around the topic of knowing when to stop adding more things into your home. But then that got me thinking specifically how the ideas apply to a realm where owning the latest and greatest often means owning more than what you need: home technology....

We just dissembled and stored away our bedroom window air conditioning unit, a bit of a pain in the behind, but necessary as autumn weather starts letting itself be known in our area. Wouldn't it be nicer if your air conditioner wasn't an ugly and loud appliance and instead was integrated into the shape of window blinds? Oh, and it would also be solar powered, so no need for power cords!

With a 86" viewable haptic touch screen with 2304x800 pixel resolution, this superwide multi-touch table was designed for the Space Chase Gallery at the Adventure Science Center in Nashville for visitor use; the setup is powered by dual Intel I7s with 6GB of triple channel DDR RAM, allowing several people to manipulate virtual objects all at the same time. Although meant for museum use, the MT-50 hints strongly at the move toward touch screen integration into table design, undoubtedly will make its way into home furnishing and entertainment setups...

How to Make Unlimited Cell Calls Using Google Voice: useful and money saving directions showing how to dial for free using a variety of carriers in conjunction with Google Voice.

Twitter Follow Me Knee High Socks: Looking for more followers? This might help (caught our eyes, didn't it?).

FORM 2 Vibrator: Yves Béhar is the founder of the San Francisco and New York design studio, fuseproject. He can also now claim designing one of the most unique looking sexual aid devices. Rabbit or tooth, you decide.

The Litl Webbook: like a netbook, but more useful and portable. Folds over backwards 178-degree so you can use it like an easel or picture frame. And the little laptop-like device is OS-free!

The team over at Engadget joke about the Samsung Tango being able to clean bedding alongside flooring, but as a two pet household, we'd love an automated helper that would keep both our floors and our bed/furniture clean of hair and dirt. If they can only figure out how to get the floor vacs from floor up to onto furnishings (a new challenge for Dean Kamen)...

We live in a pretty small kitchen...one where counter space is at a premium and requires always moving appliances, ingredients and cooking tools to be moved around to fit things while practicing any semblance of the culinary arts. So you can bet we noted these flip up gas cooktops from Alpes Inox with great interest...

The Urban Cursor is both art and furniture on wheels, providing seating and equipped with a built-in GPS tracker so you can follow its location at Google Maps...even if you're just moving it from the living room into the patio.

We were perusing some of the fabric options over at an Etsy shop when we noticed they were selling an assortment of Space Invaders inspired printed textiles, perfect to craft together an Invaders themed pillow or pillowcase. But you don't have to limit yourself to alien defense designs; there are plenty retro gaming textiles (retro Nintendo and Atari get all the love...where's the Vectrex designs?), cross stitch and crochet projects out there to get your craft on...

Justin Cole wanted to merge the retro form of the beloved, though outdated, audio cassette tape with the utility of a flash drive to create the ultimate mixtape...

Here's a USB accessory that is somewhat a specialized tool, but one with wide appeal. Because who wouldn't mind investigating throughout the house with your own wireless USB microscope to peer from 20x - 200x magnification?

If Tom Ford was to carry a portable hard drive, we think it might be one of the luxurious Brinell Purestorage drives. Clad in either stainless steel, exotic wood like genuine Macassar wood, nappa leather or carbon, the check sized drives hold up to 500 GB of your precious digital information..

For those with arachnophobia, we ask you to move along...nothing to see here. But if you're fond of creepy crawlers, named Beetlejuice, and are looking for an unusual stand that will keep your laptop cool and angled for ergonomic viewing, we give you the Monster Monster Notebook Stand...