apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We have finally done it. Hats off to Yvon Chouinard, our readers and advertisers.

We've turned AT into an earth supporting machine.
Click on over to Re-Nest, our green site for the home, and check out what our readers over there did last month...

Dear Readers, below the jump you'll find a Reader Survey - something we've never done before - that will help us get to know who all is out there. We'd love it if you'd take a few minutes to go through and ask a number of questions by clicking on a bunch of buttons. In return for taking the time, you'll be entered into a $100 giveaway. Interested? Click below for more...

Do you have expertise in o n l i n e ad sales?

We'd like to talk to you...

Our tech team tells us that we've fixed all the frickin' RSS glitches and you should be good to go. So if you have a new spankin' Kindle reader tucked into your bag, you won't miss AT, Kitchn, Ohdeedoh, Unplggd or Re-Nest in their new incarnations. The Atom feed is at the bottom of every page (cities as well as main). Please let us know if you encounter any more problems: support @ apartmenttherapy.com.

Take It With You. Looking back at some reader feedback from previous Good Questions, we decided to take a longer look at OmniMount. Known for their speaker and stereo mounts, the company has branched off with solutions for nearly all areas of in-home entertainment systems and flatscreens. While the site features nearly endless solutions for audio and video storage and display, we are most interested in the furniture that is free-standing and does not require wall-mounting ideal solutions for renters!...

Hello AT,

My boyfriend and I recently bought a Philips 42" LCD flat screen TV. However, when we moved, he accidently broke the swivel stand that came with the TV. We don't have the option of mounting it on the wall at our new apartment, and Philips recently discontinued the TV and does not offer replacement stands...

Getting their sound on. As DWR starts to test the waters beyond furniture, we were very excited to see that they'd begun stocking this super cool, elegant Geneva sound system from Geneva Labs, their first consumer electronics item ever...

"Small is cool" when it comes to laptops too. The insides keep getting smaller, but the screens seem to keep getting larger. While we all love watching a movie on a nice 17-inch laptop, it's not necessarily the best alternative for a computer used in our home and on-the-go. Here's a look at some of the best small laptops. (Price reported is the base price.)

Apple Macbook $1099

Dell XPS M1210 $1299

Fujitsu Lifebook Q2010 $1999

Fujitsu Lifebook P7230 $1699

Toshiba Satellite U205 $1199

Please pass it on. Right now we're looking for a really hot developer to come on board for a full time position. If you are interested or know someone who might be read this and pass it on. Thanks!...

Everyone who works for AT was a reader first. It is with this in mind that we are putting up this post and copy catting our favorite ice cream company (see 1994).

The time has come to find a really good, smart, fanatic person who is capable of joining our staff here at AT and helping to run operations and all that business-y stuff for the years ahead. Is this you? If so, read on...

I just upgraded to one of the Keira Knightly-thin Apple Keyboards yesterday, and so far I'm very impressed with the usability, comfort and build of the svelte unit. No problems transitioning typing on it, with adequate key spacing, and the keys themselves have a much more satisfying feel than the mushy-sticky Apple keyboard I've replaced (aka "The Clear Dust and Dirt Aquarium"). And best yet, my hands feel more ergonomically comfortable because of the low angle, despite my initial apprehension of transitioning to a more laptop feel to the keystrokes).

Above is the result of many hours of transferring a small portion of our physical music collection onto digital storage mediums the past few weekends. We've got a small apartment where space is at a premium, and hundreds of CDs shelved, stacked or put away in sleeves has become a glaring inefficient use of space. So every weekend, we've taken batches of CDs and individually burned them into MP3 and Apple Lossless formats via our G5 tower and MacBook, with grand plans to take the CDs (and a few DVDs) to Amoeba Music for a massive trade-in for credit or cash.

Samsung's SPF-72V digital photo frame seems like a one-stop solution for your home digital photo display needs. The 7" frames comes sporting a USB port, memory card slots (SD, MMC, Micro SD and XD), built-in speakers, Mp3/WMV9 playing options, and is Wi-Fi optimized for Windows Vista, allowing display of images at a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels from your PC wirelessly via Window Media Player 11 (seems like us Mac user are SOL). The SPF-72V can also update and be fed images via RSS feed, so you can keep your grandparents updated via your Flickr account remotely. Not too shabby for a suggested $249. [via TechGadgets.In]

German electronics manufacturer Grundig might be alive only in marketed name, but these Grundig branded Audiorama 360-degree audio field producing "sound spheres" go back to the future of 1970 and a revisit the stylings of the iconic Audiorama 4000/7000 speakers. Looking straight off the set of Logan's Run, these are one of the few speakers I'd purposely want visible in my home and I for one welcome their return.

Many of us are waiting for the invention of wireless EVERYTHING, but until then we are just going to have to accept that most of our gadgets have those pesky cords. Having lived in our fair share of apartments, weve found that each apartment offers a new set of challenges for hiding cords. There have been a slew of inventions that have helped us along the way, heres our Top Ten.

• Cable Yoyo Sleek and comes in black, white and silver. Perfect for computer peripherals and cell phones.
• Cable Turtle Allows you to wrap and conceal and comes in a variety of sizes.
• Wire Looms An old standby that can be used to corral multiple cables.
• Velcro Wraps An adjustable binding solution.
• Zip Ties Easy to close for a tight bundle, but impossible to open.
• Nail-In Clips A simple solution to allow you to tell that cord where to go.
• Bluetooth The best invention by far, no cord necessary!
• Twist ties The budget solution, simply reuse what bundled the cord in the first place.
• IKEA Signum Cable Management Allows you to snake multiple cords, but only really functional when you can install out of sight.

Have we forgotten something or perhaps theres something we havent discovered yet? Let us know below.

-Kelly

Here's a seating solution for the gaming set living in small quarters. The Trey Chair was developed by a gamer for other gamers who find themselves living in dorms or apartments where seating is at a premium. The chair offers a traditional office chair experience, except that this chair can convert into a two piece setup at the touch of button, offering a rocker seat and a small surface for drinks, controllers, or impromptu arm wrestling matches. The folks at Ars Technica have a detailed hands-on review of this multifunction task chair and interview with the designer Jeff Jameson. Now if it only came with a built-in Wii controller charger powered by rocking motion....

AT Home Tech reader and tech enthusiast, techgirllaura and I have been exchanging facts, opinions and personal observations about the consumer electronics industry and women's purchasing habits. She's correctly stated that women are in fact the primary purchasers of consumer electronics today, outspending men US$55 billion to US$41 billion, as supported by figures from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). This discussion sprung from a post about how important colour is to home theater screen purchasing decisions, but quickly morphed into an interesting discussion about gender and the consumer electronics landscape...

When you've got a small apartment and hate wires like I do, something like the Yamaha YSP-800 sound projector is an agreeable compromise. To be frank, the sound experience is a fraction of a proper home theater system, but it actually quite surprising what 23 sound beam drivers can recreate in terms of a surround sound experience, and I don't ever regret getting one of these compact home theater solutions.

Well...okay...I do regret not waiting a bit longer to get one of their new updated sound projector solutions after reading about the newest features.

Recently, one of my neighbors has asked me for help and advice about redecorating and reorganizing her cluttered studio apartment. She wanted to start anew, with a moderate sized budget and big time dreams of making her studio apartment a bit more cohesive in decor. After discussing possible paint choices, editing her collection of "things", and a discussion of maximizing her space, she mentioned how she had always wanted to upgrade to a flat panel television, but was unsure about price and how it would look with her decor.

This wasn't the first time a female friend or acquaintance has mentioned the importance of colour; several friends have asked about different colour choices beyond the variance of dark greys and blacks lining the electronic aisles (my neighbor actually preferred black, and I steered her to a 27" Olevia LCD that fell within her limited budget). There's really not much out there, barring some boutique brands from Europe or expensive contraption to just hide it away altogether. I know, I know...a panel should be neutral dark for optimal viewing. But let's be honest here: there are many people including myself who will trade in a little of that optimal viewing for better compatibility with our decor. So how important is the colour of the monitor for you?

Do we really need our chair to inform everyone about how much we weigh? Fuwa PicaHoneyComb chairs play tattletale using computer sensors combined with soft inflatable cushions and LED lighting to glow assigned colours according to the user's respective weight. The seats also use built-in sensors that adjust colours of the chair to compliment the colours of a surrounding environment. So while my slightly out of shape behind glows an embarrassingly conspicuous glow of fried chicken gluttony fed guilt, the others chairs will nicely compliment the rest of the interior.

We're working under the hood this weekend. Please excuse us while Mark has been shifting our entire publishing system this weekend to a new server. Although you won't notice any great changes on Monday, everything should load far quicker, and it lays the foundation for everything we're adding in the next eight weeks, including a new search function this week. Yee-Haw!

Earlier this year I purchased a Netgear Skype WiFi Phone, all in the hopes of abandoning my landline for good. Mostly because I'm nearly always reachable via instant messaging/email (friends joke I email so quickly, it might as well be called instant messaging), I had up till very recently lived without a cellphone [insert gasp here] for over three years after being an avid early adopter of the technology. I realized I hated being able to be reached everywhere and anywhere; turning off and tuning out is one of life's luxuries these days. But the Skype service has proven to be unreliable, so for now, as ridiculous as it seems, I have three different phones and three different services. With so many voice communication options these days, it got me wondering how many people out there are actually just like myself, juggling a myriad of devices, not completely satisfied with any of them. There seems plenty of people who have abandoned the traditional phones, and now only have a cell. Yet, there are a few friends I know who still just have a plain old analog landline (I believe these people were called "hermits", "witches" and "that weirdo at the ontop of the hill" in another time).

What do you get when you combine carpeting and a light switch? Apparently the Essential Wall Dimmer, a most unique light switch made of conductive yarns, neoprene and acrylic which puts a soft spun tactile spin on the simple act of turning on or off the light. Just like myself at age 16, with the most gentle of touches, it turns on.