apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

It's hard to come up with a person who still relies on landlines to keep in touch with all the cell phones out there right now, but there's apparently still a market out there that General Electric had to cater to; hence the creation of their phone-clock combo ideally named, "Designer Series Contemporary Phone." It's so shiny, it even matches our Kitchenaid mixer...

After reading into Tom's Hardware's extensive tests looking into proposed power savings of these new flash-based drives of the future, they made a shocking discovery. Despite the overall performance gains (as expected from flash memory), they found SSD's actually used up significantly more power than normal hard drives found in most laptops. So, what does that mean for the portability market?

Though we were excited to hear the Playstation team was working on making our pricey PS3 investment worthwhile by adding a slew of new features requested by the community, it seems they've run into a few issues this time around.

We were fortunate enough not to update ours right away, but it seems those who were at the edge of their seats waiting for the update to roll-out may have caused more harm than good as reports worldwide of consoles becoming lemons began coming in. Luckily, there is a workaround, but c'mon Sony - we expected better from you!

While Flickr browsing, we happened to stumble upon a number of Craig's wonderful Macbook Air wallpapers (all of the wallpaper resolutions are 1280 x 800). Through sheer diversity, bright colors, and simple patterns, there's a style for any mood that you're in - I'm in a pinky mode, so I chose this one as the main picture. There's tons more though, all equally cool, so check it out!

At first glance, it looks like any other relatively-upscale design that may or may not break the bank. That's what we initially thought, too, until we found out it was from a Walmart series called "Stockholm" and it breaks no more than a few piggy-banks at most. The metal feet give it an airy feel and complements that mid-century modern that we all so love...

Branching from the standard earphone designs, GreenHouse has created a very unique design for their newest line of earbuds with a body of a pig that seems to go from the right ear into and out the left. They're noise isolating buds as well, so if you want to listen to Old McDonald Had a Farm without any distractions, you now can.

Living in tight quarters does not mean you must have televisions and computers laying all around (though that kind of sums up my apartment in a nutshell). Why not hide all those bright screens with an a sleek sliding bamboo closet door from Moso Bamboo? It looks better than a plain wall, and could finally turn that entertainment room back into a casual area for talk once again.

Summer's a great time for one's biggest steps in life; the big "M." Yes, it's funny that we should mention marriage on a tech blog, but there are tons of photographs taken on that special day, which is why we're more than happy to showcase photographer Jan Garcia's immaculate work-live space.

It's the first of July and that means one thing: updates all around! With this latest Playstation 3 rollout, there will finally be an in-game XMB for PS3 games, on-the-fly Bluetooth adapter setup, trophies, and the ability to play your own music in games. Looks like Sony's doing a pretty good job of listening to their consumers, one thing that most technologies fail to follow up on these days.

Although Linksys Linux-based Tomato and DD-WRT firmwares (used to give routers speaker powers for speed monitoring, traffic controls, and tons of other options) have been around for a while now, Netgear has recently gotten fancy with its marketing by aiming its latest WGR614L router at all the DIY's out there.

The 08 Radio by Mikael Silvanto is a nice spin on a radio, turning it into what people would normally use as a precision calliper tool or something from a doctor's office. However, because it looks so analog, it boasts the ability to find stations with extremely high "precision." Though we highly doubt it can beat out digital tuners today, the piece is nonetheless interesting to look at.

Another update along with featured workspace by Mondopiccolo. This round of upgrades include a ton of bug fixes for Airport performance, Adobe Suite integration, iCal, Safari, Exposé and Spaces. We also found tons of preparation framework for MobileMe and the iPhone 3G. Just sounds like a bunch of bug fixes to us, anyone else find something significantly different?

While the innovative YSP-600 was just cranked out a few months ago, Yamaha's looking for even bigger (and pricier offerings) for the consumer market who just hates wires (us). The YSP-3050, Yamaha's latest offering features an increased number of speakers that will bounce off walls to create an emulated (yet, pretty convincing the last time we took it for a test run at our local Fry's Electronics) surround sound experience. Full details after the jump.

Recently featured on Time's 50 Best Web Sites of 2008, including one of the top user communities, is highly active designer resource COLOURlovers. Whether it be for ad campaigns, product design, architectural specifications - it's a great place to compare color palettes (and patterns), submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.

Those in need of mood lighting, but can't afford crazy price tags for built-in units, the Mathmos Poplight has you covered. Going at six inches in height and made of hand-blown glass, the LED bulb in the middle rotates between blue, purple, violet, magenta, red lighting, and uses a simple "popping" mechanism on the top as a means of powering on.

Earlier today, a tipster sent the game-savvy Kotaku team a shot of what seems to be a new Samsung LCD TV with integrated Xbox360 features (and of course matching colors to boot). For those who prefer their televisions to match their consoles rather than the decor around it, this proposed model should start sounding to be pretty good.

As Outdoor Tech month slowly comes to an end (I'm still curious if anyone caught on with all the outside gear we've been featuring), comes the 57" monster from Aquavision. The specs sound pretty decent in this author's opinion, with full 1080p resolution, 1,500:1 contrast ratio, 600cd/m2 brightness, 8ms response time, and all the inputs you can think of, but the best part is the price (ready my drum roll, please...)

It's hard to recycle CD's, we know. We've seen previous attempts of using CD's to make a lamp, but it's nothing as elaborate or dramatic as the lamps Transparent House have created with old cassette tapes.

For the crazy media collectors out there who are at their last terabyte, Seagate has just announced their new flagship NAS drive featuring a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive with 32MB of cache, covered in its snazzy black stainless steel finish, and features DLNA, UPnP media streaming, 2 USB ports, and should be available by the end of the month for $330.

Perhaps we're just suckers for the simple, lived-in look. Ultra-modern has its flair, but even with cables out, Perke's pine garden table looks like a wonderful place to work. With the lights casting an uneven pink glow on the wall, you can only sit back, relax, and wait for the summer heat to kick in.

I know, I know. A terrible pun to start off the day, but I just had to. Anyway, for those still paranoid of scratches as they use their electronics day in and day out, Fabrix just announced a large range of designs and styles for your new iPhone 3G that not only look hip, they have hip names to go with them, too.

While it may take a while for LED's to become mainstream lighting, the next best energy-saving option when it comes to lighting are compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). On the other hand, did you know there are different types of CFLs emitting various intensities? Fortunately, Wired has been kind enough to sum up these different varieties of CFLs into a compact list with suggestions for each type of room around the house.

While many people are alright with their standard laptop speakers or built-in monitor sound emitters, audiophiles will go a long way to try and convince you how much blaring distortion is present from those sources. Take our word for it, if you want to hear music's crisp details, you'll probably need an amplifier - especially if it's coming from a computer-as-source.

Fortunately, NuForce has simplified this process by including an all-in-one PC USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC), 12W x 2 digital amplifier, 3.5mm headphone amp and stereo preamplifier - all packed into a pretty metallic miniature package.

For all you Fliqlo Screensaver fans, we've found that Twemco - whom possesses over 30 years experiences of manufacturing clocks in this kind - is still producing these great retro analog flip clocks. Only now, they're fitted with radio frequency atomic time to provide you with worry-free time updates.