Old Infrastructure. Yesterday, the New York Times Real Estate section ran an interesting lead story. Rather than focusing on new developments and expensive apartments, The Cost of Saving Energy begins to explain the growing concern of the less-than-efficient existing housing stock in New York City. While NYC is fairly green due to our dense population, extensive mass transit system, and small-sized homes, we have an aging infrastructure of poorly-maintained older buildings that are far from energy efficient... More

Rescued in Style. Mooi uit de brand — Dutch for "rescued in style" — was a recent design competition requesting student designers to make fire safety more attractive. (Apparently few Dutch homes have smoke detectors). The winner of the competion was Louise van der Veld for her Chick-a-Dee design. This is one of those obvious solutions where we'll ask ourselves "Why didn't I think of that?"...

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For a quick way to turn off all of his chargers at once, AT reader Marcelo thought up the idea of combining a power strip with a foot switch. We think it's a great idea.

This power strip at the Super Media Store has a foot switch integrated into the strip. It could work well as long as the strip isn't concealed within a cabinet.

Personalized (Green) Comfort. Design power-house Herman Miller has recently launched the Be Collection � a group of office-oriented accessories to assist one to Be Comfortable, Be Organized, and Be Connected. Described as "essential ingredients for personalized comfort", Be Collection includes lamps (like Yves B�har�s LED Leaf Light, above), space dividers, various desk organizational tools, monitor arms, keyboard trays, etc. We're super excited to share that the entire collection falls into Herman Miller's Design for the Environment protocol (DfE) for material selection and product design... More

Electronics at home can take up a lot of space and botch the look of your apartment. For those without a separate room for the home office, this is a good alternative. It's called eNook and it's a wall-recessed desk for charging and using electronic devices. More

We just heard about wireless security systems. They can be used in conjunction with a monthly service like that offered by ADT or without. We started checking these out when we saw a simple wireless window alarm at Home Depot.

So, we can't vouche for the effectiveness of such systems, since we have not used one in our own home. But we're intrigued that the possibility of installing a system looks pretty easy with these wireless alarms available. One of the better sources we've found online is here. It looks like most systems run from $150 to $300. Has anyone any experience with something similar?

Three is not a crowd in this case. This ingenious new power receptacle, the Acenti by Leviton, is a triplex! That's three places to plug in.

Anything that helps to keep us from getting out the old power strip is very welcome in our home. This outlet's pure brilliance, keeping more receptacles where they belong - in the wall.

The design won the IDEA Award For Best New Product Design in 2005.