Home Tech

A kitchen renovation is a MAJOR UNDERTAKING, and poor choices can cause lost money as well as a lifetime of cooking irritation. The new augmented reality (AR) apps out there allow you to use your camera or photos to see exactly how the tile, countertops, paint, appliances, and accessories will look and fit in your space—and you don’t even have to step foot in the store.

Feeling a little bored with your regular place settings? Wish your decor could be a little bit Harry Potter, a little bit Minority Report? Want to make sure your plants are getting 360 degree sunlight? Levitating X is here to make all your gravity defying decor dreams come true. Using a chargeable base and a little bit of magic (aka technology) the company offers up a variety of cups, plates, sculptures and plants that levitate and spin.

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show was a coming out party for the bots. Sony had a new version of its Aibo dog, Honda had its line of mobility robots, and yet the robot with the most buzz on the show floor was a funny little thing from LG called CLOi (pronounced like “chloe”—KLOH-ee). Ever wish you had a clone to help you out around the house? CLOi may be as close as we get.

Why is doing laundry always so tedious? Maybe because it takes forever. We spend an average of 18,000 hours of our lives on laundry, and just over one year (375 days) just folding clothes. These stats come courtesy of the marketing materials for the Laundroid, an automatic laundry folding robot, of course… because they have an automatic folding machine to sell. But also, you had us at laundry folding robot.

Last week over 180,000 people from around the world descended onto the Las Vegas Convention Center to see the latest ideas in consumer tech at CES — the Consumer Electronics Show. CES is a chance to see what both big and small players from the tech industry are cooking up for our future (the first VHS VCR debuted at CES back in 1975). Many guesses miss the mark, but among the 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space, there are some truly life-changing ideas.

Oh how we love to track our steps and our health with our FitBits and other life-logging apps, but is actual wearable technology—like a new pair of underwear that connects to your Nest and adjusts your home temp according to your body temp—taking things a bit too far?

Planned obsolescence—or the strategy of designing products with an artificial lifespan in order to ensure consumers will need to upgrade or make repeat purchases—is no longer a rumor with Apple’s iPhone. But if you have an affected model, and if you hurry to snag your Genius Bar appointment at the Apple Store, you can score a deeply discounted replacement battery upgrade in 2018.

If you think the bathroom is a boring space, then clearly, you haven’t been paying attention. Lately I’ve been seeing lots of exciting trends for the bathroom — here are some of my favorites for 2018. Hint: expect more color, fun shapes, and lots and lots of tile. Bathrooms, by their nature, tend to have a lot of straight lines, and a different shaped mirror can be a lovely counterbalance to that.

Imagine a year that trades the dreaded full camera roll for treasured photos that are aren’t trapped in the overflowing digital archives of your phone. Deciding to do something with your photos — right now, before you take too many in 2018 — will not only you give you a keepsake of your memories, but will also lead to some compelling and surprising consequences.

We saw a lot of interesting and fun things hit the market this year, and we saw a whole host of interesting things hit the almost-market on Kickstarter. We decided to take a look back at all the innovative and independent options that wanted us to clean better, sleep better and drink better in 2017. After a new study came out to tell us that our towels are basically never, ever clean, these Kickstarter towels started looking mighty, mighty good.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weigh,t you are probably familiar with the conventional wisdom of weighing yourself regularly. Some programs recommend weighing one’s self once a week; others every single day. It can be a frustrating process with the numbers going up or down depending on water retention, time of day and all sorts of little things that can make an already emotional experience slightly harder.

Here’s a perfectly legitimate reason for Potterheads to rush 2017 the heck outta here and slam the door behind it: A Harry Potter mobile game is slated for release next spring, Variety reports. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is a collaboration between Warner Bros.

With the holidays coming up, you may find yourself considering a break from the internet or a digital detox. If your want is stronger than your will, this browser extension is here to help. With one simple download, Nothing on the Internet will remove the content from whatever web pages you’re looking at, leaving only blank shapes and colors.

In the age of planned obsolescence, it’s not surprising that our electronics need replacing as often as they do—and phones are no exception. Anyone who’s held onto a device for more than two years knows just how slow things can get, and how sad the battery life becomes. Now, Apple actually confirmed that this happens on purpose—but not for the reason you would assume.

If slogging through product reviews before making a purchasing decision takes all the joy out of buying something new, then you may want to try this new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven product review consolidator. It says it will save you time and money when shopping for electronics and technology by digesting thousands of Amazon reviews into a dynamic, at-a-glance infographic. We give it a test.

Anybody who says they enjoy flying just hasn’t flown enough. There aren’t enough audiobooks and podcasts in the world to make waiting at a crowded gate for a delayed flight with a 10-percent battery feel like a good time. But what does go a long way in making a miserable airport experience a, well… less miserable airport experience are modern amenities— everything from free wifi to creepily accurate wait time trackers.

A Dutch company has combined two of the internet’s favorite things: sleep deprivation and robots. Somnox, the world’s first sleep robot, just exceeded its Kickstarter goal and should hit the market in the next year or so. The robot, which looks like a cuddly little bean, is designed to help lull people to sleep using “breathing regulation, audio and affection.” Sleepers can tuck the Somnox under their arm or hold it like a teddy bear when falling asleep.

We may have just gotten the new 2017 emojis last month, but there’s already talk about next year’s newbies. Here’s what could be coming to a phone keyboard near you in 2018. Emojipedia reported today that the beta for Unicode 11.0 has been announced, and there are 130 potential new emojis jostling for placement at your fingertips.

You know the type: they’ve had a subscription to Wired since forever, they attend tech expos every year (or at the very least, follow the coverage on social), and they always, always know what’s new and next. Get them chatting about which of these pieces of tech they’re coveting (nobody has everything), and watch them geek out…even more than usual. A do-it-all device with 4.3 stars from 59,132 reviews, all for only $50?

Using data from Google Maps, Google News Lab has figured out where we’re going, what we’re looking for and when we’re getting there around Thanksgiving. So, if you’re trying to eat Chinese food on the way to the plant nursery on Black Friday, you’re not alone—but you should probably avoid driving at 9am. So how’d they figure out that folks in Texas are particularly interested in bicycle sharing locations?

Ever leave the house with a nagging panic? Whether your personal nightmare is that you left the coffeepot or iron being left on or the pipes bursting when you’re not home on a below-freezing night, there’s a new smart home sensor that could be just the kind of anxiety-killing remedy that we need.

What was your introduction to podcasts? When I was in undergrad, a friend of mine told us we could download This American Life episodes to our phones so we could listen to David Sedaris’ Billie Holiday impression on demand, and our lives were changed. Since then, podcasts have an ubiquitous part of daily life for many, they help pass the time during commutes, chores and busy work. And they’re great! They teach us about so much and build worlds and make us laugh.

Exceedingly wealthy human Bill Gates has reportedly invested in 25,000 acres of unpopulated Arizona desert with the intention of building a smart community. The desert town will be a technologically advanced hub with a planned population of around 182,000. There will be driverless cars, high-speed internet and, given Gates’ philanthropic interests, likely a well-funded public school system.

Cleaning the bathroom is generally at the bottom of everyone’s favorite chore list. And while cleaning grout is tedious and scrubbing the tub is exhausting (unless you use this tip!) cleaning the toilet is just sort of…icky. SpinX is a toilet cleaning robot, here to save us from scrubbing the bowl ever again. So how does this magical problem-solving robot work?

One of my family’s favorite holiday traditions is turning on—and then ignoring—the hours of television aptly titled, Footage of a Burning Log. West Elm recently released a new holiday app that puts a stylish spin on my beloved footage a Yule Log. The app for Apple TV (and the corresponding YouTube channel) offer up not only the soothing and seasonal logs on the fire, but four different fireplaces and rooms from which to enjoy them.

Starting tomorrow, apologizing will get a whole lot easier. Former MSNBC news anchor Greta Van Susteren announced via Facebook that she’s releasing a new app, Sorry, for free on November 14th. Van Susteren has been working on the app for over a year and hopes it will revolutionize the way we apologize. It will function as a way to say sorry in our interpersonal relationships, as well as allow the general public to respond to a celebrity or company’s public apology.

Weak wifi is one of the more infuriating annoyances of modern life. Whether you work from home or are just an avid Netflix watcher, an internet disruption can totally throw off your plans. A team from Dartmouth College has come up with a surprising (and surprisingly simple) way to boost wifi signals — put a tinfoil hat on your router. Yup.

It’s about to be peak winter Hygge season and I don’t know about you but I’m excited as hell to stay inside and hold a mug with both of my hands. But sometimes the warmth emanating from own two palms is not enough to keep a mug of coffee warm as I slowly sip it throughout the morning. Luckily Ember, a Los Angeles based start-up, is here to solve this very particular, but common annoyance.

If you weren’t already hip to the Amazon Echo Dot, now’s the time to smarten up. Kind of like the Echo’s cool, younger (and much smaller) sister, the Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice-controlled device that allows you to do everything from play music to order pizza using Amazon’s Alexa technology.

I didn’t think it was possible to fall in love with a TV. Shoes maybe, but I’ve never been one to go gaga over tech. It’s just that televisions have been eyesores almost as long as they’ve been around. Sure, they’re functional, and flatter and thinner than before. But they’ve essentially remained big black boxes, even when hanging on the wall. That is, until now.

Never underestimate the power of a quality pair of headphones. Whether for yourself or the music lover in your life, gifting a good pair of headphones this season can be a total game-changer for your day-to-day routine. Commuting and travel becomes more enjoyable, as does the gym and just about everything else, because you can cancel out the noise around you and focus on all your fave songs—which will sound amazing in a well-made headphones by the way—instead.

We all know that Instagram is a great place to show off your social networking skills, but it can also be a valuable visual resource if you know how to use it right. Along with loads of helpful hashtags, location tags, and images, the social media app is brimming with untapped advice to aid your shopping and travel endeavors. To prove our point, I’ve rounded up some of the more savvy, albeit unexpected, ideas for using Instagram images and tags to your advantage.

Long gone are the days of bulky boom boxes and home stereo systems, having been replaced by wireless speakers. These petite powerhouses reign supreme for a lot of reasons, the most notable being that they’re, well, actually portable. By wirelessly connecting to your smart phone or car, these mini mobile wonders allow you stream music just about anywhere you can pump the jamz without getting strange looks from passersby.

By now, we’re all well aware of the inspiration, discovery and even expression that apps like Instagram and Pinterest offer designers and design enthusiasts alike. But what’s the new new in tech for the creative set when they want to get their inner decorator or DIYer on? We polled designers, trend experts and influencers from the home decor world to get the scoop on what apps make their jobs easier, more fun and more inspiring—or all three.

An out-of-control inbox is a problematic thing. Not only does it make it hard to keep your professional and personal life organized, a cluttered inbox can often lead to missed emails and opportunities. Andrew Mellen knows all about the value of well-organized inbox. As New York City’s leading professional organizer, he’s made streamlining people’s digital disorder his business. We asked him for advice on how to better manage our own email issues, and he had a lot to share.

Since the first time I saw Clueless, I have envied Cher Horowitz’s closet. Not even her clothes—although she’s still one of my style icons, so I’ll take those too!—but the computerized system that she used to pick out her outfits. I mean, it was truly amazing, both because it was pretty high-tech for the 90s (It was 1995! Her computer had a touch screen!) and because it meant that she always looked flawless and her closet could so easily stay impeccably organized.

They say that if you want to know what the future will hold, then you should study history. But it might be more accurate to substitute the word “history” for movies and television shows. For decade after decade, movies and television shows like “Back to the Future” and “The Jetsons” have depicted their take on what day-to-day living would be like in the future.

You wash your hands when you leave the restroom, and maybe even reach for a paper towel to open the door handle to keep bathroom germs off your hands. You wash your face with skincare products that cost more than the food you eat, and maybe even sleep on fresh pillowcases every night to keep spots off your face. But all of that is for naught—like going to the gym everyday on a diet of donuts—if you’re not taking care of the filth on your cell phone.

If you like art, and are always looking for a way to get more into your home, around your flatscreen is the perfect place to keep building your collection.

A whole new generation of TV addicts is just finding out that antennas exist, and that they get you basic channels for free. It’s actually leading to a revival in sales for “rabbit ears.” Yes, really — in 2017.

Expanding his ability to put dogs into a state of Zen, dog whisperer Cesar Millan has partnered with Audible.com to launch Audible for Dogs, an expansive collection of over 350,000 audiobooks specifically designed to help the pooch in your life be more calm and relaxed.

One Irish man invented the lifehack we didn’t know we needed: a stationary exercise bike that will stream Netflix for you, but with one genius catch — only if you keep on pedaling. The DIY tutorial dubbed CycFlix was created by Dublin Institute of Technology engineering student Ronan Byrne, and is available for free via how-to video and step-by-step code share on Instructables, if you’re feeling up to the Python/electrical engineering challenge.

If this test lab review of the BedJet had a CliffsNotes version, it would be: I liked it a lot and I didn’t lose any limbs. But for a more complete assessment, read on. Once upon a time lived a born-and-bred Florida girl who was HOT. Not wanting to crank up her A/C in July (in South Florida) to an acceptable temperature at night (an action that would likely bankrupt her), she sought out alternative ways to stay cool while she slept.

There's a way to turn a vice into a virtue—just listen to these brilliant tips by self-admittedly awful emailers.

If you’re sold on the future of smart home, you don’t need me to exalt all the benefits of Amazon Echo’s voice-activated personal assistant, Alexa. But this post is actually for the skeptics out there. Even if you think the whole voice-controlled smart home thing is silly or extra, I bet I can sell you on it, at least for one room in your home. See, I was an Echo skeptic for a long time. Until my sister-in-law gifted us an Echo Dot for Christmas last year.

The art of forgetting isn’t hard to master. No matter how organized and prepared we attempt to be, sometimes well, it happens. We forget stuff. But what if there was an iPhone app designed to ensure you don’t ever walk out the door without everything you need? Don’t Leave It! is a location-based reminder app that helps you keep track of your everyday necessities, so you always remember to take them with you when you leave. And best of all: it’s free.

If a visit to the IKEA showrooms is the opposite of your idea of fun, how about a Pokemon Go-style experience for furniture buying instead, where you can sit at home and place IKEA furniture around your house — possibly without even leaving the couch? Thanks to Apple’s upcoming ARKit, that time is here. Co.

Think right now about all the digital photos you have on your computer hard drive. Take a moment to relish the thought of all those memories, preserved: your college trip backpacking through Europe, your wedding, your baby’s first steps, your family portraits through the years, all of which you can go back and look at any time a reminiscent mood strikes. Now imagine that they are gone in the blink of an eye.

I, for one, love the idea of the Internet of Things and smart home technology. I’m looking forward to more and more cutting edge, connected tools that create efficiency with automated tasks, ones that actually save money and time (rather than costing a bundle and eating up the extra time with a giant learning curve or constant troubleshooting).

This round-up was a long time in the making and I’m so excited that it has finally come together. I know I tend to feature many brand new tech-y products in this series, and it certainly seems that the capabilities of technology in today’s world are endless: everything can connect to wifi, Bluetooth, and, you name it, it’s got an app.

Technology gets smarter, cooler and more useful by the day, but between our phones, computers and TVs we tend to spend a lot of time looking at and being distracted by screens. There’s nothing wrong with that—if the tech life is the life for you, that’s great!—but for some people, it can lead to bad habits.

If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of time each day clicking through your inbox. (And, admittedly, if you’re anything like me you also walk away from the inbox with a seemingly never-ending pile of unread messages and junk mail. Does it ever stop?!) But what if there was a way to make sifting through that inbox easier? Enter Gmail shortcuts. Here are 10 essential shortcuts everyone should know.

When you live in a small apartment like Mary (366 square feet), finding the right home for everything is a priority. Having already made over her kitchen and closet to suit her needs, Mary was no stranger to crafting custom, diy solutions for her small space. Her next project: creating a stylish setup for her home entertainment devices and hiding those cords! Housing electronics in a stylish, unobtrusive way is a always a challenge.

The land of luxury homes with underwater views officially has the coolest Apple store in the world. Customers typically know what to expect when they walk into one of the brand’s electronics stores, unless they’ve been lucky enough to visit the unbelievably posh Apple store in Dubai. Keeping in line with the destination’s signature upscale offerings, the brand new location in Dubai Mall is completely over the top.

When it comes to TVs at home, there are two teams. Team Hide That Thing Away does not want that distracting piece of technology messing up their design story, and they’d rather put it behind pocket doors or in a piece of furniture. And then there is Team Hail To The Screen: The Television, in all its glory, IS the design story, and the size is only limited to how large a screen can fit through the front door.

Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, can do a lot of things—tell you the weather or traffic, shop for you, play music. Now, she can help you get dressed. Amazon’s latest device, the Echo Look, is a hands-free, Alexa-enabled camera that is your new #OOTD bestie so you can give your Instagram Husband a break. Echo Look, like Amazon’s other Alexa-enabled products, is voice activated, so you can tell it to take a photo or a short video without having to press any buttons.

Okay so I’m admittedly a bit of a black thumb. For starters, my apartment—like most in New York City—has windows that directly face the brick exterior of a neighboring apartment, which means natural sunlight is, well, reserved for time outdoors. Throw a busy schedule and life in the mix and remembering to water your succulents is not as easy as it sounds . So although it’s upsetting that I can’t even keep an air plant alive, it’s not terribly surprising.

Update 5/26/17: IKEA announced this week that their smart lighting collection will also come with voice activation, supporting all three major assistants, Siri, Google, and Alexa. 3/31/17: The home of the future just got a lot more accessible. This week, IKEA debuted their new smart lighting collection. If you’ve been curious about smart home tech, but haven’t yet dipped your toe in, the Swedish retailer just made it as easy as—you guessed it—screwing in a lightbulb.

Every night when it’s time to go to sleep, I follow the same routine: Shut the bedroom door, turn off the lights and meander my way to my bed in the dark, because my light switch—and the only major lighting in my room—is on the complete opposite side of the room. Or at least, I did, until a few weeks ago when I bought a light bulb I could talk to instead.

Amazon’s Echo, a Bluetooth speaker powered by voice assistant Alexa, burst on to the scene a couple years ago and instantly captured the hearts and minds of consumers. You could hear the collective cry: voice control is finally here! Of course, there was lots of voice control on the market already (including Apple’s O.G. Siri), but Alexa was the first out of the gate that promised—and delivered—on making voice commands useful in the home.

Did you know there haven’t been any updates to the traditional tape measure since the late 1800’s? Well, watch out: the measuring revolution has arrived. Just this week, InstruMMents (yes, that’s two M’s) celebrated the launch of “01,” the world’s first dimensioning instrument. Designed to seamlessly measure any object, (even one with 3D curves!

Does it feel like junk mail is taking over your life? Between random credit card offers and ads piling up in your mailbox and a seemingly uncontrollable amount of subscriptions and spam flooding your inbox, things can get cluttered and super overwhelming—and fast. The good news is, there are some tricks and services you can use to manage both your mailbox and your inbox to keep your life as junk-mail-free as possible.

In the early age of technology, products and devices weren’t always pretty to look at. Computers were clunky, TVs were monstrous, and— if you can remember this— phones were beige and tethered to the wall. Shudder. Then Apple came along and changed all that, by making us lust after their beautiful designs. They understood that, as tech jumped off your office design and became personal, the consumer would want style just as much as they want function.

Have you ever browsed the Instagram Explore page to find cool accounts to follow, only to fall totally head over heels for one? Some Instagrammers—be they bloggers or brands—are just so good you can’t help but double tap on every single beautiful, creative photo they post. Here are 14 Instagram accounts the Apartment Therapy editors are totally crushing on this Valentine’s Day. (Seriously, these are the ultimate in aesthetic goals, and you should go follow them all.

Take a second to go over your gym checklist in your head—what do you always carry with you? You’ve got your keys, a water bottle, maybe a towel, your headphones… and of course, your phone. But new research shows that it’s probably better if your phone stays out of sight and out of mind during your workout.

I’ve been thinking about getting a projector. The thought of curling up on my couch and recreating the movie theater experience in my own home is very appealing. But I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to buy. And I sure as heck don’t know how to get the most bang for my buck. Thankfully, three real people in real homes were more than happy to share why they’re #teamprojector for life—and it just might inspire you to make the switch.

Endless entertainment, working and shopping from home, Facetiming and sending gifs of a cat in a monkey suit eating a banana: it’s an enchanting time to be virtually connected. But as we’ve learned from every Disney movie ever, everything tantalizing comes with a potential dark side—in this case, things like malicious viruses, eye strain, and crappy battery life. But fear not!

Caroline Biggs is one of six people tracking their resolutions with Apartment Therapy in real time. You can read her earlier installments here and here. According to a recent study, there are a whopping 2.3 billion active social media users worldwide. That’s nearly one-third of the entire human population that, per another staggering study, spends around an hour of every day on Facebook alone.

Your phone can do it all these days, thanks to a never-ending supply of apps.

Caroline Biggs is one of six people tracking their resolutions with Apartment Therapy in real time. You can read her first installment here. You’d be surprised to discover how often you check Instagram. True you might only spend a few minutes total scrolling through it every day, but if you’re anything like me—i.e. committed to staying off social media for a month—you’ll come to find you check your apps almost compulsively, at all hours of the day. Bored at work?

Signing up for your favorite store’s email list sounds like a great idea at the time—it means that you’ll never miss out on great coupons and discounts, right?

You’ve got a busy schedule and a lot on your plate, so how do you deal when to-dos and plans keep piling up, and it’s starting to become more than you can handle? You could just never go to bed and pretend the whole “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” thing is your new mantra, or you could get by with a little help from your apps.