Reuters reports on the results of an American Institute of Architects (AIA) survey which found homeowners choosing home offices over more frivolous rooms like home theaters. The survey queries architects to determine trends about what kinds of rooms and features homeowners are interested in. Here are some findings from the survey.
Americans are less interested in game rooms, media rooms, home workshops, or suites for au pairs or in-laws.
Americans are less interested in exercise rooms and additional laundry space.
Three-car garages have fallen in popularity.
The survey found a decline in homeowners desire for high-end kitchen and bath amenities.
46 percent of architects surveyed said home offices are gaining in popularity.
Two-thirds of architects said homeowners are interested in energy efficiency.
The increase interest in home offices coincides with the growth in telecommuting and the interest in energy efficient homes is a result of both the green movement and consumers desire to save money in a bad economy. You can see more findings from the AIA's survey here.
USA Todayreports that some are angry that the man who advocated a simple lifestyle is the "poster boy" for Montblanc's latest pen. The gold and silver pen was launched by Montblanc to commemorate the 140th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth. USA Today says one group has filed a lawsuit to try and stop the sale of the pen.
The decision to turn a man who shunned foreign-made products and pushed simple living to new extremes into a "brand ambassador" — as one local website put it — for a global luxury goods maker has left some Indians puzzled and others angry.
One group filed a lawsuit Thursday to try and halt distribution of the pen.
"Mahatma Gandhi advocated a simple lifestyle," Dijo Kappen, who filed the suit and is managing trustee of the Center for Consumer Education in the southern state of Kerala, told the Associated Press. "He was, of course, a nationalist and, in the nature of the independence struggle, the only thing he promoted was Indian-made goods. It is a mockery of the great man and an insult to the nation ... to use him as a poster-boy."
The BBC and Washington Post also have stories documenting the outrage over the pen. Montblanc's chief executive Lutz Bethge told the BBC, "I certainly have to say, I wouldn't have thought that people would have reacted negatively."
The pen bears an image of Gandhi as you can see in the video below. Only 241 of the limited-edition pens were make.
BuckyBalls are a set of magnetic spheres that can be used to make different shapes and objects. They should definitely be kept away from small children because magnets can be very dangerous if swallowed. The website has a warning that are "not intended for children under age 12 or anyone likely to swallow what is clearly a metal object." BuckyBalls cost $29.95. Here is a video that shows BuckyBalls in auction.
Fisher Space Pen Co. has made 1,000 limited edition AG7-40LE Space Pens to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The pen is designed as a replica of the anti-gravity model pen that was invented by company founder, Paul C. Fisher, in 1966 and flew aboard the Apollo missions.
The 40th anniversary pen features a piece of "Kapton" foil, used as protective thermal insulation on the Apollo 11 Command module, Columbia, which carried the astronauts to the moon and back. The artifact floats in a water-clear acrylic dome sealed into the pen's cap.
The pen is finished with black titanium nitride. The engravings are inlayed with 24-karat gold include the pen's sequential serial number, the names of the Apollo 11 crew and the image of an astronaut planting the American flag into the lunar surface.
The Fisher AG7 Space Pen and display case retails for $800. You can find more details at spacepen.com.
NASA released a newly restored video of the July 20, 1969, live television broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk today. You can watch it here.
R. Allen Stanford was recently accused by the Feds of running an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. Now, the public now has a chance to buy the luxurious furnishings that were once owned by the Texas billionaire.
Stanford had adorned four floors in a downtown high-rise with Oriental rugs, regal marble-topped tables and leather couches. He had bronze eagles (the symbol of his company, Stanford Financial Group) and blown-up photos of Palm Beach County polo grounds that he sponsored.
There's even a tapestry of Louis XIV, France's legendary 17th Century "sun king."
AMC Liquidators of Fort Lauderdale is handling the liquidation of Stanford Financial. You can see some of the luxury office goods Stanford owned in this video clip. Take a look:
Wall Street Journal reporter recently tested several of today's new office chairs including Knoll's flexible new chair, Generation by Knoll. The comfortable looking chair costs about $1,000. Take a look:
A new study says that losing a job can have devastating health effects. It is just common sense that people are unhappy after being fired or layed off. But this new study reveals that the stress caused by the loss of a job can cause an increase in a number of health problems. Kate Strully, a sociologist at State University of New York in Albany, had her study published in the journal Demography. Strully says that losing a job can trigger a host of serious physiological and psychological illnesses.
But what impact does losing a job have on your health? Could a layoff send a perfectly healthy person into a downward spiral of sickness? It's possible, says Kate Strully, a sociologist at State University of New York in Albany. In her new study published in the journal Demography, Strully analyzed a variety of job loss situations — including being fired or laid off or losing a job after the entire company shut down — and found that job loss may indeed trigger serious physical and physiological illness.
Strully used a nationally representative and continually updated data set known as the U.S. Panel of Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), which surveys people around the country each year on their employment status and their self-reports of health, among other things. Strully used data from 1999, 2001 and 2003 to track people's job status and the impact on each person's health 18 months later. Since previous studies on employment and health suffered from a chicken-or-egg conundrum — researchers could never be sure whether the stresses and strains of unemployment led to poorer health, or whether people's poor health led to missed work days and lower productivity, which contributed to job loss — Strully focused on people who reported having lost their job due to factors out of their control, such as the entire company shutting its doors.
She found that among people unemployed under these circumstances and who did not report any health problems prior to losing their job, 80% were diagnosed with a new health problem — ranging from hypertension and heart disease to diabetes — 18 months later. (Not surprisingly, those who started out with one or more of the conditions asked about on the survey were 54% more likely to lose their job within a year and half, for any reason, than those who did not report any health problems.) The most commonly reported conditions among this group were high blood pressure, arthritis and other cardiovascular-related problems. "Job loss leads to a lot of physiological changes," says Strully, who conducted her study as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar. "That's definitely what this suggests."
More intriguing was the long-term effect job loss appeared to have. Even if some of these people found new jobs soon after losing their first one, they were more likely to retain the legacy of poor health from having once been unemployed. "People who lost their job and were re-employed within a year and half also reported increased onset of new health problems," she says. "They shouldn't have had the most severe experiences of unemployment and income loss, and still we see them having new health issues."
This is another one of those horrible studies that basically says that if something bad happens to you -- divorce, illness of a loved one, job loss -- then you have a higher likelihood of getting sick or depressed afterward, thereby compounding your problems. So far the only good news that the study reports is that exercising and eating healthily can help mitigate some of the devastating effects that stress has on the body. Other studies have shown that social support, mediation and prayer also help reduce stress.
Spanish designers Helbert S. Ferreira and Remi A. Melande at System Design Studio have come up with this unique concept design for a flexible lamp called iLamp. System Design says the iLamp is made of white silicon with an electroluminescent polymer screen. The iLamp would be able to bend in whatever shape you need at your desk. Sadly, this twistable lamp is still in the design or prototype phase and it's unclear when it will be available for purchase.
This tiny tie camera discreetly records up to 4GB of video footage at a resolution of 352 x 288 pixels. The pin-hole camera is hidden in the pattern of this boring tie (which you'll never notice because of the horrifying shirt underneath it) and can be controlled by a remote. The tie camera is sold at Brando for $66.
Be careful out there. One of your fellow employees could be wearing one of these ties and giving the recorded footage to your boss or uploading it to YouTube. Remember: you're not paranoid if they really are out to get you.
Office Depot is offering customers free copies of resumes and free faxing from April 19 to May 30, 2009. Customers can participate in the special offer by visiting the Design, Print, & Ship Depot center in any one of Office Depot's 1,100 Office Depot retail store locations nationwide. Office Depot is providing free copies of resumes, up to 25 single-sided pages, as well as free faxing to five different domestic numbers, up to 25 pages in total.
"Times are tough, and whether you are looking to make a career move or seeking your first job out of school, Office Depot is helping our customers take care of business by providing a valuable service free of charge," said George Hill, Senior Vice President of Office Depot's Design, Print, and Ship Depot. "From paper and portfolios to custom printing and shipping, Office Depot is truly a one-stop-shop for resume products and services."
Customers can upgrade their resume paper selection to a color or premium paper from Southworth for a fee.
Office Depot has announced an expanded retail partnership with New Leaf Paper. Under the partnership, New Leaf Paper will launch a new assortment of 60 eco-friendly stationery, resume paper and envelope products and distribute them exclusively through more than 1,000 Office Depot retail stores across the U.S. The new stationery products include:
New Leaf Paper Stationery: The New Leaf Paper stationery range includes sustainable greeting cards, thank you cards, invitations and postcards. All 49 of the items in the assortment are made with 100% Post Consumer Recycled Content, processed Chlorine Free and manufactured with Green-e certified renewable energy, which verifies that green house gas emissions were mitigated during the production and shipping of these stationery products.
New Leaf Paper Resume Paper and Envelopes: The New Leaf Paper resume paper and envelope assortments are designed to meet the needs of professionals applying for green jobs. The 11 products in the new resume range available at Office Depot are made with 100% Post Consumer Recycled Content, bleached and processed Chlorine Free and manufactured with Green-e certified renewable energy.
Office Depot also carries some New Leaf notebooks, which can be found here on officedepot.com.
MotoArt is a company that specializes in recylcing old plane parts and turning them into office furniture, sconces, beds and sculptures. MotoArt co-founder Dave Hall told CNN that the DC-9 Wing Desk (pictured above) is one of the company's bestselling items. Take a look:
The Wall Street Journal's Stacey Delo looks at two products from Neat Co., Neat Desk and Neat Receipts. The products include a scanner and software that are designed to help organize your paperwork, receipts, business cards, and life. Stacey Delo said some of the cards wouldn't scan properly so she had to enter them manually. She says the system could be a useful tool for someone who has lots of business cards and/or receipts to scan in.
This Dow Jones handkerchief is embroidered with the graph of the Dow Jones from the past 5 years, 2004 to 2009. Investors are hoping the Dow Jones graph looks much different several years from now.
The Dow Jones hanky sells here at Design Glut for $28. For $95, they will embroider the graph of your personal stock portfolio.
Bloomberg reports that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has negotiated the return of thousands of Lehman Brothers merchandise that had been transferred to Barclays Plc when Lehman's sold Barclays its brokerage unit.
Tote bags, umbrellas, stress balls, Tiffany paperweights and other items now stored in closets and warehouses from New York to Chicago will be returned to Lehman and sold to pay creditors, according to a court filing yesterday. Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September and has about $200 billion in unsecured liabilities left to pay, Chief Executive Officer Bryan Marsal said Jan. 28.
As part of the arrangement, Lehman is barred from trying to sell the objects to Barclays' employees, according to court papers. The investment bank may need a liquidator to move the logoed goods, which would fetch "a discount to their intrinsic value," said Richard Kaye, chief marketing officer at Hilco Trading, which values and sells assets for companies, in a phone interview.
"A golf ball plays the same way no matter what it says on it," said Kaye, who might offer Hilco's services to Lehman, he said. "But does someone want to walk around with a logoed Lehman umbrella?"
The article says its unclear what Lehman's will do with the logoed items now. They could try and sell the loot on eBay. There are a few dozen Lehman Brothers items listed on eBay as of this writing. They aren't selling for high amounts.
Here's a listing of the items Barclays wil be returning to the Lehman Brothers according to Bloomberg.
Items in storage include: 1,630 green canvas duffle bags with Lehman ribbon, 353 green compact golf umbrellas, 75 Waterford Marquis Treviso crystal clocks, 682 white Lehman coffee mugs, 130 Swiss Army pens, an English beechwood-lined sterling silver box from 1902, 200 Lehman conference pens, 12 pairs of Links of London cufflinks, 24 Screwpull wine openers inscribed "LB," 24 Titleist PRO VI golf balls inscribed "LB," 30 girl Teddy Bears, 18 large, ivory womens’ F&G stretch snap shirts and one Tiffany shooting star.
The Lehman umbrellas won't go for much but some people may not mind the Lehman Brothers logo if it is a good umbrella. The Tiffany paperweights, Links of London cufflinks and Waterford cyrstal clocks will sell.
Reuters 
Bloomberg 
