The Gadgets Page

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When Mike and I lived in an 800 square foot house, we got quite inventive with our storage and multi-use rooms, but nothing like the ingenious work done by architect, Gary Chang, in Hong Kong. His sliding walls can create many rooms in a 344 square foot apartment. Check out the video from the Wall Street Journal below.

The idea of creating one room with sliding walls that create a different room is a stroke of genius. The media storage wall of the living room slides away to reveal a dressing area.

The guest bed folds down over the bathtub.

The master bed folds up into the wall just like an old Murphy Bed.

The wall holding his television slides away to reveal a kitchen including a bar.

Gary’s entire apartment is a gadget lovers dream! The walls slide so easily, despite being loaded down with books or a heavy television. I wonder what mechanism he used to make the panels move. The next time you’re feeling cramped in your home, remember Gary and his inventively creative use of space.

I bought a netbook a little over a year ago. I thought it would be perfect for conferences because it was so small, but the battery life was so unbearable short that I was always searching for an electrical plug. At the last conference, I ended up going back to my trusty Macbook because at least the battery would last six hours. I endured the bulkiness in exchange for the convenience of not having to find electricity in every room.

With the iPad, however, there is a perfect marriage of long battery life and portability. It’s smaller than my netbook and the battery lasts easily ten hours. I haven’t fully acclimated to the onscreen keyboard and I prefer to have a real keyboard. The Apple Bluetooth keyboard works perfectly and even when I have to carry both around, they are still about the size of my netbook.

When we bought the iPad, I looked forward to reading books, playing video games and watching movies with it. I had no idea how good it was going to be for taking notes and actually working!