Archives for July 2010

This post is a bit different, and is by a guest author. Hope you like it!

The year is 3010. Due to a population explosion, apartments have shrunk to the size of capsules. Interiors have become outlandish and uncomfortable. Your window? Tiny. Your balcony? It’s now part of the window. But that’s ok because evolution has phased out acrophobic and claustrophobic tenants. There are also no more three-toed sloths, but they were never that great anyway.

Presenting 22 futuristic apartments you need to see to believe.

Color is in; way in

You might be wondering where the television is. And the computer. Those two people are the television and computer. Yeah, humans have made some significant upgrades. The woman who looks like she’s crying? She just watched a Youtube video. We never evolve out of Youtube.

Picture me rollin’

Put those “house on a hill” dreams to rest and upgrade your renter’s insurance. You’re going down.

Apartments Go Mobile

In the future, people’s incessant need to always be moving will lead to movable apartments. Their answer will be the Metromorph, which turns into a balcony and scales the wall of your building. Subsequently, parking lots around the world will go out of business.

With space for two, the Metromorph has seats held by rotating arms and two giant doors that slide up and over the vehicle. If you’ve seen Minority Report, you’ve seen the Metromorph.

Taking the highrise to a whole new level

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. Oh wait – no it’s the flying apartment system. Just don’t. open. the windows.
Look for this on PadMapper apartment listings in 2060.

Star Trek Becomes Reality

The perfect place to host a Trek party. The problem is that you also have to live there the rest of the year.

Windows get weird; apartments float

This apartment was clearly designed during “Take Your Son to Work Week.”

You said near the water. This apartment is in the water.

Can’t get more futuristic than white

iApartment 4.0 was almost a great success. Too bad you can’t touch the stove on the lower-left corner. Bumper and utilities extra.

This apartment looks amazing until you think about how many times the person who lives here bumps his or her head on that slanted ceiling above the bed. Or is that the couch?

You know the story about the dead person who was buried beneath the floorboards? Yeah, these people were a bit more careless.

Weird Interiors

It’s a laser-lounge.

In case you ever wanted your apartment to scream “I shop at Target.”

Get Cyberfied

Sure, the interior resembles a 70s bachelor pad. But this Dubai apartment is as high-tech as you can get. It’s called, “The Pad” and it’s the world’s first cybertecture apartment tower. Each apartment will have a virtual reality projection wall linking it to locations worldwide. That means you can see the New York City skyline in real time without ever leaving your living room.

The Pad concept also includes iArt, which allows you to switch that Andy Warhol painting to a Monet in a matter of seconds. And you can rotate your lounge 360-degrees to change your view.

We predict that in the future, no one will ever leave their apartment. Why would they?

The Turning Torso

Welcome to the Turning Torso, a new apartment constructed in 2005 in Malmo Sweden. The name is….well, off-putting (who would want to live in a torso?), but the concept is super green and super cool. To save energy, this building features automatic LEDs, triggered by motion sensors.

There’s nothing like capsule livin’

Suddenly, your 500-square-foot studio doesn’t seem so small.

This apartment/office building, made out of shipping containers gives a new meaning to “humble abode.” The future of recycling is oh-so bright!

Someone really messed up a game of Tetris.

Penthouses in a Polygon

In the future, it’s no longer hip to be square. Apartments take on every shape. Imagine living in an octagon.

It’s transformer chic. Except it doesn’t transform. And you better hope your furniture sticks to the walls because that coffee table is going to slide.

In the future, you’ll have lots and lots of neighbors. Garantupartments become the norm. And living in a Lego is no longer a distant dream.

In 3010, apartments defy gravity. Eat it Newton!

Inspired by Pauly Shore’s epic film BioDome. Did we mention that the Urban Cactus is located in the cool, wet Netherlands? Nothing desert about it. Maybe that’s why it looks nothing like a cactus.

PadMapper recently had it’s one millionth unique user come by and use the site.

That’s a pretty humbling thought, especially if you try to imagine a million PadMapperers standing in a field.

Many of you have come in the recent past, as the word seems to have spread pretty quickly. Others have been using the site for over a year and are old salty PadMapper veterans, having just found your 3rd apartment in 6 months. I’d like to say thank you to all of you who have told your friends and made this hobby project into something that has some real-world impact. It’s always great to hear someone I know tell me that someone they know recommended PadMapper to them, and the emails that many of you send are amazingly motivating.

I hope PadMapper has made and continues to make your apartment hunts suck less. I’ve got some cool things still waiting up my sleeves. See you at 5 million. 🙂

All the best,
Eric

PS: I haven’t said this enough in recent email exchanges – I used to all the time – but… Tell your friends!

If you’re looking for a cheap place to rent, chances are that you’ll have quite a few options in the shadier parts of town. If you’re moving to a new city, you might have no clue what the nice parts of town are vs. the shady parts of town.

For example, I recently moved to Silicon Valley, and I’ve always heard that Palo Alto was really nice. After all, it was the birthplace of Apple Computer and a bunch of other big companies, and a lot of very rich company founders live there. It turns out that that’s West Palo Alto that everyone’s singing praises about. East Palo Alto was actually the murder capitol of the US for a while pretty recently.

This cluelessness, which almost had me living in a former murder capitol, is why I’ve been working on something to show you what the crime rates of different areas of town are.

I’ve just rolled it out in San Francisco, and other cities should be forthcoming if the response is good. Red means high crime, green means low crime, yellow is in between, and blank is either extremely low crime or a lack of data (in SF it means very few crimes were reported in those areas). The labels in the picture above are hard to read, but the red dot in the middle of SF is the Tenderloin. Wikipedia even has a pretty large section about the crime of the Tenderloin.

To access the crime overlay, go to PadMapper for San Francisco apartments, go into the filters, open up “Super Secret Advanced Features”, and check on the “Crime Overlay” checkbox. It might take a bit to load, so don’t worry if it doesn’t appear immediately.

Alternately, you can just check out the crime map by itself.

And please let me know if you find it useful or stunningly unuseful by emailing me at padmapper@gmail.com. If you’re looking for an apartment to rent in San Francisco, it should be pretty helpful.

No matter how much stuff you own, moving that stuff into a new apartment scores about a 9.5 out of 10 on the crap-I-never-want-to-do-ever-again scale. Finding a moving company is a big part of the hassle. Not only is it hard to trust other people with your prized collection of Ikea furniture, there are a number of people that have been hit with moving scams.

Not every moving company is bad, but there are enough shady moving companies that it’s worth being wary. Before you hand your stuff off, you should know a thing or two about the moving industry and what to look for when trying to spot a potential scam.

The Moving Industry in a Nutshell

Before 1980, I’m told that Americans generally had reliable moving companies. Since only a few companies legally moved goods across state lines, it was easy for the government to regulate the moving industry.

Things changed in 1980 when the moving industry deregulated with the Household Goods Transportation Act. The whole business turned upside down – interstate movers started issuing binding or “fixed estimates,” which led to price instability and ultimately opened the door for increased competition. Prices fell as was likely intended, but so did the quality of service.

The Rules of a Moving Scam

The most common moving scam involves a rogue moving company using a low non-binding estimate. After moving the goods, the company holds the cargo hostage by demanding inflated charges.

For example, let’s say you received an estimate for $1,000 to move your prized Hello Kitty collection from Seattle to your new apartment in San Francisco, and you sign the contract.

Two weeks later, the truck rolls up to your new apartment, but now the moving bill is $2,500 – What?! Even more bad news, the shady movers tell you they’re going to take your kitties and run if you don’t pay up.

These scams happen all the time, and there’s not much we can do about them, besides perhaps calling your representative. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regulates the moving industry, but since they employ less than 20 people, watching over hundreds of moving companies is almost impossible to do very effectively.

How to Avoid Moving Scams

Here’s a few tips to avoid getting scammed during the big move, but you might not like some of the answers:

1. Just sell all your stuff and start fresh. No one really wants to put together another Ikea Malm, but it sounds a whole lot better than the great Ikea heist of 2010.

2. Move it yourself. It’s cheaper, and the only person to blame for damaging your stuff is yourself. Besides, loading your own U-Haul isn’t that bad… except when you have to drive cross-country in a U-Haul.

Note: Loading your own U-Haul doesn’t sound like a good idea? No worries, there are plenty of companies that will load it for you.

If you need to go with a moving company, here are some basic tips:

1. Get referrals from real estate firms. They deal with these movers all the time and they should have their favorites.

2. Beware of completely internet-based movers. It’s great if the moving company has a website, but make sure there’s a brick and mortar place of business for you to meet with them. This makes it much easier to track them down in the event of a problem, and it gives a door for the police to knock on as well.

Once you find a mover that passes your gut check, check their listing on the Better Business Bureau. There you can find out their full legal name, contact information and service grade.

Finally, right before you hand over your last worldly possession, ask for a booklet called “Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move.” Moving companies legally have to give you this information, and it’s a good sign they have their act together.

If you can find a moving company that passes all these tests, you should be all right. Keep your wits about you, though. Happy moving and good luck.