Author Archives: Carol Edwards

Another year, another CES draws to a close. But this year, everything was a tad… eerier. 

The famously crowded Consumer Electronics Show returned to Las Vegas for 2022, hoping to reunite tech enthusiasts in shoulder-to-shoulder showrooms for in-person demos and keynotes. Alas, amidst the ongoing pandemic and the latest Omicron surge, many publications and companies chose to stay home and tune in virtually. 

The resulting hybrid event featured many empty showroom floors. But worry not! The tech companies still had plenty to show off to audiences, both virtually and in person. From new work-from-home gadgets to giant robot overlords, here’s the best of everything that happened at CES 2022.

Pandemic life tech

As the pandemic rages on, so does pandemic-era tech. 

Omicron is forcing many to reckon with the quality of their everyday masks, but if you want a mask that offers both protection and a party, Razer has you covered.

After showing a concept dubbed Project Hazel at CES 2021, the company debuted a base model and Pro version of its Zephyr mask this year. The masks feature two-way air filters and fans, plus customizable, colorful lights via a connected app and voice amplification. You get Covid safety and a rave for your face. What’s not to love? 

And for those looking to spice up their work-from-home setup, la Vitre invites you to completely eliminate your home privacy. It’s a fullscreen video portal that connects you with your coworkers – because, ya know, Zoom isn’t enough. You knock on the screen like you would an office door, and a coworker can step into view to answer the call.

The worst part? It’s constantly on, albeit blurred for privacy if needed. Who needs work-life balance anyways?! 

Self-care upgrades

Despite various world disasters, or perhaps because of it, plenty of tech at CES 2022 showcased ways to really treat yourself. 

On the everyday people side of things, L’Oreal launched the Colorsonic, an at-home hair dye wand that promises to make coloring your hair as seamless as just brushing it.

On the uber-rich people side of things, Kohler debuted the PerfectFill drain kit system, which promises to preset your bath’s temperature and depth for an impeccable soak, every time. You can even start the bath via voice command on the Kohler app, all for the price of $2,700 (plus the cost of a Kohler tub and spout.) 

Who needs headphones? 

Headphones are constantly being updated across every audio brand, but what if you could have the private listening experience of headphones without actually wearing any? 

Noveto debuted this “soundbar,” called the N1, at CES, and it supposedly transmits ultrasound through the air to place it near your ears without bothering anyone nearby. It also has face-tracking tech to sync with any movement you make, and to be honest it all sounds too good to be true. It’s slated to debut later this year, so we’ll be keeping an eye out. 

Car tech 

CES is consistently filled with new auto ideas and accessories, but some definitely garner more excitement than others. 

On the unrealistic-yet-deeply-cool side, Cadillac added to its autonomous car lineup with the InnerSpace concept, a luxury two-seater electric vehicle with no steering wheel. Truly a car for no thoughts, just vibes.

For those who want a car gadget they could actually use in their existing, less cool cars, Nextbase also released the iQ. It’s a dashcam outfitted with three cameras and accident-tracking tech packed into an aesthetically pleasing body. 

Robot takeover 

We all know the robot revolution is imminent, but we didn’t see it being so… relaxing. 

Massage Robotics launched its flagship bot at CES, and it just so happens to be a 7-foot-tall gargantuan with two arms to massage out your knots. It can understand verbal commands, communicate data with a neural network, and will only run you $310,000 – much more affordable than a regular ol’ human massage! 

The future of farming 

If you’ve always dreamed of running away and becoming a farmer but feared your inability to drive a tractor, fret no more. 

John Deere debuted its updated autonomous tractor, and it can definitely drive itself. It has six pairs of stereo cameras for 360-degree obstacle detection, and it uses a deep neural network to determine its movements. If you still don’t quite trust self-driving tractors, you can also monitor it via phone with access to live video, images, data, and metrics to adjust elements like speed and depth.  

There are people who move into new places and immediately decorate and furnish them. People whose homes quickly come to feel lived in and finished. I am not one of those people.

After moving into a new apartment in June and knowing my spouse and I would have a home office to furnish, I finally admitted defeat sometime in October. In the month we’d initially hoped to be done with the project, we instead started looking for expert help to get it off the ground. Traditional interior designers charge around $100 an hour plus a commission, so when a friend suggested trying out an online interior design service as a cheaper alternative, we went for it.

We compared two online design services, Havenly and Modsy, by giving them the same assignment: Turn our office from a workspace with a plastic table for a desk into a functional room we could enjoy. The results — see the full Modsy review and the head-to-head comparison — showcased both the limits and potential of these services, and reminded us of the ripple effects of supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Getting started with Havenly

Havenly’s design process starts with an initial style quiz, though you can choose to skip it. Similar to Modsy, you choose example rooms you like, which the algorithm crunches to determine your design type and subtype. My main result was “Mid-Century Modern” with “Scandinavian,” “Industrial,” and “Bohemian” subtypes. These were accurate, if not groundbreaking observations. Design quizzes feel a bit like astrology or personality types —there’s enough in there to recognize that it’ll feel true, no matter what.

After a few more questions, you’re matched with a designer. Havenly puts the designers up front. Unlike with Modsy, where you’re assigned a designer, Havenly gives you options and you get to choose who to work with. Each designer has a small portfolio, and the site gives you a percentage match to indicate how satisfied you’re likely to be with them. I skipped my first suggested designer after being underwhelmed with their portfolio. Scrolling down, I found a designer with a high match percentage whose portfolio renderings all felt like real rooms that could be lived in. In a bonus, her expanded portfolio page had an example office I liked.

With Havenly, you get to choose the designer you’ll work with.

Most of the example rooms, whether in the style quizzes I took or in the designers’ portfolios, were living rooms or bedrooms. Kitchens were nonexistent, though there was the occasional dining area. It was often difficult to imagine how a design style would translate into an office without some examples; that’s an area where both Havenly and Modsy could improve.

Havenly also has an app, although it’s clunky to use. It was so hard to find the features I needed that I eventually gave up and reviewed my designs on my laptop.

How much does Havenly cost?

Havenly has two pricing tiers: Havenly Mini (currently $79) is a smaller package that promises “inspiration” to help “spice up your space or refresh a room.” If you’re starting from scratch furnishing a room, you’ll likely choose the Havenly Full package, currently $129. The main difference is that the Full level gives you a room layout and some “layout visualizations,” or renderings of the space.

Both packages include time with a designer via messaging, text, or the phone, as well as multiple revisions of concept boards of style ideas (which eventually includes a layout), and help with the ordering process.

Havenly’s design process

After ordering my design package — I went with the “Full” package — I needed to make a room profile. This process was quite thorough and took about an hour. The software asked sensible questions, like whether I lived in an apartment or a house, and whether I owned or rented.

I took pictures of the space I wanted to improve from every corner, as instructed. I also submitted measurements and photos of any furniture we wanted to keep, as well as our floor plan. Havenly instructed me to draw one if I didn’t have one handy, which would have been a real pain if we hadn’t just moved in a few months ago and had the layout from the building saved. Later on, our actual furniture featured in the design we received, which made the space feel more ours.

We explained in the questionnaire how the room will be used and who will be spending time there. We also added a budget and a few other ancillary comments.

Accommodating pre-existing furniture was much easier with Havenly.

The one departure from the project specifications we sent to Modsy was at this point. We uploaded photos of a 12-piece framed map, which we planned to hang on the wall, to incorporate into the design. Accommodating pre-existing furniture was much easier with Havenly. I suspect this is because the renderings are a less prominent part of the process and it’s much easier to use a Photoshop-type program to add an item to a collage. With Modsy, a similar product would be used, or we’d have to pay $25 per item to have our own included in the renderings.

At this point, it was time to wait. Our designer wouldn’t be able to start our project for another week. Havenly suggested we could start sooner with another designer, but none of the others I looked at were available any earlier than the one I liked the best, so I waited.

At first it felt like slow momentum, but the turnaround times once she started went quickly. She messaged me via the Havenly site to ask for a link to a Pinterest board, if I had one, and any other inspiration images. It’s a pity it’s not easier to export Instagram bookmarks, as that’s now the platform where most of my browsing happens.

Havenly’s design process starts with 3 “Idea Boards,” which have different color palettes and vibes. Our designer offered to FaceTime to discuss them, though we ultimately stuck to messaging within Havenly.

Once you’ve chosen an Idea board, the designer creates a Concept Board. Here’s where you’ll start to see actual suggested products in the vein of the Idea Board that you previously approved. These are items that can all be purchased via Havenly, from companies like Article, West Elm, or Wayfair. In both the Concept Board and the Idea Board phase, the collages will be accompanied by a list of products that you can thumbs up or thumbs down. The products you like will be incorporated into the final design, so it’s important to take your time with this step and be clear with your designer about your preferences. We made sure to ask about alternate colors for a chair and buffet, as we wanted the option to move things to other rooms later and still have them match.

The collages will be accompanied by a list of products that you can thumbs up or thumbs down.

After the Concept Board comes the Final Design. This looks very similar to the Concept Board; when I received mine, I couldn’t at first detect a difference. However, once you click into the Final Design, there will be a right arrow that shows you the suggested layout. This is the first time you’re presented with a floor plan, and there is only one (in contrast, Modsy gives you two, and at the beginning of the process).

Initially, I would have preferred having the floor plan earlier in the design process. The biggest drawback of doing it this way, for me, was that I needed to approve furniture items to move forward without knowing exactly where they would go. The depth of a bookshelf or the height of a console depend on their place in a room, and it felt like I was making decisions with only partial information. After completing the process, I can see the wisdom of Havenly’s order of operations, which is more similar to a traditional interior design process. It requires more trust in the designer, but mine delivered.

That criticism aside, I was very pleased with the Havenly layout. The arrangement of the room was creative and functional, and better than the two layouts Modsy suggested. There was also a pleasant amount of furniture – the room felt furnished but not stuffed with furniture. Compared to Modsy’s, it was almost spartan. This also meant that it respected our budget much better. I didn’t have to look at the design and start calculating what we’d have to skip.

Having Havenly’s 3D rendering come last almost makes it unnecessary, whereas with Modsy, it’s the showpiece of the service. I had to make all of the decisions about what to buy before I could visualize the room, which seems like underutilizing the potential of the software. Havenly’s renderings are also not of the full 360 degrees of the room. Rather, it’s two views of the space from different angles, focusing on the furniture suggestions. While it’s certainly less cool than Modsy’s interactive renderings, it’s not any less useful. Havenly solved my actual problem — I need a functional office — which does not require a Sims-level interactive experience.

Havenly’s rendering hit a good balance between making it easier to visualize the space without virtually staging the whole room and thus cramming it full of stuff to buy.

Havenly’s drawbacks

Havenly’s messaging structure is confusing. Everything is in a text-message format, so there’s lots of scrolling to see previous messages. Once we approved a change, our designer updated the design itself, erasing the earlier version. While this avoids the version control explosion that Modsy creates, it makes it hard to track changes.

Choosing products without knowing the room layout was also confusing, and I wish this part of the process had been clearer. I didn’t realize that we’d passed into the “this is your furniture” part of the process until it had already happened. There are, however, “designer alternates” for each piece, and the software suggests additional options if you want to swap something out. I rather liked the way that Modsy’s two initial renderings (which are akin to Havenly’s Concept Boards) gave me two different spaces and furniture options.

Choosing products without knowing the room layout was confusing.

The Havenly designer gets a commission on any furniture that’s included in the final design that you then purchase. This means that if you swap something out, perhaps because you find something else on sale or that can be delivered sooner, they don’t make any money on it. Knowing this, I felt more inclined to ask for extra revisions to make sure the items I was planning to buy were incorporated into the design. Havenly works with a number of brands to source furniture, including CB2, Serena & Lily, and Anthropologie.

The supply chain

This is not the easiest time to be buying furniture (or really much of anything). That makes it doubly difficult to get the most out of Havenly. A product that is meant to make my life easier frequently just gave me headaches.

First and most egregiously, Havenly doesn’t have updated delivery information for many of the products that it recommends. This is likely an API issue on the part of the furniture manufacturers themselves, but it affects popular brands like West Elm, Article, and Crate & Barrel. I was told I’d see the estimated delivery date on my receipt.

Instead of doing that — and running the risk that something wouldn’t be available for a year — I cross-referenced each item on the manufacturer’s website to see the estimated delivery date before I bought it. The earliest items would come was January or February, though two items wouldn’t be delivered until May or June. There’s no way to filter items by delivery date, so I wound up asking my designer to provide alternatives. It’s perhaps possible to manage this at the outset, instructing the designer not to suggest anything that isn’t available within a certain time frame. As it was, it was painful to get excited about a room that I couldn’t have, which initially discouraged me from buying anything.

Ultimately, I asked my designer to suggest alternatives that could arrive sooner, and sourced items myself.

If I’m going to need to source products myself based on the delivery estimates, it seriously undermines the service that a company like Havenly or Modsy provides. Since there’s no discount baked into the purchase, there’s little incentive to buy from them instead of a retailer — and everything they offer with regard to furniture comes from other retailers. An exception is for discounts that apply to a minimum order volume. In those cases, it’s worth searching to see if Havenly carries other items you may have your eye on, so you’ll get a discount on the whole lot.

Ultimately, I asked my designer to suggest alternatives that could arrive sooner, and sourced items myself. Once I found what I liked, she added it to the design and then I ordered it. Had I not cared about her commission, I could have ordered the bookshelf and desks directly from West Elm, or ordered them through Havenly without adding them to the final design.

Ordering with Havenly

After you’ve added your desired items to your Havenly cart, you can request a shipping invoice to confirm the shipping charges and delivery level (if applicable) before you actually pay. We paid for a delivery service that included assembly and the option to make a delivery appointment. Delivery levels are set by the retailers, not Havenly. This process concluded within a day. From there, I hit buy and started to wait.

Tl;dr, I needed to ignore the order page and wait for a phone call.

After checking out, subsequent log-ins showed me a “Manage Order” menu. Here, I could see the order status and get shipping updates. It’s a little weird not to have access to the direct order confirmation from the manufacturer, though I did get an email from Havenly when the first item shipped. Havenly’s messaging around the other items though, was incredibly confusing. On my order management page, I was simultaneously getting told that my furniture delivery was ready to be scheduled and that I would get an email when it was ready to be scheduled. A call to customer service revealed what was actually happening: I wouldn’t get an email at all but rather a call from West Elm to schedule my delivery. That wouldn’t happen until all the items in my order were available, and one wouldn’t be ready until January. Tl;dr, I needed to ignore the order page and wait for a phone call.

Irritating details such as bad messaging or confusing designs make Havenly seem like a new startup, when in reality it’s been in business since 2014 and has raised $85 million of dollars in funding. My designer did a good job walking me through the process, but the proprietary terminology didn’t make it accessible.

The easy way to a more beautiful space?

My office will soon have two desks, a bookshelf, and a lamp, assuming West Elm doesn’t leave me in a lurch. By that metric, Havenly was a success. The design process was pleasant. My designer knew what she was doing and was lovely to work with. The end results were in line with our budget and our tastes. The criticisms that I have about the delivery times feel somewhat unfair in the midst of a global supply shortage.

That said, I do think Havenly could make it easier to browse alternate furniture on my own, either through their site or via a browser extension that would show me what items were available through them. At times I felt like I was taking advantage of my designer by asking for too many changes, or cutting her out of a commission if I found something else in another place, even though she’d done a lot of work. This doesn’t add up to a great emotional experience using a service, and, the fact is, a layout and initial design suggestion is a valuable product on its own.

I can see a valuable role for a service like Havenly, used wisely. To that end, either be clear about your delivery timelines when you go in — or wait to use it until more furniture is back in stock.

I’m writing this review in what is, essentially, a storage locker with windows, high ceilings, and a parquet floor. My plastic work table from Home Depot — ahem, my desk — has been mostly sufficient for my needs since June, when my spouse purchased it because we clearly needed something to work on. I tried to talk him out of it.

I finally hit a wall in October and acknowledged the obvious: The room isn’t functional, let alone pleasant to spend time in. As a recovering perfectionist, furnishing my apartment has always been a slog, especially if it’s a room that’s important to me (I’m a wizard with the insides of closets). Since I live with another person who finds bare walls and books stacked on the floor for years untenable, I suggested we try another path. I love to scroll Instagram as much as the next person, but coming up with a coherent design for a functional, beautiful office on a budget while working full-time just wasn’t going to get accomplished in the near future. We briefly considered hiring an interior designer, but assumed the cost would be too high. Then, a friend recommended an online interior design service.

These services, which come from a cadre of companies like Havenly, Modsy, and Spacejoy, are an example of would-be decorating disruptors taking an IRL service into the cloud. Buoyed by cheap and ubiquitous rendering software and arbitraging wages across the globe, the companies promise to design your space and let you buy your furniture with ease — for a small commission, of course, on top of the flat fee, which runs from $150 to $500 depending on the package level. A traditional interior designer in the U.S. charges an average of $100 an hour plus a furniture commission, so the online services are often much cheaper.

The assignment: Help me transform my home office into somewhere I’d actually enjoy working.

I gave two design services — Havenly and Modsy —the same assignment: Help me transform my home office from a storage unit with a fold-out table into somewhere I’d actually enjoy working (and walking by another 30 times a day).

In the end, the experiences showed the strengths and weaknesses of these types of companies, and the limits of technology in making things easier. You can see a head-to-head comparison here.

Getting started with Modsy

On Modsy’s website, you start by clicking the maroon “Start Your Project” button in the upper right hand corner and choose the room you’d like to design, from living room to nursery to office (and more). The next question asks about your motivation for the (re)design. Are you moving or redecorating? (This inquiry feels like a cross between mildly useful and market research.) Subsequently, you’ll choose how “finished” the space is. Basically, do you need to buy everything, or only a few pieces?

At this point, you’ll hit a paywall and need to choose a package.

How much does Modsy cost?

Modsy’s pricing starts at $159 for a Premium-level single-room package. There’s also a Luxe level ($499 per room), which includes unlimited video calls with your designer, special discounts, and the ability to change flooring or create renderings from blueprints. Both packages include 3D room designs, furniture discounts, and unlimited design revisions. There’s a third, multi-room option as well. I went with the lowest-priced Premium package.

In addition, there are discounts when you buy your furniture through Modsy, similar to the commission structure of pre-internet interior design. Overall, I didn’t notice Modsy’s prices to be cheaper than buying directly from a vendor, though there were several coupons on offer via a banner on the site. I would expect that Modsy can take advantage of trade discounts, so I’m a little surprised there isn’t a built-in cost savings on the furniture (perhaps there is for some brands). Modsy also promises to automatically price-match any sale you find on a manufacturer’s website, but I haven’t tested it.

Sales don’t always include the items that were used in your room design, though I did receive an email when one of the pieces in my room designs went on sale. However, I can see which items are on sale when I open the shoppable room renderings.

The first step in any project after you buy a design package with Modsy is to create a room profile, a process that took about 20 minutes. The site takes you through a range of questions, asking about your budget, color palette, needs for the space, and the results of your style quiz, which you can take before starting or after paying for your room package to hone in on what rooms you like. Some of the room profile questions seemed forced to create opportunities for more purchasing. For example, I had to choose one add-on feature for our office (I picked a reading nook), but none of the options were that interesting or really what I needed (a craft area for my kids). Choosing only one color palette also felt limiting, since it was hard to know exactly how that would translate into a final design and what it would dictate in the process.

Modsy’s style quiz

The website gives you a selection of 16 spacious living and dining areas to choose from; you pick your top three. If you don’t live in a large house with lots of natural light from big windows, you might have to do some imagining to translate these styles to your particular abode. But half the fun is dreaming about a “perfect home.” There is no clutter or children’s toys in any of the inspiration images, which aren’t connected to your particular project. As I was designing an office, it was a little frustrating not to see any actual office spaces in the style quiz.

“You’re drawn to vintage and eclectic spaces,” my first top-three room declared.

Each of those three initial choices is presented as a design subtype that you explore in more detail by evaluating the furniture and items in the rooms. “You’re drawn to vintage and eclectic spaces,” my first top-three room declared. It was followed by a grid of furnishings for me to favorite or skip. I repeated that process for “Scandinavian modern spaces” and “industrial and urban spaces,” helping the algorithm hone in on my tastes in chairs, couches, lamps, and art. That “urban spaces” is somehow a design sub-category feels like a red flag.

Finally, the quiz asks whether you’re actively working on a project. You have to enter an email address to get your results. It’s a canny, irritating move after you’ve come so far — are you really going to not provide your email? Rest assured, the email capture won’t go to waste: In the 22 days since I first signed up with Modsy, I’ve received 27 emails from the company, 15 of which were about my order and project, and the rest of which were marketing emails and sales notices. The Style Quiz results, in comparison, were underwhelming: two sentences of description and then a call-to-action with a discount to purchase a package.

What’s the Modsy design process?

Online interior design services like Modsy and Havenly (which we also reviewed, and have a comparison of the two) have a clearcut promise: You submit information about your space, you’re matched with a designer, and then renderings are created, from which you can shop the items. However, this is a streamlined version of the process, which varies slightly between the services with regard to the order of operations and level of detail.

With Modsy, after filling out the room profile, I had to scan my current space with my phone using the company’s app, which is downloadable for free. I walked around in a circle, keeping the phone level and pointed across the room. Clutter (of which there was a lot) was fine to keep in view. The scan helped create the later 3D rendering, which faithfully recreated our floors, windows, and door. It also took the relevant measurements of the space.

Modsy assigns you a designer based on your style, project, and pricing tier. (Luxe customers get access to more experienced designers.) I ordered my design package and submitted my information on November 1, and the service told me I’d get my 3D renderings on the 17th, which seemed like a big delay. However, the process has a lot of intermediary steps — phone calls, layout options, initial designs — that might explain that lag and could be better spelled out.

Pro tip: Get your Pinterest board ready before you sign up.

My designer emailed me within 24 hours to schedule a project call, which took place a day later. During the 15-minute session, my spouse and I discussed with her what we wanted out of the space (two workstations) and to drill down on our tastes and budget. If you have a partner whose preferences you are taking into account, I highly recommend doing this exercise together. One of the biggest difficulties my spouse and I had when thinking about furnishing the office was finding a design and style that suited us both. Speaking with a designer and leaving it in her hands was very helpful, and one of the big reasons we decided to try the service at all. Modsy’s process was also confusing, with decisions about layouts, and then initial designs to review. Having a designer to walk us through it was really helpful.

Pro tip: Get your Pinterest board ready before you sign up. We submitted more photos of items we wanted to repurpose in the room and some links to inspiration images. If you have pre-existing items, Modsy will include those exact items in the renderings for a fee, or similar alternates for free.

Roughly two days later, an email alert told us it was time to choose a layout. Through Modsy’s website we were presented with two layouts for the space, which included stand-in furniture and the reading nook, and some background context from the designer. We had 72 hours to make a selection, at which point our designer would have moved ahead with her preferred layout (which was the one we chose anyway).

We were able to give feedback on the layout (e.g., change a bookcase to open wall shelving) that was incorporated into the subsequent design. There’s a good feeling of momentum with Modsy, moving from one step to the next. Getting the layouts was exciting, and I could really start to envision the space.

Reviewing Modsy’s designs

A few days after we submitted our layout, we received two designs. These were 3D renderings of the space, and rendered images with shoppable products. But each room had a slightly different vibe.

The desks, consoles, and reading nook chairs were all different. One of the designs seemed to be at a lower price point overall; nearly every item was cheaper than its counterpart in the other design. The pieces were generally in mid-range West Elm or Crate & Barrel level, $400 to $1100 an item. You can choose a pricing level for individual pieces when creating a room profile.

One of Modsy’s very cool features is the ability to swap out pieces using their “Live Swap” tool. You can click on an item and see suggested or similar alternates, and then the rendering engine will replace it in your mock-up and save it as a new design. The tool is both powerful and finicky. In one instance, I tried to replace a set of sideboards with another set that I didn’t realize were longer. Instead of moving another piece of furniture that was next to them down, or alerting me about the issue, the rendering engine just stuffed them in there, cut off. You could tell the pattern didn’t hold. At that point I just requested a revision from our designer through Modsy’s messaging tool, who made the swap.

One of Modsy’s very cool features is the ability to swap out pieces using their ‘Live Swap’ tool.

There’s a lot of unrealized potential in that tool: I’d have loved the ability to make a set of shelves narrower, or erase a top shelf I didn’t think I needed. Even with all the expert and technological guidance, it’s still a process that you’ll probably need to be involved in by giving feedback to your designer. You may also want to do your own research to understand the options around different colors of furnishings and available shelf lengths.

Heights and other measurements are clearly taken into account. A filing cabinet, upon which our printer was to rest, was exactly the same height as the desks it was next to. Our designer told us to double check the measurements on one set of furniture, because there was likely just enough space for the pieces she was suggesting.

The furniture came from major retailers like Crate and Barrel, CB2, West Elm, Article, Wayfair, and some brands I didn’t recognize.

Modsy’s drawbacks

It’s no secret that Modsy (and, I hope, the designers) makes a commission off of any furniture purchases through the service. Yet to have purchased every item included in our designs would have swelled our budget to comical proportions. Reader, there was a surfeit of side tables. My design revisions were largely about removing pieces of furniture and deciding how much storage we actually needed, so we didn’t buy more furniture than we had to.

Buying even just the main furniture pieces we were looking for — desks, console, filing cabinet, and bookshelves — would have nearly reached five figures. Sure, we could save up and chip away at it over time, but it’s not much fun to ogle a room you can’t have.

There’s also a sense that these are rooms designed for Instagram. They’re beautiful, but they don’t feel lived in. Perhaps that’s inevitable in a rendering. Only rooms that have been lived in can look that way.

It’s not much fun to ogle a room you can’t have.

Just like home decor magazine layouts, the 3D rooms need to be staged to make an impact. That means art on the walls, books and sculptures on shelves, and curtains over the windows. That they’re all shoppable seems fair.

Looking back at the designs, I can’t quite tell what’s a real design recommendation and what could be a requirement from Modsy that serves as a form of upselling. Must every room have at least two fake plants and a mirror?

While I appreciated that each new revision request creates a new design, I now have seven designs in my project. Each time I used the Live Swap tool to test out a new piece of furniture, the software saved a new design version. Formal revision requests from my designer did the same, and I had to keep track of which version to use as the base for subsequent revisions. Part of the purpose of using an interior designer was to avoid endless choices, not to play around with extra options interminably. Ultimately, we decided to wait to purchase until our designs came in from Havenly and see what they recommended.

You also need to keep a close eye on the delivery times of items included in your designs. Modsy is downstream from pandemic-induced furniture delivery delays. Often, I needed to go directly to the manufacturer’s website to see whether an item was backordered. I had to ask my designer for alternates for some pieces that had exceedingly long wait times.

Is Modsy worth it?

What is Modsy actually selling? The answer isn’t straightforward, and knowing your goal before going in would be wise. Are you seeking a personal shopper to suggest furniture you might like? Are you unsure of how best to organize a room’s layout? Do you just want to buy what they tell you and not think about it? Knowing those answers will help you steer toward your goal throughout the process.

It’s hard to imagine that most Modsy users will simply click “buy” on everything that’s recommended (I’m sure Modsy hopes I’m wrong!). So when I look at my designs, I find myself asking, “How much of this stuff do I need to buy to make my room feel like this?” That is, to feel finished and put together. I don’t have a good answer to that question.

Knowing your goal before going in would be wise.

The design process in general is time-consuming and challenging. Decisions are interconnected and there are lots of variables involved. For example, hanging open shelving requires knowing where your studs are and doing the installing (or paying someone else to do so, an added expense you have to arrange for yourself).

Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that committing to a design, furniture, a layout, is an active choice to foreclose all the other options, at least for now. As a recovering perfectionist, that was always going to feel hard. Perhaps here’s where the real work of an interior designer is (and what Modsy seems to approximate with its Luxe tier): Supporting you through your feelings.

Well, here we go again. For a lot of folks, 2022 promises even more working from home, whether by choice or not.

The good news is that nearly two full years of empty offices in parts of the world have accelerated the progress of work-from-home technology. That was plenty evident at CES 2022, the tech industry’s largest annual showcase. From robots that clean while you work to better webcams for video calls and everything else in between, 2022 could be the easiest year for WFH yet.

Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra 

First up is a decidedly baller robot vacuum. Sure, things like Roombas have been around for years, but as we spend more time at home, it’s inevitable that more gunk will accumulate on the floor. We need something more powerful and up to the task of cleaning during this prolonged period of wearing sweatpants to work. 

Meet the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra. It’s a high-tech vacuum with cameras, a LiDAR scanner, and other AI features that help it build a 3D map of your home for theoretically better automatic navigation than the competition. It also comes with a dock that you put it in when it’s not in use, where it will automatically refill its water container, empty out its dustbin, and clean its mop system.

Welcome to a new era of laziness. Chores are so last year.

1080p laptop webcams

Anyone who has spent the last two years or so regularly making video calls (for work or otherwise) knows that most webcams built into laptops just aren’t very good. Your coworkers, parents, nieces, etc. just don’t look flattering in 720p. That may have been an acceptable standard for high definition 15 years ago, but times have changed.

Lenovo and HP, for example, both committed to higher-res webcams for their laptops at CES this year. Lenovo’s Yoga and ThinkPad line got outfitted with 1080p lenses, and HP put 5MP webcams on all of its computers it showed off at CES. This isn’t revolutionary or unexpected, really, but after years of grainy, crappy-looking video calls, it’s a welcome change.

TP-Link Deco XE200

It’s also safe to assume that working from home has revealed plenty of holes in your internet service that need patched up. While the quality of signal you get into your modem is something that only your ISP can fix, what you do with that signal can turn a WiFi dead-zone into a WiFi paradise thanks to mesh routers. 

TP-Link’s Deco XE200 mesh system from CES isn’t cheap, with an expected price of $800 for two units, but it promises to extend your internet signal to every part of the house. Two of these should cover up to 6,500 square feet in beautiful WiFi, and each unit comes with three high-speed LAN ports in case you need to hook up a desktop PC or game console for maximum stability. If you find certain corners of your home lacking in useful internet connectivity, seriously consider picking up a mesh system like this one.

Full-body video calls

One of the best things about working from home is that you don’t need to necessarily look your best all the time. There’s no one to impress but yourself. The 7-foot video call device known as la Vitre is maybe more horrifying than progressive, but it’s worth noting either way.

It’s an always-on, full-body video call device that, at the moment, is primarily used in offices for presentations and such. But the folks behind la Vitre didn’t rule out eventual home use down the line. You can recreate all of those awkward office conversations where both people are standing up and neither one knows how or when to end the chat, and get back to work. And again, although there’s an option to blur the image, it’s always on.

The future doesn’t always look bright.

Bonus concept that may never come out: LG Omnipod

One of the most oddball ideas shown off at CES 2022 is the LG Omnipod, which the South Korean electronics giant calls a “future mobility concept cabin.” In other words, it’s a car that can also be your home office thanks to modular, upgradeable appliances, big screens, and an AI concierge to assist in things like ordering food.

Who said WFH needed to be restricted to a house or apartment? If Omnipod ever hits the market (LG calling it a “concept” means that could never happen), you could take all your video calls from a moving bachelor pad with AI that orders lunch while you watch movies. Nothing says WFH innovation like redefining what, exactly, a home is.

You can’t hide from Google.

An escaped convict learned that the hard way in December, after he was arrested by police in the Spanish town of Galapagar. It seems that, according to an investigator who spoke with Reuters, a photo of the man appeared on Google Street View — sparking a deeper investigation.

The Street View photo, which shows two men talking outside of a market, allegedly depicts the wanted 61-year-old Gioacchino Gammino. Gammino, a member of the Sicilian mafia, escaped from an Italian jail in 2002 and in 2003 received a life sentence for murder.

“The photogram helped us to confirm the investigation we were developing in traditional ways,” Nicola Altiero, the deputy director of an Italian anti-mafia police unit, told Reuters.

According to La Repubblica, Gammino had been living as a chef before he was arrested on Dec. 17. “How did you find me?” Gammino reportedly asked police (translated from Italian via Google). “I hadn’t phoned my family for 10 years.”

That level of care obviously wasn’t enough in a world where Google cameras rove the streets of every major and minor city in the world.

Are you still puzzled by all those tweets adorned with grids of gray, yellow, and green boxes? Or have you finally tried Wordle?

The daily word puzzle that’s become a viral sensation thanks to its inherent simplicity and eye-catching (and widely embraced) share feature feels like it’s here to stay, at least for a while. Yeah, it’s buzzy. But it’s also a delightful little brain warm-up for your day that pretty much anyone who reads and writes in English can sit down and play.

Now personally, my preferred way to play — this, and really any other game — is to just jump in and figure stuff out on my own time. But not all of us have time to spare, or approach things in the same way. Games are for everyone, period. So if you’ve been having trouble getting a handle on Wordle, here are some helpful tips and tricks that may make the going a little easier.

1. Start out strong

I like to think of Wordle as a neat little mash-up of the New York Times crossword puzzle and Wheel of Fortune. It’s not as hard as the NYT‘s daily challenge, but it’s still a shared experience where every new day brings the same puzzle for every player. That Wheel of Fortune layer is just as key, though; you want a good spread of commonly used letters in every guess, because the more green or yellow results you get, the closer you are to solving the puzzle.

Since your first Wordle guess of the day can be literally any five-letter word, make it a good one. Words with repeated letters can be the answer for the day, but they’re not a great place to start since ruling out the most common letters makes your subsequent guesses easier. Leave words like “added” or “melee” for moments when you think the answer might actually be that. Start instead with words where every letter is unique, and preferably ones that have more than one vowel.

There are those that feel strongly about starting off every day with a specific word because of its spread of vowels. That kind of approach takes some of the fun out of this whole exercise for me. I prefer more of a free association approach where whatever 5-letter word I think of first is my initial guess (so long as it’s free of repeating letters). All that said, “ADIEU” is a great place to start because it’s so dense with vowels. But the same could be said for any other words that’s got at least three vowels: PIANO, ABOUT, OCEAN, EQUAL, OUIJA, and NOISY (among many others) are all solid choices.

2. Pay attention to every clue

The only bad guess in Wordle is one that doesn’t heed the clues that preceded it. The yellow and green boxes we want to see with each guess are vital, of course — they’re the key clues we use to solve the puzzle. But the greyed out letters are equally important. If your first guess makes it clear that R, S, and T aren’t in the day’s word, using any of those letters in a subsequent guess is basically throwing that guess away.

Take note of the virtual keyboard at the bottom of each day’s puzzle. As you make your guesses, the keys on the keyboard are marked to reflect what you’ve guessed. So it’s very easy to see at a glance which letters are still in play. Take advantage of that at every opportunity and you’ll be better set up for success.

3. Words can have two of the same letter

While it’s a bad idea to start with words where the same letter appears more than once, it’s important to remember that such words can be the day’s solution. Once you’ve got a few letters figured out and start to narrow down the possible answers, don’t be afraid to drop in a guess with recurring letters if you think it fits.

Even if you’re wrong, Wordle will tell you — using the same yellow/green clue scheme — if the second occurrence of whichever letter is in the word. So if the day’s answer is “APPLE” and you already know for sure there’s one “P” in it, a guess like “PAPER” that includes two Ps will mark both of those letters as yellow and green, respectively.

4. If all else fails, Google is your friend

Some might call it cheating, but everyone should play the games they want to play in whatever way works best for them. If you want help with the day’s Wordle puzzle for whatever reason, you can search the internet for some gentle assistance without having to look up the whole solution.

Play Wordle as normal when you’re starting out and make a guess. Then, using the clues gleaned from your first guess, ask Google for some suggestions. Let’s say you went with “PIANO” to start things off, and the P and I happen to be in the right spot. You can search “five-letter words that start with PI” and you’ll get a bunch of lists in your results. You can re-jigger that search around whatever clues you get — “five letter words with A and Y in them” or “five letter words ending in OY,” for example — and most of the time your search results will lead to helpful destinations.

For my own Wordle good times, those kinds of searches undermine the fun that Wordle offers and the satisfaction of solving its puzzle. But not everyone is wired the same way! Just remember: There’s no wrong way to play this or any other game, and there’s no shame at all in looking for help, whatever your reasons might be.

5. Screenshot and alt-text your shares

This isn’t so much a tip for playing Wordle better as it is some advice for participating in the community and online watercooler chatter that’s unfolded around the game so far. Wardle’s “Share” feature copies a spoiler-free results page to your clipboard as emojis laid out in a grid for you to paste into a post on your social platform of choice.

There’s just one problem with that: Not everyone on social media can physically see the posts, and screen readers aren’t the best at making emoji aurally legible. What I do instead is paste the Share content into an empty Twitter post and then screenshot just that part of the screen (Mac users can do this natively; as a Windows user, the open-source app Greenshot is my go-to). Then I delete the results from my draft post and drop in the screenshot, which (on Twitter, at least) supports the addition of screen reader-friendly alt-text.

You should be adding alt-text any time you’re posting a screenshot on Twitter. But it’s especially useful for sharing inherently visual Wordle results.

6. Use the same browser every day

There’s no sign-in for Wordle; it tracks your ongoing progress using cookies. So if continuity is important — the game automatically tracks how many times you’ve played and how many rounds it took you each time — you’ll want to make sure you’re using the same computer/device and browser to play every day. You’ll also want to avoid playing in Incognito/Private browser windows.

Likewise, if you regularly clear out cookies or you’ve automated the clearing of cookies, you may want to create an exception for Wordle‘s cookies if you don’t want to lose its built-in performance tracking.

7. Don’t overlook the gear icon

Wordle is incredibly self-explanatory and simple to pick up and play. But! There is a settings page, and you can change a few things about your playing experience in there. I’m a big fan of the Dark Theme, which replaces the all-white background with an all-black background.

There’s also Hard Mode, which requires every guess to account for the clues you’ve picked up so far. If you’ve got three letters figured out, you’ll have to use all of those letters in subsequent guesses. That’s a good practice anyway for solving a Wordle in as few rounds as possible. But Hard Mode makes it a requirement. A separate Color Blind Mode is also one of the options, and its use of high-contrast colors can be easier to read for that subset of players.

8. Don’t let anyone tell you how to play

This advice really applies to any big game of the moment: However you choose to play, it’s the right way. Don’t let social media trolls discourage you from sharing your favorite tips, preferred starting words, or whatever else. Trolls gonna troll. Just enjoy the game, block the idiots, and get on with your day.

One caveat, though: There’s no defense for spoiling the day’s puzzle. Wordle‘s results sharing feature is great exactly because it communicates everything any fellow player would need to know about your successes or failures without giving away the whole game. Let people have their fun.

If there wasn’t video, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was all some kind of joke.

Back in October, the Canadian vehicle manufacturer Daymak claimed it was making a three-wheeled electric car which would, in its downtime, mine bitcoin, ethereum, or dogecoin. Well, we finally got a look at the apparently real thing.

In a video (first spotted by Electrek) posted to YouTube and shared on LinkedIn by Mike Chow, Daymak’s Vice President of R&D, we can see the “Spiritus 3-Wheel All Electric Car first drive test.”

The red car emblazoned with a maple leaf logo is shown driving around some relatively empty streets and parking lots. So, in other words, the car is real and can actually drive. Beyond those basic and observable facts, however, it’s unclear if the Spiritus delivers on its promised specs.

“Daymak Avvenire’s Spiritus is a fully loaded two-seater electric car with optional autonomous driving features, Wi-Fi connectivity, AC, 12-speaker stereo system, solar panels for additional trickle-charging — additions to add ultimate comfort to your daily commute,” explains the Daymak website. “With a super-fast charging time of under two hours, the Spiritus also sports a GPS alarm system, back up camera and so much more — all while offering a range of up to 480km – or 300 miles!”

Potential customers can preorder the car starting at $21,495, and Daymak says “deliveries to start in 2023.”

No word yet on whether or not, by then, customers will also be able to mine Shiba Inu in their three-wheeled rides.

Thomas Zurbuchen can finally shave.

Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator of its Science Mission Directorate, said he wouldn’t shave until the James Webb Space Telescope — which will peer at the first galaxies and stars (along with fascinating worlds) — was fully deployed in space. To fit the giant telescope on a rocket (it’s half the size of a 737 airplane), engineers designed the JWST to compactly fold up.

On Saturday, Jan. 8, two weeks after JWST successfully blasted into space, NASA and its Webb partners successfully unfolded and deployed the final major piece of the telescope, the second wing of its gold-coated mirrors. Now the telescope’s honeycomb-like, over 21-foot-wide mirror, is in place.

“I can’t wait to shave,” Zurbuchen said on NASA TV Saturday morning. “I fully expect to shave today,” Zurbuchen added.

At 1:18 p.m. ET, NASA announced the deployed mirrors had latched into place, the final step in the deployment process. Zurbuchen then addressed the mission’s scientists and engineers from the control room: “How does it feel to make history, everybody?” he asked.

NASA photos showed engineers celebrating after the last mirrors successfully set into place. Prior to launching, NASA described the JWST’s ambitious planned maneuvers as the “most complex sequence of deployments ever attempted in a single space mission.”

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Once in space, the JWST first had to deploy its tennis court-sized sunshield, which keeps the telescope shaded from intense heat and light from the sun (as well as from Earth and the moon.) Engineers unfurled the five-layer sunshield over several days. All went swimmingly, though mission planners devised backup plans in case the unfurling hit a snag, or snags.

Now the giant mirror is deployed, too. It’s over 21-feet across — over two and a half times wider than the Hubble telescope’s mirrors — to capture more light, and hence see deeper into space. The JWST will peer back over 13.5 billion years into the past, when the first galaxies were forming.

Though Webb’s deployment is historic, it won’t start imaging the cosmos for many months, until around June. Engineers and scientists have to fire up the different instruments on the telescope and ensure everything is working correctly to gather unprecedented observations.

Next up, engineers will perfectly align the telescope’s 18 hexagonal mirrors, so they work together as a single, grand mirror.

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If all goes well, and things have so far, Webb will deliver unprecedented insights into the cosmos, and planets in other solar systems, in the coming decade.

Elmo isn’t the only one struggling to deal with a small rock in recent days.

On Friday, NASA’s Twitter account for the Mars-researching Perseverance rover blasted out some news and a set of photos to go with it: The rover is having trouble stowing away its latest collected sample of the Mars landscape because some rocks are getting in the way.

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“I recently captured my sixth rock core and have encountered a new challenge,” the tweet, which is written from the rover’s first-person perspective, reads. “Seems some pebble-sized debris is obstructing my robotic arm from handing off the tube for sealing/storage.”

The sample in question was collected on Dec. 29, extracted from the core of a rock — marking only the sixth time in the history of human space exploration that a rock was cored on a planet other than Earth. But when the rover went to pass the collection tube along through the automated process by which gathered samples are stored, the process was interrupted when “our sensors detected an anomaly,” according to NASA.

As Perseverance attempted to move the sample tube from the percussive drill used to core rocks into the “bit carousel” where samples are staged for storage, it encountered an unusual amount of resistance. The rover’s engineers asked Perseverance for more data and images in the hopes of understanding what the issue was, but it took extra time because of the distance involved in communicating with a semi-autonomous rover situated more than 200 million miles from Earth.

Clarity came on Jan. 6, when the struggling sample tube was extracted and images of the obstruction were beamed back to Earth.

“These most recent downlinked images confirm that inside the bit carousel there are a few pieces of pebble-sized debris,” NASA’s post reads. “The team is confident that these are fragments of the cored rock that fell out of the sample tube.” That’s why there was a struggle transferring the tube to the bit carousel: One or more annoying, little rocks got in the way.

It’s nothing the Perseverance team didn’t anticipate happening at some point during the rover’s mission. But this is the first time the collection process has had to pause for “debris removal,” and “we want to take whatever time is necessary to ensure these pebbles exit in a controlled and orderly fashion.”

It’s not clear if any of the offending pebbles are related to an Earthbound pet rock named Rocco. But you can bet Elmo has thoughts about all of this.

Tesla’s promise of “full self driving” is about to get even more expensive.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the cost of the “full self-driving” feature, which is still in Beta and does not make Tesla’s fully autonomous, will raise to $12,000 this month. It’s currently a $10,000 add on.

“Tesla FSD price rising to $12k on Jan 17,” he wrote on Friday. “Just in the US,” Musk added.

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This is not the first time Tesla has hiked the cost of the confusingly named technology. In October, the CEO announced the cost was to increase from $8,000 to $10,000. And we can expect it to go up again in the future, as well.

“FSD price will rise as we get closer to FSD production code release,” Musk noted Friday.

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We reached out to Tesla to confirm the dates and prices shared by Musk, although as Tesla notoriously has no public relations department or media liaison, we do not expect an immediate response.

In September, the National Transportation Safety Board asked Tesla to slow its rollout of the full self-driving software.

“Basic safety issues have to be addressed before they’re then expanding it to other city streets and other areas,” NTSB head Jennifer Homendy told the Wall Street Journal at the time.

Maybe that extra $2,000 per order will be just the added cash Tesla needs to work out those last kinks. And if not, the company can always raise the price of FSD — again.