desks
Latest
Stir's new smart desk is a relative bargain at $2,990
We poke fun at Stir sometimes, but that's mostly because $3,900 is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a standing desk -- yes, even a "smart" one. But once you get past the sticker shock, it's clear the company is doing some cool things: The existing Kinetic Desk has a sleek design and can learn your sitting and standing habits. (The fact that there are built-in outlets to keep your stuff from falling over is also a plus.) Again, though, four grand is a lot to spend, especially if you're a company looking to issue several of these to your employees. With that in mind, Stir is releasing another desk that's relatively more affordable. Which is to say, it costs $2,990. Still not cheap, exactly, but a thousand-dollar price cut is a start.
The minimalist's Mac setup
Clean Mac desktop setups are a thing to behold, and this one is quite striking. With hardly a wire in sight, it's clean and tuned for productivity. Lovely. Have a particularly sexy Mac desk you want to show off? Hit me up on Twitter with your best photos. [Photo credit: MattsMacintosh]
Stir's 'smart desk' now works with Fitbit, shows how many calories you've burned while standing
Remember the Stir Kinetic, that $3,890 "smart desk" we showed you last fall? You know, the sleek-looking one made by someone who used to work on Apple's iPod team? Yep, that's the one. In any case, it's about to get a few more features to help justify that insane price tag. Stir just announced that the desk will now integrate with Fitbit's fitness-tracking platform, allowing you to tally up all the calories you've burned while standing.
Stir Kinetic smart desk selling for $3,890, New Yorkers can try before buying
Remember the Stir Kinetic, the standing desk that learns your sitting habits and adjusts the height automatically? Well, it's going up for sale today and yes, it's as expensive as we said it would be. As promised, the hardwood desk starts at $3,890, though for now you'll only need to pay a $300 deposit; the rest will get charged to your account when it ships in April. (The first 50 customers will actually get it in February.) Just so you know what you're getting into, the desk has a super-minimal design, adorned only by a touchscreen, which you'll use to lower the desk over its 26-inch range. You can also tap the screen to see how many calories you've burned and keep track of how much time you've spent standing. There's also an "Active Mode" that allows the desk to move periodically, encouraging you to take a break. Additionally, the desk has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, along with four USB ports and eight AC sockets -- a neat way of ensuring your cables stay put as you move the desk up and down. As we've been saying all along, $3,890 is a heckuva a lot to pay for a desk, so in addition to having deep pockets, you better be sold on the idea that working while standing up is good for your health. If not, the company will be showcasing the desk at an in-person store, but just one: the Wired Web Store at 353 West 14th St. in New York. If you happen to live in the area, you can mosey on down starting December 4th and check it out in person (no purchase necessary if you just wanna get your kicks). As for everyone else, you might just want to revisit our hands-on video and call it a day.
Stir's Kinetic Desk is a standing desk that learns your sitting habits, moves when you need a break (video)
If Apple were to build a desk, it would look like this. Much like Nest, maker of the world's sexiest thermostat, Stir is a company founded by someone who worked on the first iPods, and, it too is trying to make a mundane household item fashionable. In this case, of course, the product in question isn't a thermostat or even a home appliance, but a standing desk. The Kinetic Desk, which will ship in the first half of 2014, has a thermal sensor that can tell when you've arrived, and over time, it learns how long you prefer to be on your feet before taking a break. To lower the desk over its 26-inch range, just double-tap the built-in touchscreen, located on the left end. From there, you can can set goals, like standing for 25 percent of the day, as well as see how many extra calories you've burned, or monitor how much time you've spent sitting. CEO and founder JP Labrosse tells us that the desk might eventually integrate with fitness-tracking services like Fitbit, though it won't at launch. Still, the desk has WiFi and Bluetooth radios baked in, so if Stir ever did want to share data with third-party services, the hardware would at least be able to support it. The Kinetic Desk has just one button. Press it and you'll be telling the desk to enter "active mode," which will remind you to take periodic breaks by rising up and down ever so gently when it's time for you to stop what you're doing and walk around. (It's less distracting then it sounds; in fact, Stir is using the name "WhisperBreath" to describe it.) Also like an Apple product, the desk has a stark design: it's powered by a single cable, with eight AC ports and four USB sockets tucked into two hidden panels at the top of the desk. That makes for a minimalist look, of course, but it also means you don't have to worry about dragging cables (and knocking things over) when you adjust the height of the desk. Once this starts shipping, you'll have two color options for the lacquered wood surface, and four choices of accent colors for the underside and in the two charging drawers. As for the starting price, you're looking at $3,890 and up -- suffice to say, you'd better already be a standing desk convert before taking the plunge.
ExoPC's 40-inch multitouch EXOdesk is coming in 2012 for $1,299 (video)
We haven't even made it to Black Friday yet, and already we're getting a taste of the futuristic swag that'll be on display at CES in January. Over the weekend, ExoPC posted a video teasing a multitouch surface called the EXOdesk, promising more details when the show kicks off after the new year. The desk measures 40 inches (make that "40 high-definition inches") and, as you'd expect, supports a smorgasboard of multi-fingered gestures. The entire teaser lasts less than a minute, but you don't need more than a few seconds to realize this isn't the same UI we reviewed with the ExoPC Slate. So far, we noticed you can run apps at full-screen and swipe widgets to chuck 'em out of sight. You can also swipe the corner with four fingers to reveal what appears to be an RSS feed, and then swipe individual items to make them disappear. That's all we know about how it works, though the company did reveal it'll go on sale next year for $1,299 -- a fraction of the $8,400 you'll pay for the new Samsung SUR40 running Microsoft Surface. We'll be keeping an eye out for this when we stake out CES in January, but until then, we've got the teaser vid tucked after the break. [Thanks, Trevor]
The Daily Grind: What does your ideal gamespace look like?
When you're younger, your game consoles and systems are usually put wherever the space exists, and your computer is generally tucked into a corner of your bedroom. But when you get a little bit older and move out on your own, you start having a much wider field of options for where you game and how you do so. Video games could be the centerpiece of your house, or you could have a special room devoted to just gaming in some corner of your apartment. And if you're going to be involved in a marathon session of Fallen Earth, wouldn't you like a minifridge nearby? Today we're going just a bit meta and asking you what your ideal space for gaming would look like. Would it be large? Small? What sort of furniture would it contain? The hardware isn't necessarily important -- what is important is what you'd build for your play if you didn't have to worry about space or budget. Games like EverQuest II let us create the environment we want in a virtual space, but if you had that same sort of power in the real world, what would you do? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
T'Light lamp for major nerds with good taste (should such a thing exist)
The T'Light lamp isn't the first one we've seen which boasts things like chargers, docks and USB. It is, however, the nicest looking one we've ever seen. The modern stainless steel lamp has an iPod dock in its base, plus a USB port and a jack for charging laptops -- though there's no adapter for MacBooks as of yet, apparently. The T'Light is available now for $90 -- hit up the source for more details.
Reader WoWspace of the week: Crumbs
This week's Reader WoWspace was sent in by Crumbs, who has managed to fit twice the geeky goodness and a whole lot of desk space into one nifty corner of his office. As Crumbs told us here at WoW Insider, he had been playing a Hunter "forever" but when Burning Crusade came out, he decided to make the jump to a new character. He has since switched to a L70 Draenei Priest named Chilee of the guild <Epitome> on the Thrall server that he's been enjoying raiding with.For more cool pictures and details of Crumbs' WoWspace, check out the information after the jump!
Microsoft shows off DigiDesk workstation of the future
Everyone's got their own idea about how we're gonna get our work done in the future, and except for the camp that envisions us toiling away in the silicon mines for our robotic overlords, most of these concepts seem to have converged around a few of the same elements. Well Microsoft was showing off its Center for Information Work's take on the ideal workstation at Convergence 07, and the so-called DigiDesk does indeed incorporate many features we've seen before, including a multi-touch display (we know, we know), document digitizer, speech recognition engine, and ability to resize objects on the fly a la Jeff Han's famous TED presentation. Of course Redmond conveniently neglected to tell us when we can expect to to find the DigiDesk at our local Office Depot, meaning that like most of these neat-o concepts, a YouTube vid (after the break) is probably the closest you're gonna get to this tech for a long time.
