Do you remember Maria’s post on the sort-of-creepy-but-pretty-neat Rube Goldberg Fifth Avenue apartment?

Well.  That is just…peas…compared to Scott Jones’ palatial estate.  Considering Scott’s background (Scott invented VOICEMAIL, ChaCha, MOG, Gracenote, etc.), it seems only fitting that he owns a 27,000 sq. foot mansion filled with tech treats and hidden surprises.  The house was featured on HGTV’s “Top 10 Most Amazing Homes” and, more recently, MTV TEEN CRIBS.

Fact!  I did not even know MTV Teen Cribs existed (Thank you, Phil), but the episode above (well…I only watched the first crib: Scott’s home presented by his son Andrew) is far more satisfying than any other Cribs episode I have ever seen.  The house has a secret passage (concealed by a bookcase!), a giant slide, a movie theater, a tree house, and a T-Rex head.  The tech stuff is pretty cool, but I could not stop thinking about the (Disney Channel Original Movie) Smart House.  Which, if you do not recall (or if you spent your youth watching more worthwhile things), was about a tech house “of the future” that goes bat shit.

Finally…Question.  Is it just me or is the intro speaker’s voice much higher than the usual speaker?  Follow-up Question.  When a certian thing is “kid-a-fied,” does that automatically equal higher-pitched voices?  Like…Kidz Bop (I admit, out of all the Kidz Bop songs to feature, this is a poor choice.  BUT PAY ATTENTION AT EXACTLY 2:38 AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH IT.)

PS- If the video above does not work, this is the link.  I don’t think embeded MTV likes Stickers and Donuts, because the video almost never loads.  Womp womp.

These colorful houses in Japan have been posted on Cool Hunter, UO’s blog, Tree Hugger, and the NYTimes, but since I’m away on vacay, I thought a little re-posting couldn’t hurt, especially since they are such bright colors!

Part of the point of these homes is that they have wavy floors (and whatnot) and thus they are a little hard to navigate. Yet they are made for adults & the elderly, not kids! Supposedly, keeping you on your toes keeps you young (if you don’t break a hip trying to get to the kitchen).

I recommend checking out the NY Times article (especially this slideshow) for more information about these homes & a few others like them!

Cherryflava recently posted about Ikea’s “out of the box” advertising methods. How cool is this?

This “box” was placed in Brookyln and filled with furniture (elegently placed, of course, despite the small space… most of us NYC-ites like to say we “live in a box”) for Ikea’s grand opening.

Cherryflava also shows off another Ikea stunt where balconies were made to look like boxes for storage.

“The architectural designer Eric Clough embedded clues into a Fifth Avenue apartment, leading the family who lived there on a scavenger hunt through the rooms of their home” (NY Times).

I couldn’t believe this article today in the NY Times. You can actually be an adult and a real person and have a house with hidden drawers and closets and clues! (This may be more thrilling to me than when I found a book about tree houses that real, actual, non-unibomber adults live their lives inside.)

The apartment apparently comes with its own book, soundtrack, and slews of hidden doors, drawers, codes, messages, games, and treasures. And the architect put the whole adventure in without the family even knowing, and it took a year before they even realized there was a mystery to be solved!

For more pictures of the mystery apartment click here and read the full article here.