What to do if your keyboard on the screen. And if there are dozens of screens: At CES, the Russian design Art Lebedev, the company shows upcoming Optimus Aux Optimus popularis keyboard with a mini and a series of six unique keyboard for data input devices on the key to the home screen.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
How to Learn All About a New City Without Leaving Your House
If you're thinking about picking up and moving to a new city, you have a lot of research to do before you even begin looking for jobs there. The average salary, rental or real estate prices, crime statistics, best and worst neighborhoods, transit situation—they're all things you'll have to dig into before you decide if a city is right for you. Here's how to make that research go quickly so you can go back to job hunting in what'll hopefully be your future home.Moving to a new city can go one of two ways: You can either take a risk, throw everything to the wind, and see where you end up, or you can do your homework ahead of time, consider your options, and research extensively before you move.Most of us don't know the ins and outs of a city before we ponder moving there—we just know we have friends in town, or family nearby, or maybe we like something we've heard about, like the city's overall atmosphere or popular industries and companies nearby. If that's where you are, let's look at some tools you can use to research a town through and through before you book plane tickets to go visit.Cities and towns are big places, and you'll probably want an idea of where in town you should live before you even begin looking at stats, prices, and other data. We've offered some great tips to help you pin them down, including visiting sites like StreetAdvisor, which is entirely dedicated to neighborhood reviews and information. We'd also suggest checking out neighborhood details on Foursquare or Yelp, even if you're not specifically looking for nightlife or restaurants—both apps have a wealth of information entered by locals for locals, and don't be fooled, there are reviews for entire neighborhoods at Yelp, and some of them are both hilarious and useful.Similarly, City Data offers a wealth of information about the entire city, as well as specific neighborhoods. The site includes cost of living, average home prices, and even local attractions or famous destinations in the area. Plus, their forums are an invaluable resource—a treasure trove of information and locals who are willing to help you decide where in town you'd like to move, visit, or just learn more about. Similarly, Neighborhood Scout can help you learn more about specific neighborhoods once you've pinned down a few you'd like to live in. You can start with a bird's eye view of a city, and then zoom in on popular neighborhoods, up-and-coming ones, or test your luck with neighborhoods that are more affordable but offer a more authentic and less glossy experience. Whatever you're looking for, both sites will help you find a few neighborhoods you might want to look into.Once you have an idea where in a city you might want to live, your next step is to see how much it would cost you to actually live there. Some of the previous sites will give you averages, like the average home price and average income in the vicinity, but there's no substitute for looking at what's on the market or available to rent right now. Here are a couple of options:For home buyers, Trulia, Zillow, and Redfin all offer virtually every real estate listing in a given city. If you've bought a home in the past, you're familiar with them, but if not, looking for home prices on the market in an area is as simple as typing in the zip code or name of the area you're interested in. You'll see active listings, their asking prices, and even get to see photos of the home and the surrounding neighborhood. Obviously you're not putting in an offer just yet, but it's a great way to familiarize yourself with the real estate market in your preferred neighborhoods.For renters, Apartments.com, MyApartmentMap, Padmapper, and HotPads all collect the best of a city's rental listings and make them easy to browse. The real estate sites like Trulia and Zillow also offer rental listings, but go to the source. These are some of our favorite apartment search sites for good reason. There's always Craigslist too, but many of these sites pull in Craigslist listings. Still, if you don't see them, Craigslist has finally added maps, so they're worth checking out. There's also Lovely, which also caters to top-down neighborhood-browsing. In any event, the best feature of all of these is that they can help you figure out which neighborhoods have rentals you can afford and amenities that you'd enjoy while you live there, and they do it all on a map that you can click and drag around (or drop down into Google Street View with) easily. Many include information on transit options, walkability data (like how close a rental is to transit, shopping, dining, etc), and others, like previously mentioned AutNo, helps you find transit friendly neighborhoods and rentals directly.Once you have an idea of how much it'll cost to rent or buy a home in a specific neighborhood, take a street view tour of the neighborhood and look around. Check out what kinds of shops and restaurants are nearby. The more amenities like transit, dining, and retail are nearby, the higher you'll know the cost of living will probably be—but all of the tools we've mentioned will help you pin down exact numbers.A Google Street View tour will help you determine whether a neighborhood looks a little rough or looks a little too clean for your tastes, but there's no replacement for real, public crime data and police blotter aggregators for the areas you're thinking about moving to. Crime Reports is a great first stop for information on any city in the United States, and Family Watchdog lists convicted sex offenders. SpotCrime is another great database of crime statistics and data, and signing up even gets you regular alerts from a neighborhood or town so you get to see what's going on there before you even visit.Beyond online databases and search tools, you can (and should) reach out to the local police department for the city you're thinking about moving to and ask them for a crime report. You may have to find the precinct or district that covers the neighborhood you want to move to, or you may have to give the department a specific address to get a report of all activity within a given radius of that location, but it's worth doing. It's the only way you'll get completely accurate information, and you'll be able to dig through the reports yourself and judge with your own eyes. Some police departments only provide aggregate data, so keep that in mind when you ask—but almost all of them are willing to give you some information so you can make an educated decision about moving.If you have children or are planning to start a family, you'll naturally want to find the neighborhoods with the best schools—or at least with schools that are well regarded but are still affordable to live in. A good first stop is GreatSchools, a site that helps you find good schools in a specific area, or will guide you to schools within a certain vicinity. The site is more than a search engine: You'll find tools that will walk you through defining "good" or "bad" schools look like, tips on how to assess a school, and even tips for navigating tricky school systems to get the information or help you need.Similarly, Neighborhood Scout's school district ratings page can help you find the best public schools in any area, complete with aggregate data like test scores, class sizes, and student achievement. SchoolDigger is another resource with free, complete metrics on school districts and systems around the country. Before you start piling up statistics though, this old op-ed in the Washington Post, although some of its information is specific to DC residents, is worth a read—it'll calm your nerves and help you focus on what's really important when picking a school system, especially since the competitive rush for exclusive private and charter schools can get out of hand in some cities.Finally, once you have the details you need to decide whether a neighborhood sounds like a good one, take a step further and really dig into the local culture, attractions, and atmosphere. City-Data's forums are perfect for this, because you can probably find someone who's local to where you'd like to live to speak with directly. Look at the city from this perspective: If you moved there, what would you do for fun? The answer doesn't have to involve the city's famous destinations or popular locales (although it certainly should—if you're moving to a new city, we have plenty of tips to help you get the lay of the land once you're there), but it should also involve your own interests and passions. If you're a movie buff, look for movie theaters close to your preferred neighborhood, and check out which movie theaters are the most popular and well loved by local movie fans.Ask yourself what the city is known for, cuisine-wise, and check Foursquare, Yelp, and Google Local for reviews and recommendations. Then think about your favorite foods, and check out where you can get them near your future home. If you're a big fan of Japanese food, make sure you can find a decent restaurant somewhere nearby. If you find a half dozen and a couple of ramen shops to boot, you're in great shape. Repeat the process with your other interests, whether it's live music, nightlife, museums, even local festivals and block parties. Some neighborhoods even have their own Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and websites designed to alert locals to events happening in their backyard. Pretend it's your backyard too, at least for the time being. Before long, you'll feel like a local.Photos by ollyy (Shutterstock), Perfect Vectors (Shutterstock), Andy Dean Photography (Shutterstock), Carl Wycoff, Seattle Municipal Archives, and dumbonyc.
Once you have an idea where in a city you might want to live, your next step is to see how much it would cost you to actually live there. Some of the previous sites will give you averages, like the average home price and average income in the vicinity, but there's no substitute for looking at what's on the market or available to rent right now. Here are a couple of options:For home buyers, Trulia, Zillow, and Redfin all offer virtually every real estate listing in a given city. If you've bought a home in the past, you're familiar with them, but if not, looking for home prices on the market in an area is as simple as typing in the zip code or name of the area you're interested in. You'll see active listings, their asking prices, and even get to see photos of the home and the surrounding neighborhood. Obviously you're not putting in an offer just yet, but it's a great way to familiarize yourself with the real estate market in your preferred neighborhoods.For renters, Apartments.com, MyApartmentMap, Padmapper, and HotPads all collect the best of a city's rental listings and make them easy to browse. The real estate sites like Trulia and Zillow also offer rental listings, but go to the source. These are some of our favorite apartment search sites for good reason. There's always Craigslist too, but many of these sites pull in Craigslist listings. Still, if you don't see them, Craigslist has finally added maps, so they're worth checking out. There's also Lovely, which also caters to top-down neighborhood-browsing. In any event, the best feature of all of these is that they can help you figure out which neighborhoods have rentals you can afford and amenities that you'd enjoy while you live there, and they do it all on a map that you can click and drag around (or drop down into Google Street View with) easily. Many include information on transit options, walkability data (like how close a rental is to transit, shopping, dining, etc), and others, like previously mentioned AutNo, helps you find transit friendly neighborhoods and rentals directly.Once you have an idea of how much it'll cost to rent or buy a home in a specific neighborhood, take a street view tour of the neighborhood and look around. Check out what kinds of shops and restaurants are nearby. The more amenities like transit, dining, and retail are nearby, the higher you'll know the cost of living will probably be—but all of the tools we've mentioned will help you pin down exact numbers.
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