Archive for the 'La Times' Category
January 2nd, 2008 -- Posted in La Times |
Bad flow is a real stumbling block
Smooth room-to-room transitions help bring life to a dwelling and can improve its marketability.
By Jennifer Lisle
Special to The Times
December 23, 2007
Bad room flow can be obvious: an oversized couch that blocks the doorway, a front door that opens into the kitchen or a powder room in a far-flung location. It can also be subtle — a large room where something just doesn’t feel right.
As owners demand houses with larger rooms that have multiple functions — home theater, kids’ study area, meditation room — designers and architects say it can be easy to over-complicate a home’s basic traffic patterns.
Although it’s possible to live with a space that doesn’t flow smoothly, real estate agents warn that homeowners may have trouble when they try to sell, as a home with an awkward room flow can sit on the market longer than a home with good flow.
“The cream rises to the top in this kind of market. If the place has a bad flow pattern that isn’t easily corrected, it can sell for up to 15% to 20% less than a home that’s the same size and similar location,” said Larry Young, a Realtor with Prudential — John Aaroe, Beverly Hills.
Young cites as an example a Westside home he recently sold that had a major flow problem — a series of dark walls that isolated the living and family rooms from the rest of the house. The home sold for $1.9 million, whereas comparable homes in the area were selling for $2.5 million, Young said.
But even those who overlooked big flow flaws in the buying frenzy of recent years should know that a house with bad room flow doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a teardown. Although major problems might be hard to fix without construction, designers say there are minimally invasive repairs and disguises for minor flow issues.
Sandi Sinicrope, president of ASF Interior Re-Design in Alhambra, said she looks at a home’s flow starting at the curb outside. It’s desirable, she said, to have a clear and elegant pathway leading to the front door as well as a welcoming entrance.
“When we enter a house, I think it’s important to have a ‘pause’ area, a breathing spot,” she said. Even though many homes are built without a separate or formal entrance hall, she added, it is possible to signify a front entrance with design elements.
For those with the space, a bench or a chair with a table and lamp or plant gives people a place to stop and collect themselves, she said. “It can help you start to change your mentality from being at work to being at home.”
If there are space limitations, Sinicrope said, an area rug and a hall tree can do the job, as can an umbrella stand or even a small table inside the door for keys and mail.
Once you are inside, said Karen Zieba, who owns the Long Beach-based remodeling firm Zieba Builders Inc. with her husband, Joe, there should be a sensible, easy and pleasant path through the space without going through too many rooms or around too many obstructions.
“The sight line should go as far as possible through a house,” Zieba said.
Karen Taylor, who inherited her grandmother’s 1940s bungalow in Long Beach, found that the path from its entrance to its kitchen was long and arduous.
“You had to go through a closed door, then a small TV-room area, then through a solarium and another exterior door to get there,” she said.
Zieba and her contractor ended up removing the wall between the entrance and the small TV room and integrated that space into the entrance hall. Then she turned the solarium into a family room that connects to the kitchen.
“We now have a more welcoming entrance way that leads to the family room and kitchen,” Taylor said.
Zieba encourages homeowners to consider changing the purpose of a room if the flow doesn’t seem right.
“Just because it’s always been called the living room doesn’t mean you can’t turn it into the family room,” she said.
Zieba cited her own kitchen, which had no real dining area, as an example. The kitchen had a small, adjoining unused utility room where she installed a banquette and created a breakfast nook.
Joan Ackermann rethought the purpose of several rooms when she reworked the kitchen area in her Simi Valley condominium.
The area was originally three different rooms: a narrow kitchen separated from a tiny dinette area by a horizontal kitchen island with a sitting room on the other side of the dinette.
“We lived in the seating area and wanted it to feel more spacious but didn’t know what to do about it,” Ackermann said.
Jo-Ann Capelaci, an interior designer with Garrett Interiors of Woodland Hills, reconfigured the island so it was longer and ran vertically through the space. She took out the dinette set and installed a built-in window seat against the wall below a window.
“It really plays up the window area and ties the three spaces together,” Ackermann said.
The dining area is now a small round floating table at the end of the island, a few inches below the counter. Without the dinette, the seating area flows more easily into the adjacent space and seems bigger.
“It’s doubled our living and entertaining area,” she said.
In opening up spaces, designers say it’s important to maintain flow by defining the area’s functions in a cohesive way.
“There is a big desire for flexibility and space right now. People want larger rooms that have multiple functions,” said Chris Brown, architect and owner of Architectus, an architectural firm in Long Beach. And this is frequently possible in today’s larger homes. The number of homes larger than 2,400 square feet continues to rise, from 10% in 1970 to 42% in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
To prevent the space from looking like “a mass of furniture,” designer Christy Arakaki of Ryan Taylors Interior Design in Fullerton recommended creating mini rooms within the space with a main traffic pattern through the middle.
The mini rooms, like “TV-watching area” and “home office,” can be defined by area rugs, appropriate furniture and task lighting.
To define areas within open spaces, Capelaci makes the most of “duplicative” or multi-functional built-in furniture pieces.
“A room divider that’s done right both separates and joins the rooms at the same time,” she said.
In some cases, pathways through a house are sensible but not necessarily pleasant or attractive.
“You want to keep people moving through those transitional spaces, but if people see a long dark hallway, they don’t want to go through it,” Arakaki said.
Homeowners can give people direction, she said, by making hallways attractive and providing focal points, such as spotlighted artwork and dressed-up windows, along the way. Architectural elements, perhaps an interior archway or a recessed niche in the wall, can also break up the monotony, architect Brown said.
If there’s an unused corner on a main pathway, Zieba recommends putting something there to make it interesting, maybe a table and chair with a lamp, or a plant.
“It will seem bigger if it looks like you use it,” she said.
Jennifer Lisle can be reached at jenlisle1119@aol.com.
December 19th, 2007 -- Posted in La Times |
Agents want a little loyalty
Some agents say the free rides are over. They’re embracing the idea of a buyer’s pledge of allegiance.
By Ann Brenoff
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 16, 2007
VETERAN home sellers usually don’t flinch when a realty agent pushes a sheath of papers in front of them to sign when they list their houses. The agent, after all, will be bearing the upfront expense of advertising, printing up mailers, holding open houses and arranging showings — and who would do all that without a signed listing contract guaranteeing a commission if they sell the house?
But what about buyers? They get a free ride.
FOR THE RECORD:
Real estate agreements: An article in Sunday’s Real Estate section about requiring buyers to sign loyalty agreements gave the name of a buyers’ brokerage as John J. Rygiol & Associates. Realtor John Rygiol’s brokerage is called Buyer’s Broker. John J. Rygiol & Associates is that brokerage’s luxury-home-buying subsidiary. —
Buyers can drop in unannounced to virtually any realty office, and an agent working that day will drive them around, showing them what’s for sale. There’s nothing to stop those buyers from turning around and making an offer on one of those houses through, say, their sister-in-law who just got her real estate license. The agent who spent half a day with them likely won’t get so much as a thank-you note.
That, gradually, is changing.
Twenty-one years ago, John Rygiol, owner of Seal Beach-based John J. Rygiol & Associates, turned the tables: He stopped representing sellers altogether and began asking would-be buyers to sign loyalty agreements, documents stating that in exchange for his time and services in finding them a home, they will make all offers through him or pay him a commission anyway. Today, 10% of California Assn. of Realtors members use buyer loyalty contracts.
The effect on buyers is twofold: They are represented by an agent who won’t try to steer them toward his or her listings, and they’ve signed a contract wedding them to one agent for a fixed period of time.
Agents with listings have a financial incentive to push those listings, Rygiol says. If the client buys a home the agent has listed, the agent would pocket the full commission.
“I have no listings. I’ll show you everything that is out there and I will only be working with you,” Rygiol said. His business now has six offices and eight agents in Southern California. Statewide, there are 17 exclusive buyer brokerages and 54 exclusive buyer’s agents.
California has a strong dual-agency disclosure policy, which requires agents to tell their buyer clients if they or another agent in the same firm represent the seller. The problem is, it is often disclosed only at the point when a buyer is making a written offer.
Rygiol client Ed Novitsky, a first-time home buyer, likes knowing that “John just works for me.” Novitsky, his wife and daughter, 2, are renting in Torrance while looking for a home to buy in the South Bay. He is shopping in the mid-$600,000s range.
Novitsky, who calls himself a skeptic, may seem an unlikely type to sign a loyalty agreement. He said he is someone who needed to understand the home-buying and financing process himself and was unwilling to blindly trust someone else to protect his interests in what he called “the biggest purchase” of his life.
He personally called about 15 mortgage lenders directly and got pre-qualified. He then interviewed about a dozen realty agents and, frankly, he recalled, wasn’t always impressed.
But when he came upon Rygiol, the idea of having an exclusive buyer’s agent “just made sense.” “When I called John, right away I liked what he said to me: ‘Let’s meet and see if we think we can work together.’ ”
He wasn’t bothered by Rygiol’s request that he sign an exclusive six-month contract. “It’s fair,” Novitsky said. “If he puts in the time and does his job, why wouldn’t he be entitled to compensation?”
Novitsky is part of a small but growing minority in this regard. For many California buyers, the idea of being asked to sign a loyalty agreement before an agent opens his car door is a novel concept.
Buyer loyalty contracts are commonplace in other states — and are most prevalent along the East Coast and in the Midwest — but Colleen Badagliacco, president of the California Assn. of Realtors, acknowledges they haven’t caught on as widely in the Golden State. CAR offers its members sample contracts, and Badagliacco encourages their use. The contract that Rygiol uses states that if the buyer winds up making an offer within six months on a house that he showed them (not just drove by but toured the interior), he is entitled to the commission.
Most contracts are for a fixed period of time — a weekend if an out-of-state buyer is coming in to look or two weeks if it’s someone local. But the obligation to pay the agent a commission extends for six months if the home being bought is one seen during the initial showing period.
In other states, exclusive buyer agents may take it one step further: Before they agree to spend their weekends driving buyers around, they not only want it in writing that the buyers will make their offer through them, but they also charge a retainer of $250 to $500. In almost all cases, the retainer is deducted from an eventual commission when and if a deal is finalized, but even if it isn’t, the agent keeps the fee.
Buyer’s agents in California don’t charge a retainer (or advance fee, as the state Department of Real Estate calls it) because of the stringent and cumbersome rules governing how this money must be handled. CAR guidelines also discourage it. Many agents mistakenly believe the practice is illegal; although it isn’t, failure to comply with the state regulations can carry criminal penalties.
To some extent, said Paul L. Campbell of Dream Drafters Real Estate in Everett, Wash., the retainer is proof of sincerity and a measure of a buyer’s seriousness. He charges a $250 retainer, refundable at closing.
And there appears to be wiggle room. In some cases, repeat clients aren’t charged a retainer nor are the buyers whom those clients recommend. If a buyer is unhappy, some agents say they just cut him or her loose.
But, for Rygiol anyway, “it’s never come to that.”
ann.brenoff@latimes.com
December 3rd, 2007 -- Posted in La Times |
Donating stock can be better than giving cash
Charities are happy to accept it, and you can save a substantial amount in taxes.
By Kathy M. Kristof
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 2, 2007
Americans make about $200 billion in tax-deductible gifts to charity each year, and most of them are in cash.
But if you have stock in your investment portfolio that has risen significantly in value since you bought it, you might be better off donating the stock instead of cash.
Doing so can boost your tax savings, allowing you to give more to charity or simply enjoy the fact that the contribution costs you less money.
Charitable groups are happy to receive stock, said Gail Berlant, director for distinguished giving at the American Cancer Society’s Los Angeles office.
“This is a wonderful way to donate to charity,” she said. “Any nonprofit would really appreciate stock donations.”
By giving away stock, you avoid selling the shares and realizing a capital gain that you would have to pay tax on. But the government still lets you deduct the current market value of the donated stock from your taxable income. The more the shares have gone up in price, the greater the advantage in giving them compared with writing a check.
“The added tax savings from donating appreciated securities over cash can be significant,” said Steve Feinschreiber, senior vice president of research for Fidelity Investments in Boston.
Let’s say you want to give $10,000 to charity. If you make that gift in cash, you can take a $10,000 deduction on your federal and state returns. If your top combined tax rate is 35%, that saves you $3,500 in federal and state income tax.
But let’s say you happen to have 1,000 shares of XYZ stock that you bought in 1985 for $1 a share and is now worth $10 a share, or $10,000.
If you sell those shares, you’ll have to pay a 15% tax on your $9,000 capital gain, setting yourself back $1,350.
If instead you give those shares to charity, you get the same $10,000 deduction for the full market value of the stock — and the same $3,500 in tax savings that results.
But you also don’t pay any capital gains tax, saving $1,350. The total tax benefit of your gift: $4,850.
And you don’t have to worry about increasing the charity’s tax liability, because charities are exempt from income tax.
There are some tricks to getting the best bang for your donated shares, said Philip J. Holthouse, partner at accounting firm Holthouse Carlin & Van Trigt in Santa Monica.
First, you need to donate stock that you’ve owned for at least a year. If you’ve owned the stock less than a year, you can deduct only the amount you paid for the shares, not their current market value.
In the example above, that would mean you’d get only a $1,000 deduction, making the donation of such a short-term holding a much worse deal than giving cash.
Also, in deciding which stock in your portfolio to donate, you should choose the one that has gained the most in percentage terms since you bought it.
But what if you still want that stock in your portfolio? Simply buy shares of the same stock to replace the ones you’re donating, Holthouse suggested.
With charitable donations of securities, Holthouse said, there are no “wash sale” rules requiring you to wait a certain amount of time before buying the same stock that you gave away. And the brokerage commission you would pay to acquire the shares would be small compared with your tax savings.
Your portfolio will hold the same stock as before, but you’ll start off with no unrealized gain on the shares.
Replacing the stock in your investment account allows you to accomplish three goals: to provide a charity with a needed gift, to reduce the capital gains accumulating in your portfolio and to continue to own a stock that you believe has the ability to appreciate further.
kathy.kristof@latimes.com
November 29th, 2007 -- Posted in La Times |
Santa Monica plans to limit some jets
Council members defy the FAA with a vote to ban many types of business aircraft from the city’s airport.
By Martha Groves
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 29, 2007
Citing safety as its paramount concern, the Santa Monica City Council has defied federal aviation officials by voting to ban the fastest jets now using the city’s airport, including the Gulfstream IV, Challenger and Citation X aircraft popular with business executives.
By a 7-0 vote Tuesday, the council approved an ordinance that a city staff report states would protect public safety, particularly that of residents living immediately next to the ends of the airport runway and individuals using and working at the airport. The Federal Aviation Administration vowed to challenge the ban, which is set for a second and final vote in January.
Residents of Santa Monica and the Mar Vista section of Los Angeles have complained for years that the airport’s lack of runway buffers and its location on a plateau with steep drop-offs creates the potential for a deadly accident should an aircraft roar past the end of the runway.
The airport is unusual in its proximity to homes, the nearest of which are within 300 feet of the runway’s end. The drop-off to the west, the usual direction of takeoff, is about 40 feet, the staff report states, and the airport is surrounded by urban development. “Landings and takeoffs at the airport have been likened to aircraft operations on an aircraft carrier,” the report says. “There is little or no margin for error.”
In a letter to Mayor Richard Bloom, the FAA vowed to use “all available means” to fight the ordinance so that “no aircraft is denied access” to Santa Monica Airport. “What you are considering by this proposed ordinance is flatly illegal as drafted,” said D. Kirk Shaffer, the agency’s associate administrator for airports.
Shaffer’s letter reiterated his belief that the city should consider buying and tearing down houses close to the ends of the runway, a proposal that Bloom called “offensive and absurd.”
Several council members said the city would be willing to fight any legal challenge. “This could lead to very significant and costly litigation,” Bloom said at the council meeting. “But safety concerns should be paramount.”
Brian Bland, a retired Associated Press radio correspondent who has lived near the airport for 11 years, said the community had tried for five years to work with the FAA to devise a compromise.
Residents and city officials deemed as inadequate an FAA proposal that Santa Monica install a safety bed of collapsible concrete at each runway end.
The ordinance would bar Category C and D jets, which would include aircraft with approach speeds of greater than 136 mph. The use of such aircraft has grown immensely in recent years as corporations and individuals have embraced so-called fractional ownership, which allows them to share the costs of owning and maintaining aircraft.
Category C and D jets account for about half of the 19,000 jet takeoffs and landings at the facility this year, said airport manager Bob Trimborn. Overall, the airport this year is expected to have 135,000 takeoffs and landings. Trimborn said the vote was a “fairly significant step forward in the effort to establish a truly safe operating airport here.”
He noted that residents were responding to dramatic changes in aviation technology since the early 1980s, when the fleet mix did not contain such high-performance jets. “No other city has ever proposed the banning of aircraft,” Trimborn said. “This is fairly new ground. Because of that, it’s open to a lot of interpretation. More than likely, it would be decided in federal court.”
martha.groves@latimes.com
November 27th, 2007 -- Posted in La Times |
Fire retardants that protect the home
By Sam Byker
Special to The Times
November 25, 2007
Scott Garrett got the evacuation order at 6 a.m. on Oct. 22. His Lake Arrowhead home lay in the path of the Grass Valley fire, and flames would arrive within hours.
Garrett rushed to his garage, where he kept 15 gallons of a flame-retardant spray called Safe-T-Guard. Using a garden sprayer, he applied the clear liquid to his 5,500-square-foot home’s decks, eaves and wood siding.
Though houses up and down Garrett’s street burned in the blaze, his remained standing. Garrett later found a 3-inch-long blackened ember that had been blown onto his deck. The wood around it had charred but hadn’t caught fire — thanks, he said, to the spray.
“Every one of the neighbors around here wants to get some now,” Garrett said.
Garrett’s neighbors aren’t the only ones. Manufacturers of products such as Safe-T-Guard have seen interest soar in the wake of the fires. And San Diego-based Fire Etc. reports that sales of some of its home fire-retardant products have doubled in recent weeks.
The state of California mandates that fire-retardant materials be used in commercial buildings, including churches and senior centers. But even California’s strict regulations weren’t enough to save Malibu Presbyterian Church, which burned to the ground during the October wildfires.
Residential properties face no such mandate, so home fire protection is largely a do-it-yourself enterprise. Homeowners should never rely solely on fire retardants for protection, said David Duea, president of Fire Etc. No product is fail-safe; most are far from it.
Smart fire prevention includes clearing brush and debris away from all structures. Woodpiles should be kept at least 30 feet away from the home as well. And when a blaze is on its way, a well-thought-out evacuation plan is far more important than anything sold in a store, experts agree. Even Garrett says that he was foolish not to evacuate. “It was really crazy and dangerous and dumb, and I don’t know that I would do it again,” he said. But he does swear by the product that he says spared his house.
There are many fire-retardant products available in California, but few are widely marketed to consumers. Garrett learned about Safe-T-Guard through his work as a textile specialist on film sets, where he treated fabrics with the liquid to protect them from open flame. Realizing how useful the product could be, he decided to keep some in case of emergency.
Now, more and more companies are manufacturing products aimed specifically at homeowners. Some can protect homes for years with one application; others are designed to be used only as a wildfire approaches.
Here is a sampling:
* Thermo-Gel, sold by Fire Etc. of San Diego, is a concentrate that, when mixed with water, becomes a heat-absorbing Class A fire retardant. (In laboratory testing, Class A retardants slow the spread of flames by 75% or more; Class B retardants, by 25% to 75%.) The gel works only for five to eight hours after application, so it’s designed to be applied as a fire approaches. Fire Etc. markets Thermo-Gel as part of a $330 homeowner kit, which includes four 1-gallon containers of gel along with an applicator nozzle that allows them to be screwed onto a garden hose for application to a home, car or yard. The distributor claims the kit will cover 4,000 square feet.
Several government agencies in California use Thermo-Gel, including the San Bernardino County Fire Department and the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said Chad Nelson, sales manager at Thermo Technologies, which manufactures the gel. Some homeowners, however, have complained that the gel can be messy and difficult to apply.
Fire Etc. also markets the Fire Marshal Pool Pump, a $1,295 system that lets homeowners use their pool water to fight fires. The pump comes with a 100-foot hose and adjustable nozzle and can take in up to 70 gallons of water per minute and shoot it out in a high-velocity stream with about half the power of an average firetruck hose, the company said. Fire Etc. is currently sold out of the pumps due to a surge in interest following the recent wildfires, Duea said. The company now has a waiting list.
Thermo-Gel and the Fire Marshal Pool Pump can be ordered at www.fire-etc.com or by calling (619) 525-7286.
* Barricade International’s Home Kit Complete is a similar product. It comes with 4 gallons of Class A fire-retardant gel, which the company estimates will cover 2,000 to 2,800 square feet. The gel can be applied through a garden hose applicator nozzle, which is included in the kit and, under normal conditions, will last from eight to 24 hours on the side of a home (though in high winds such as those experienced during the recent wildfires, it may last as little as four hours). Barricade’s gel is currently used by the Los Angeles City Fire Department. Homeowners can purchase the kit for $326 at www.barricadegel.com or by calling (800) 201-3927.
* Safe-T-Guard, manufactured by Santa Clarita-based Firetect, is a clear, odorless and nontoxic Class B fire retardant that can be used on wood, paper and some fabrics. Homeowners can apply Safe-T-Guard, as Garrett did, with a simple garden sprayer for large projects. A household spray bottle can be used for smaller ones, and unopened containers of the retardant will last up to 10 years. Safe-T-Guard is intended for long-term indoor use, not for a last-minute outdoor application like Garrett’s. A gallon costs $31.95.
* WT102, also sold by Firetect, is a latex-based paint that acts as a Class A fire retardant. WT102 works with water-soluble tints and can be applied like any paint. About $40 per gallon, it has a shelf life of two years.
Although some homeowners have used WT102 and Safe-T-Guard on home exteriors, they haven’t been tested or approved for outdoor use and will decay over time, said Firetect President Kathleen Newman. WT102, though, might last for 10 or more years on a home exterior, Newman added. Both products are available at www.firetect.com or by calling (800) 380-8801.
* Flame Resist, made by Hy-Tech Thermal Solutions of Florida, is a clear, fire-retardant coating that sells for $70 per gallon. It too has not been approved for outdoor use. Hy-Tech claims that it will last 14 to 18 months on the exterior of a home before reapplication is necessary. It can be applied with a garden sprayer.
Flame Guard, also made by Hy-Tech, is a granular paint additive sold for $10 per 6-ounce package. One package added to a gallon of paint gives it a Class B rating; two, a Class A. Flame Guard works only with interior flat latex paint, available at most hardware stores. Flame Resist and Flame Guard can be purchased at www.hytechsales.com or by calling (866) 649-8324.
* A higher-end interior paint is available from International Fire Resistant Systems, based in Marin County. The company’s Class A latex-based FF88 has been used in the Pentagon and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. It too can be tinted to a custom color and applied like a regular paint, but its price — $315 for a 5-gallon container — may be out of range for some homeowners, even if they want the cachet of matching the Green Zone’s most coveted address.
Those interested can go to www.firefree.com, or call (415) 459-6488.
* The Foamsafe FireMaster, designed by Oregon-based Consumer Fire Products Inc., is a high-end system designed to protect a property automatically in the event of a wildfire. Starting at just under $20,000, including installation, each FireMaster includes a compressed foam system (shaped like an outdoor air-conditioning unit), a water tank, a set of roof-mounted fire detectors, and a network of tubing connected to emitters placed on the home and around the property.
When the detectors sense an approaching fire (a feat the company claims these devices can perform at a distance of half a mile), the system activates and begins spraying the home and yard with a Class A fire retardant foam called Silv-ex. Think of it as an automatic sprinkler system for the outdoors.
Each FireMaster system comes with 10 gallons of foam concentrate, which retails for about $20 per gallon and has a shelf-life of 20 to 25 years.
After a fire is detected and the system finishes its spray cycle, it temporarily deactivates and re-scans several hours later. If it still senses a fire, it sprays the home again. Each coat can last for up to 12 hours.
For an added fee, the system can be activated online; another added feature allows it to call up to four phone numbers as an alert of its activation.
Consumer Fire Products has sold fewer than 100 of the systems so far, said co-founder and Chief Executive Irene Rhodes. For more information, call (866) 901-2374, or visit www.consumerfireproducts.com.
November 26th, 2007 -- Posted in La Times |
I think this is a great article so I included it in my blog for this month. ENJOY~ Diane
Test-driving hands-free texting services
By David Colker
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 18, 2007
Britney does it.
So does my boss. What about you? It’s texting while driving: the insanely attention-diverting practice of typing out messages on cellphones while barreling down the highway. A law against it in California is set to go into effect in July, but it applies only to drivers under the age of 18. Guess that leaves Britney Spears in the clear.
An abstinence campaign probably wouldn’t have much of an effect either, given how common texting has become as a form of communication.
The most obvious solution, other than self-control, is hands-free texting.
Ford Motor Co. is getting into the game. It will offer a technology upgrade called Sync as an option for some 2008 cars. Among other functions, it can read aloud, via computer voice, incoming text messages. But Sync won’t send messages, which makes for a one-sided conversation.
There are a few products on the market, and more to come, that enable you to send text messages without any pesky typing, directly from your phone.
Not all of them rely solely on technology. Some use human transcribers in India or elsewhere who listen to your spoken message (an impetus for keeping it clean) and then send it along as text.
Others employ voice-to-text technology.
Neither type is infallible. And none of the services tested for this article provided a complete solution.
Because the problem is relatively new, the remedies are in their early stages. Still, some showed promise.
Jott
The test message came out this way: “It actually turns my text to speech, which is kinda the idea if I was in the choir and doing this.”
I was not in a choir, thank goodness for anyone who has heard me try to even hum a tune. The word I actually said, while testing Jott, was “car.”
Someone, most likely offshore, listened to my test message and got the word wrong. In addition, the entire message was presented almost without periods in long, run-on sentences. But slang words, such as kinda, were spelled perfectly.
Maybe the transcriber was learning English from “Welcome Back, Kotter” reruns.
John Pollard, chief executive of Jott, acknowledged that mistakes would be made. But a transcriber is more reliable than currently available speech-to-text programs, he maintained.
“There is no way that speech technology, by itself, can be used over a cellphone in a wide variety of situations,” Pollard said.
The messages were understandable if you didn’t take them literally, and they arrived about 15 minutes after being spoken — not bad considering the human intervention.
Jott, which is still in its preview release, is free to use and Pollard said the company plans to keep it that way, relying on revenue from display advertisements that appear on the text versions of the messages.
Setting up the program is easy. You register online and list the people you’re likely to text, including their e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers.
Then when you’re out driving, you call Jott’s toll-free number. Presumably, you’ll use a voice dialing program or at least speed-dial — otherwise, why bother with hands-free texting? The computer that answers recognizes your cellphone number and makes your contact list available.
You say the name of the person you want to text and then you say the message.
Unfortunately, Jott is a one-way system: It can’t work in reverse to translate incoming text messages into speech.
If someone texts you, fight the urge to read it until you can pull over. Or hope for a traffic jam that will bring you to a stop.
EVA
This is a two-way service. EVA, or Electronic Virtual Assistant, delivers messages to you by voice and then allows you to respond, mostly hands-free.
But the program was so problematic during testing that I nicknamed it “Eva Destruction” after a famed drag performer.
Here is the way it’s supposed to work: You sign up for the service, which EVA calls E-max, and list your VIP contacts. Whenever someone on the list sends you an e-mail, you get a phone call from a computer that reads the message to you. It’s kind of like getting a call from Stephen Hawking, without the brilliance.
At the end of the message, you get the opportunity to respond by recording a reply that goes out as an e-mail attachment.
The limitations start with the fact that the system can’t be used to leave a text message on a phone; it works only with e-mail. Worse, it doesn’t work with all e-mail services.
To sign up for the service, you must have a POP3 e-mail account from a commercial provider such as EarthLink or Charter. Free e-mail accounts from services such as Yahoo or Google usually won’t work, however. And some corporate accounts (latimes.com is an example) won’t cut it with EVA.
Even if you have an e-mail account that the texting service finds agreeable, it might not welcome all messages.
You can try it free for 30 days, then it costs $20 a month.
They’re starting small. Every time I called customer service, I got the same person and sometimes I could hear her baby crying it the background.
EVA’s hands-free texting service might end up being of value, but it has a lot of technical hurdles to overcome before it can be a real player.
Yap
This service will not be available until next year, and it’s not clear if it will be offered to everyone or only through certain cellphone service providers.
But Yap has gotten a lot of buzz, at least partly because its voice recognition software seems so accomplished, even over a cellphone line. It can even translate into texting-style syntax.
For example, say “Where do you want to go tonight?” into a phone loaded with Yap software, and it translates it as “Where do u want 2 go 2night?,” using the contractions that hard-core texters employ.
It could just as easily use the full words, but that would not be cool, according to Yap’s founder, Igor Jablokov.
“That way, their friends don’t think they text like a nerd,” he said.
david.colker@latimes.com
November 20th, 2007 -- Posted in La Times |
Breathing a little freer indoors
Furnishings and finishes that make the place look great can emit harmful gases.
By Jeff Spurrier
Special to The Times
November 15, 2007
When air quality officials declared pollution from wildfires last month to be hazardous, they advised Southern Californians to stay indoors.
Unfortunately, the air inside may not have been much better.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the air indoors is often two to five times more polluted than it is outside. Part of the blame falls on the furnishings and finishes that consumers put in their homes — products that may contain formaldehyde, toluene, benzene, volatile organic compounds (better known as VOCs) and hundreds of other chemicals clinging to every surface.
They might come from your walls, your carpeting, your drapes, your favorite bookcase. “Outgassing” or “off-gassing,” the process is called, and it can last weeks, sometimes years.
“Over 60% of the air you breathe in any closed space is off-gassing from surface materials,” says Ellen Strickland, owner of Livingreen stores in Culver City and Santa Barbara that sell environmentally friendly home products. “It’s an accumulative effect of everything that’s on the walls, furniture, counter surfaces, your clothes, the curtains — anything that’s brought into that space.”
Anthony Bernheim, a San Francisco architect who helped to develop air quality standards for California state office buildings, says the health effects of hundreds of construction materials and home furnishings remain largely unknown.
“We carry things on our clothes, and molecules move back and forth — the sealer on the floors, the furniture, the foam, the fabrics, the drywall,” he says. “There are grout sealers that have problems we’re finding now.”
Our lives already may be overloaded with acronyms, but get acquainted with one more: IAQ — indoor air quality. You probably will hear it much more in the years to come. Like climate change, IAQ is not a single problem. It’s a construct, a dizzying mix of factors that may contribute to headaches, nausea and other health-related complaints.
The growing concern about IAQ can be witnessed in the array of low-VOC paints, formaldehyde-free flooring and other products touting their clean composition. But green washing is prevalent, and the truth is that this problem — and its solutions — aren’t as clear as marketing slogans might suggest.
THE most common indoor air pollutant is formaldehyde, used to bind composite wood products such as plywood, particleboard and medium-density fiberboard. That’s why a colorless toxic gas emanates from some types of cabinetry, flooring, walls, countertops and furniture.
Six months ago the California Air Resources Board adopted new caps on the amount of urea formaldehyde in these products, to take effect in 2009. More stringent emission standards coincide with reports of composite wood from China containing high formaldehyde levels that haven’t been seen in this country in 30 years.
Despite the new rules, even vigilant consumers can be left wondering: What’s in those new kitchen cabinets? Or that upholstered sofa? Or even that so-called green flooring?
Santa Cruz architect Hal Levin has spent nearly 30 years researching building ecology, a term he coined in 1979. He was interested in an environmentally friendly cork veneer widely used by green designers, so he had it tested.
The material was supposed to meet the European standard of 0.1 part per million of formaldehyde, which already was six times higher than standards for California state office buildings, he says. Test results showed that the emissions were five times higher than the European standard, or about 30 times California’s.
“It was being marketed as environmentally friendly, and I’m sure most architects were buying into that,” Levin says. “There are a lot of bad actors out there.”
Indeed, the market is inundated with merchandise that purports to minimize off-gassing or eliminate volatile organic compounds. But what exactly is a VOC?
According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, VOCs are “chemical compounds based on carbon chains or rings with vapor pressures greater than 0.1 millimeters of mercury at room temperature.” In other words, at room temperature, these substances turn into gases and mix into our air.
The problem: Some additives in paint and floor finishes are not categorized as VOCs, but they still vaporize, albeit slowly.
“There are green products with glycols in them, and they may not smell as strong, but they do outgas,” says Mary Cordaro, an environmental consultant who specializes in home air quality. “They’re volatizing more slowly but at high enough rates to still be toxic. It can take six months for some of these glycol chemicals to finally dissipate.”
“Low-VOC” can mean anything a company wants it to mean, says Sam Goldberg, president of American Formulating & Manufacturing, a San Diego firm that makes well-regarded low- and zero-VOC paint under the Safecoat brand name. “There aren’t a lot of great definitions,” he says. “You can have things coming off paint that don’t qualify as VOCs, but they can still be irritating.”
As if VOCs aren’t enough, another threat looms: SVOCs, or semivolatile compounds, which have a higher boiling point. Exposure to SVOCs can lead to birth defects, damage to the reproductive and nervous systems, cancer and other problems, according to the EPA.
“They’re a different problem — a bigger problem,” says Levin, who is consulting with the World Health Organization. He adds that SVOCs have been largely ignored because they are difficult and expensive to analyze.
“SVOCs are something you’re going to hear more and more about,” Cordaro says. “They have a high boiling point, so it’s tough to turn them into a gas, therefore they may never go away.” Instead, she says, SVOCs outgas just a bit, enough to unbind from the source material — flooring, for example — and then stick to surfaces and dust within the home.
IT’S ironic that the newer the house, the worse the IAQ problem can be. Recently built homes are made from products that are just starting their outgassing process, and months, if not years, may pass before it’s done. New houses also tend to be built tighter and more energy-efficient; that prevents heat and air conditioning from escaping, but it also locks in indoor pollutants, creating a concentrated chemical stew.
For most Americans, IAQ may never be an issue. The number of people prone to chemical sensitivity is estimated to be about 13% of the population. But for those who are affected, indoor air has become an extraordinary concern.
Jaimie Trueblood just finished remodeling his Culver City home according to advice from Cordaro, even choosing denim insulation over fiberglass in hopes that every little change will result in a healthier living environment.
“I’ve been asking my contractors to use all these different things, and at the beginning they give me that ‘Are you psycho?’ attitude, and a week later they say, ‘This is great!’ Trueblood says. “People think you’re a jerk at first, but later on they thank you.”
Ex-Dodger catcher Brent Mayne says he thought he had IAQ problems because his kids were always coughing and the house didn’t feel “right.” So when he began to remodel a different home, he researched how to make it healthful from the foundation up. The project took longer, cost 15% more than a traditional remodel and required a leap of faith — not just for him but for his contractor. “It’s like homeopathic medicine,” Mayne says. “Some people think you’re out of your mind.”
He’s been in the house and living with its heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system, or HVAC, for 18 months. The kids have stopped coughing, he says, and his wife is sleeping better. It took the recent fires, however, to really convince him. “We just shut the windows, and with the HVAC system, it’s just unbelievable,” he says. “You go from Armageddon out here with the red skies and ash and bad air, and go inside and you’re in this oasis.”
home@latimes.com
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