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New technologies are changing how we shop for home decor.

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We’ve officially reached peak interior design awesomeness: You can confidently buy a new sofa without ever leaving your current one. No, it’s not just that you can shop online, it's that you can solve all of the pain points that come with larger purchases right from where you sit. Typically, when spending bigger bucks for furniture, people worry about how it will look up close, if it will fit in their space, and how exactly it will jell with the rest of the items they want to buy. Fortunately, digital masterminds have been hard at work coming up with clever new tools to help us buy without remorse. These features do not replace interior designers—we need experts who have great taste, understand the flow of a space, and have connections with brands and contractors. These tools simply empower design novices and homebodies to make purchasing and design decisions on their own. And better buys mean less returns, less waste, and less hassle. Everybody wins! Read on to learn more about how to virtually shop, stage, and design your dream space.

Related:The 29 Best Furniture Stores of 2023 for Every Style and Budget

For many of us, Pinterest and imagination have gone a long way to helping us nail our vision and design for our homes, but augmented and virtual reality are changing the way we plan our spaces. Hilah Stahl and John Kenny launched Spoak, an interior design studio and design suite, back in 2020. The service was a quick hit with design lovers and aspiring designers because it’s easy (or easier than learning Photoshop) to create room renderings, mood boards, floor plans, and more. Users can enter measurements and stock their space with real items across a variety of brands. “Very rarely is someone buying an entirely West Elm living room,” Stahl says. “This offers you a chance to build a room without having to accommodate different brand catalogs.” Stahl just used the program to design her new home. “It felt comforting knowing these things would fit through the front door, and that the heights and colors matched,” she says. “That’s an invaluable level of confidence.” Beyond helping you feel good about real-life purchasing decisions, virtual design is also just fun, and many users on Spoak enjoy just playing around with products and ideas.

IKEA was an early adopter of augmented-reality room planning, which makes sense because they’re known for their creative full-room in-store displays. Checking out each “room” is one of the best parts of going to IKEA (along with the meatballs and tiny measuring tapes). IKEA saw the value of at-home design in June 2022 and launched IKEA Kreativ—a way for people to explore their thousands of products and create custom spaces. The latest version of the app lets customers design their own showrooms (that’s the dream, isn’t it?). “Today, we see customers are using IKEA Kreativ to design complete spaces,” says Amanda Effron, chief digital officer at IKEA U.S. “They’re also using it to make decisions around considered purchases; for example, that one big item to add to a space—be it a bed, sofa, or entertainment unit.”

Figuring out your design plan is incredibly helpful, but let’s not forget about the shopping part. Many of us will avoid going into an actual store at all costs. It’s just so much easier to click a few buttons while binge-watching a TV show than it is to get dressed, maybe wear real pants with buttons (oof) and hustle to a store. Sofas and other big purchases will typically prompt people to get up and go, but a few brands have taken away that need with their own virtual showrooms and augmented reality features. Furniture brand Rove Concepts opened the proverbial doors to their AR 3D planner in 2021, offering people who couldn’t get to a store (or didn’t want to, no judgment) the chance to really examine all of their items without physically being there. Users can see pieces in any colorway or upholstery, and check it out from every angle (360 degrees), then see how the item will look in their own homes thanks to augmented reality. 

The app’s next update will solve another pain point: in-store shopping not only provides us with a chance to check out items, but to also see how experts style the items. The next iteration of the Rove Concepts virtual showroom will allow users to explore a 10-GB studio (read: very realistic and kind of game-like) through their browsers, giving them the chance to “visit” an actual showroom and see full room scenes. “Virtual design is only scratching the surface on what is possible for the industry,” says Art Lee, founder and CEO of Rove Concepts. The company's goal is to provide customers with tools that provide a pro-level design process—without the design degree or AutoCAD software. “This will change your everyday person's access to design ideation for the home,” he says.  

While many companies, including Rove Concepts, are turning to apps and 3D features to help shoppers buy with confidence, Houzz is focusing on featuring products from across different industries and manufacturers. They launched their app back in 2010 and were one of the first in the game to lean on AR as part of their consumer strategy. “We wanted to deliver people a more effective way to shop online because it’s often hard to judge the size and scale of items,” says Liza Hausman, VP of industry marketing at Houzz. They have millions (literally, millions) of products that users can view in 3D in their own homes, and not just chairs or sofas but also bathroom hardware, lights, or even tiles. Yes, it can lay tiles for you virtually using AR. “It’s a win across the board,” Hausman says. “It’s good for us, certainly, because people are making more purchases, but they’re also less likely to return the items.” 

Related:The 12 Different Types of Tiles, Explained by Experts

Houzz also has roots in AR tools meant specifically for design professionals, which are generally more complex and are made for presentations and layers of interactivity. Their program, Houzz Pro, features 3D floor plans as well as tools for professionals, such as invoicing and project management. Other apps, like Apple's ARki, are also focused on the pro set, offering real-time AR for architectural models so changes and tweaks can be made almost immediately. 

Stahl believes that in the next three to five years, almost every home company will have a 3D and augmented-reality platform—and if she’s right, everyone benefits (including the environment, thanks to less driving and fewer returns). Hopefully, someday, we’ll be able to click a button and have our desired furniture magically appear in our apartments (preferably already assembled), but until then, these services take a lot of the fear and guesswork out of home design.

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The term “metaverse” was coined by author Neal Stephenson in 1992, painting with astounding accuracy a picture about technology that would eventually leave the fictional realm. Little did he know his sci-fi concept would permeate the real world and end up getting so much attention from businesses and investors across the globe. The metaverse is gaining more steam by the minute, and many big names in the stock market are getting involved.

See: 3 Things You Must Do When Your Savings Reach $50,000

With metaverse stocks turning into a hot Topic on Wall Street, they’ve quickly become one of the most widely followed financial trends. If you are curious about this investment option and are considering adding metaverse stocks to your investment portfolio, these picks will help get you started.

What Are the Best Metaverse Stocks To Buy?

With many metaverse stocks becoming a focus in the financial world these days, it can become overwhelming to track all of them. Here are six metaverse stocks you could profit from in 2023:

1. Sony Group (SONY)

2. Match Group (MTCH)

3. Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO)

4. Nvidia (NVDA)

5. Autodesk (ADSK)

6. Microsoft (MSFT)

1. Sony Group (SONY)

In a June 2022 interview, CEO Kenichiro Yoshida revealed the metaverse as a growth area for Sony, with building a metaverse around entertainment as its first priority. It’s a natural progression for a company that’s already firmly established as a market leader in cutting-edge entertainment technology and content.

2. Match Group (MTCH)

This dating industry giant is mostly known as the parent company of Tinder and Match.com. It has little competition in the world of dating apps, plenty of untapped market potential — and plans to launch a virtual environment for singles. Despite a high price-to-earnings ratio, which suggests the stock could be priced high, this one could be a good choice for investors comfortable with a riskier stock.

3. Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO)

This video game publisher is responsible for industry hits like Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K and Red Dead Redemption. The company’s virtual multiplayer platform, GTA Online, brings in well over half a billion dollars per year in in-app transactions.

4. Nvidia (NVDA)

This company produces graphics and video processing chips for artificial intelligence and high-end computing. It’s an investor favorite, and now it’s playing a massive role in powering the metaverse.

5. Autodesk (ADSK)

In addition to publishing ubiquitous industrial and architectural 3D design software like AutoCAD, Autodesk has visual effects, virtual reality and generative design software that developers and creatives can use to create virtual worlds and assets, including non-fungible tokens.

6. Microsoft (MSFT)

Last year, Microsoft announced it would acquire gaming company Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal that will deliver it access to Activision’s gaming titles, including bestsellers like Call of Duty, as well as its approximately 390 million monthly users, according to Cointelegraph. The acquisition is among Microsoft’s latest metaverse plays, following its Mesh for Teams mixed-reality space and HoloLens, its augmented reality headset and platform. The company also has a partnership with Meta, which will use Microsoft products on its virtual-reality headsets.

What Is a Metaverse Stock?

In a nutshell, metaverse stock is the capital raised by metaverse-related businesses and corporations through the issue and subscription of shares. It’s a security that represents ownership of a small fraction of one of these companies.

Many people already live, work and play in the metaverse without even realizing it. Those who play video games like Roblox and Fortnite or own NFTs and cryptocurrency are part of this new virtual experience. Other spaces in the metaverse include popular dating apps, virtual and augmented reality platforms and even social media. Some analysts say it’s a good idea to start buying and developing virtual land and assets in the metaverse space, which is bound to keep on growing and gaining financial power.

How Big Will the Metaverse Be?

With Meta Platforms in the spotlight, many companies wanted to partake in the metaverse craze. It’s estimated that the global metaverse market could reach $800 billion by the end of 2024.

The metaverse could be the next big thing in the stock market, and you might want to jump on the bandwagon sooner than later. The options listed above are a good place to start if you want to dip your toes in the metaverse stock world. Most have solid track records in the physical world and seem well positioned to lead the transition to the virtual one.

FAQ

• Can you invest in the metaverse?

  • Think of the metaverse as a new-and-improved internet. While you can't invest in the internet, per se, because it isn't a specific thing owned by a specific entity, you can buy stock in companies involved in building the network and creating the websites people use to shop, socialize, learn, play and work. The same is true for the metaverse — you can invest in the metaverse by investing in metaverse stock.

• How do I buy metaverse stocks?

  • You can purchase shares in metaverse companies by opening a brokerage account — most simply by signing up with an online broker or an investing app. Once your account is active and you've funded it with money from a bank account or credit or debit card, you can select and purchase stocks.

• What is the best metaverse stock?

  • Stocks are not one-size-fits-all investments. The best one for you depends on your budget and your risk tolerance. A metaverse stock like Sony or Microsoft could be a good choice if you prefer safer stocks in well-established companies, even if the stocks appreciate slowly. More aggressive investors hoping for higher returns might opt for a comparatively speculative stock like Match Group despite the higher risk. Either way, never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Daria Uhlig contributed to the reporting for this article.

Data is accurate as of Feb. 4, 2023, and is subject to change.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 6 Best Metaverse Stocks To Invest In

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

AUSTIN, TX, Feb 08, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE via COMTEX) -- AUSTIN, TX, Feb. 08, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BOXX Technologies, the leading innovator of high-performance computer workstations, rendering systems, and servers, today announced that its entry level APEXX E3 workstation now features 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 and i9 processors. The new CPUs offer exceptional performance for CAD, 3D design, motion media, and other professional software applications. BOXX is among the first workstation manufacturers to ship systems equipped with the new processors.

John Vondrak
BOXX Technologies
5128523326
jvondrak@boxx.com

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

On the morning of January 10, 1969, thirteen graduate students gathered inside Yale’s Art and Architecture Building to deliver their final presentations in a studio led by the married architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. The students had spent the previous semester studying the urban design of Las Vegas, including a ten-day visit to the city during which they sketched hotel façades, measured nighttime illumination levels on the Strip, and crashed the opening gala for the Circus Circus Casino while wearing thrift-shop formal wear.

The agenda for the day stretched for more than eleven hours, with presentations on each of the studio’s dozen research categories, several short films (one of them shot from a helicopter borrowed from Howard Hughes), and breaks for lunch and dinner. The experts who assembled to discuss the results—the jury, in art- and architecture-school parlance—included the prominent Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully (whose son, Daniel, was a student in the studio) and the writer Tom Wolfe, whose 1964 Esquire essay “Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can’t Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!!” was an inspiration for Scott Brown and Venturi.

The following week, Venturi wrote a letter of thanks to some of the jurors, alluding to some of the raised eyebrows that he and Scott Brown encountered while bringing a close study of billboards and casino layouts into the architectural academy: “We think it went well in general,” he told them, “but I am still a little unbelieving that some people can’t understand we just wanted to look at Las Vegas in a dead-pan way which is also a poetic way of long standing.”

The book that emerged from this research, “Learning from Las Vegas,” published by M.I.T. Press in the fall of 1972 and credited to Scott Brown, Venturi, and their teaching assistant Steven Izenour, turned fifty last year. While it remains among the four or five most influential books on twentieth-century American urban form—alongside Jane Jacobs’s “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1961), Rem Koolhaas’s “Delirious New York” (1978), and Mike Davis’s “City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles” (1990)—it has also never quite outrun the critique that Venturi identified in that letter, a criticism that begins with suspicion of the idea that Las Vegas could ever be a subject worthy of serious architectural study.

The Times review of “Learning from Las Vegas,” by Roger Jellinek, carried the following headline: “In Praise (!) of Las Vegas.” Certainly, the conventional wisdom by that point saw Las Vegas and cities like it—and urban sprawl generally—as a scourge. (The Times had used a nearly identical headline, “In Praise (!) of Los Angeles,” less than a year earlier, for Jellinek’s review of Reyner Banham’s “Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies.”) The architect and critic Peter Blake’s widely read 1964 book, “God’s Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape,” saw evidence in the postwar commercial strip, with its jumble of gas stations and drive-ins, of “the decline, fall and subsequent disintegration of urban civilization in the United States.” The German philosopher Theodor Adorno made a similar argument (in similarly apocalyptic prose) in an essay called “The Schema of Mass Culture”: “The neon sentences which hang over our cities and outshine the natural light of the night with their own are comets presaging the natural disaster of society, its frozen death.”

Scott Brown and Venturi were certainly comfortable staking out a contrarian position; it was then, and long remained, their go-to move. “Learning from Las Vegas” prompted just the kind of polarized reaction they were aiming for. It dominated discussion within architectural circles and won praise from younger critics, like Paul Goldberger, who wrote in the Times that “the Venturis,” as they were sometimes called in those days, had, by giving Las Vegas so much attention, “infuriated other architects, fascinated students and made themselves perhaps the most controversial figures in American architecture today.” The book also reached an audience of general-interest readers, for whom it explained changes in American cities which were increasingly difficult to ignore but hadn’t yet been framed in such an engaging way. The book’s first run of two thousand copies quickly sold out, and it has stayed in print ever since.

But did “Learning from Las Vegas”—and the Yale studio that inspired it—really set out to praise the architecture and urbanism of the Strip? Or was it meant instead as a cautionary tale about sprawl, a phenomenon that could be seen at its “purest and most intense,” as the authors put it, in Las Vegas? The answer is both—and neither. What struck me when I went back to reread the book is how deliberately it works to collapse the distance, and therefore the distinction, between enthusiasm and skepticism, and ultimately between documentation and critique. Above all, “Learning from Las Vegas” argues for a curious and open-minded anti-utopianism, for understanding cities as they are rather than how planners wish they might be—and then using that knowledge, systematically and patiently won, as the basis for new architecture. “Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect,” the authors wrote. “Not the obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and begin again, as Le Corbusier suggested in the 1920s, but another, more tolerant way; that is, to question how we look at things.”

Scott Brown and Venturi first visited Las Vegas together in November of 1966, a year before they were married. The trip was her idea. A young widow from South Africa, Scott Brown had begun teaching at U.C.L.A.’s new School of Architecture and Urban Planning after earning a master’s degree from and serving on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where she and Venturi met. At first, she thought that Los Angeles might make the most useful laboratory for studying the emerging urbanism of car-centric cities—for employing the analytical method that she self-deprecatingly called “town watching”—before realizing that Las Vegas offered a petri dish of more manageable size. “We rode around from casino to casino, dazed by the desert sun and dazzled by the signs, both loving and hating what we saw,” she recalled. “We were jolted clear out of our aesthetic skins.”

As is often the case when architects travel—especially architects who write—the jolt wasn’t simply a reaction to what they saw. It was also an electrifying realization that what they were seeing might be material, fodder for a potent follow-up to Venturi’s influential first book, “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.” (That book, published in 1966, argued that modern architecture, by stripping away references to earlier landmarks or design movements, had drained new buildings of nuance and verve in favor of “prim dreams of pure order.” It also looked ahead to some of the preoccupations of the Yale studio by asking, in a reference to the American city-making of the era, “Is not Main Street almost all right?”) What if the pair mined their ambivalence about Las Vegas, that feeling of “both loving and hating what we saw,” for insights about the state of the postwar American city?

The trip formed the basis for a 1968 Architectural Forum essay by Scott Brown and Venturi, titled “A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas,” which gave rise to the studio and a formal book proposal. Scott Brown later suggested that “Learning from Las Vegas” wasn’t really about Las Vegas but instead about the broader “symbolism of architectural form,” and there is something to that notion. The book is preoccupied with the ways in which vernacular architecture in Las Vegas and places like it had begun to respond to the dominance of the car—and with how travelling by car through cities affects our understanding of speed, distance, and the information conveyed by signs of all kinds. “Is the sign the building or is the building the sign?” the authors ask. “These relationships, and combinations between signs and buildings, between architecture and symbolism, between form and meaning, between driver and the roadside are deeply relevant to architecture today and have been discussed at length by several writers. But they have not been studied in detail or as an overall system.”

Most architecture students over the years have read the shorter second edition of the book, a paperback published in 1977, but the 1972 large-format hardcover version is the livelier and more revealing document, if also the more contentious editorial product. It is divided into three parts. The first largely reproduces the Architectural Forum essay and includes a close study of the Strip’s architecture, signage, and street furniture. The second provides an analysis of how trends visible in Las Vegas relate to larger developments in architecture and urbanism. This section is anchored by a tribute to “ugly and ordinary” architecture, including a now famous distinction between buildings that are “ducks,” which is to say, commercial structures that take the shape of what they’re selling—a Mexican-food shop in Los Angeles resembling a giant tamale, for example—and those that are “decorated sheds,” or expediently made buildings that gain energy from signage and ornament. In short, the duck is a symbol; the decorated shed applies symbols to a more conventional architectural frame.

Many late-modern buildings, in Venturi and Scott Brown’s view, had become by the nineteen-sixties a species of duck, their flat roofs and spare geometry existing primarily to advertise their architectural loyalties—to sell stale International Style tamales, as it were. (As Ada Louise Huxtable put it in reviewing “Learning from Las Vegas” for The New York Review of Books, “The modern building has rejected decoration only to become one big decorative object in itself.”) Scott Brown and Venturi much preferred the decorated shed, in no small part because of the high-low frisson produced when sophisticated architects mixed straightforward design choices with ironic and over-scaled ones, as they themselves would do for the rest of their career.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Feb 10, 2023 (Heraldkeepers) -- New Jersey, United States Key players can grow and extend their business by expanding their product range and referring to the vital market data included in this Mechanical CAD Software Market research report. This global research also describes continuously evolving client needs to assist new entrants in making necessary changes in the final product launch and then bringing into the Mechanical CAD Software Market.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

From Lancaster’s Penn Square, pick a direction, start walking and pay attention.

“It’s an architectural history lesson,” says Suzanne Stallings, a historic preservationist specialist.

Always on the hunt for both history and beauty, she’ll often walk past a building that would be prized elsewhere.

“Here, it’s just kind of ignored,” she says. “And that’s sad.”

As part of the bureau of planning of Lancaster’s Department of Community Planning and Economic Development, Stallings created two self-guided architectural walking tours throughout Lancaster: along East King Street and Mussertown/Churchtown in Southeast Lancaster. Both tours, plus a West Chestnut Street tour, are online. You can follow the tours on foot. On a bitter winter day, you can take the tour virtually without stepping outside.

The tours help people learn more about Lancaster’s history and how it’s evolved. Stallings selected these stops, which are open to the public and have evolved as well, through construction.

Economical Alternative APEXX E3, Purpose-Built to Optimize Workflows Across Multiple Industries, Expands to 24 CPU Cores and Accelerates to 5.8GHz

BOXX APEXX E3

BOXX APEXX E3

AUSTIN, TX, Feb. 08, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BOXX Technologies, the leading innovator of high-performance computer workstations, rendering systems, and servers, today announced that its entry level APEXX E3 workstation now features 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 and i9 processors. The new CPUs offer exceptional performance for CAD, 3D design, motion media, and other professional software applications. BOXX is among the first workstation manufacturers to ship systems equipped with the new processors.

“Intel is making it easier than ever for creators to translate their visions into reality with the latest 13th Gen Intel Core processors,” said Intel’s Roger Chandler, Vice President and General Manager, Creator and Workstation Solutions, Client Computing Group. “From intensive tasks like CAD and 3D modeling, to video editing and game development, BOXX APEXX E3 systems powered by Intel Core processors deliver increased performance and responsiveness for professionals who expect the most out of their systems.”

13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 and i9 processors featuring performance hybrid architecture are designed to Strengthen hardware and software efficiency and performance with multiple cores and features like Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, 20 total CPU PCIe lanes, and up to 36MB Intel Smart Cache.

The new 24-core Intel processor inside the economical APEXX E3 runs up to 5.8GHz max turbo frequency, while the powerful BOXX workstation also includes advanced liquid cooling, 128GB of memory, and an NVIDIA® RTX™ A2000 GPU. Support for the latest DDR5 provides control over memory configuration, while Thunderbolt 4 support provides simple and fast peripheral connections. Offering high performance at a lower price, APEXX E3 is purpose-built for SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and Revit, Adobe Creative Cloud, Cinema 4D, V-Ray, and other applications.

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“In a challenging economy, architects, engineers, 3D designers, and motion media artists often have to choose price over performance when making computer hardware decisions,” said Bill Leasure, BOXX VP of Sales and Marketing. “APEXX E3 featuring new 13th Gen Intel® Core™ processors is the perfect solution. It’s a lower cost workstation that is still a powerful upgrade over their current system and will keep them competitive creatively and solid financially.”

For further information and pricing on the APEXX E3 workstation, contact a BOXX sales consultant in the US at 1-877-877-2699. Learn more about BOXX systems, finance options, and how to contact worldwide resellers, by visiting www.boxx.com.

 About BOXX Technologies

 BOXX is the leading innovator of high-performance computer workstations, rendering systems, and servers for engineering, product design, architecture, visual effects, animation, deep learning, and more. For 27 years, BOXX has combined record-setting performance, speed, and reliability with unparalleled industry knowledge to become the trusted choice of creative professionals worldwide. For more information, visit www.boxx.com.

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