Inside its Redmond, Wash., headquarters, Microsoft built a futuristic home, complete with a foyer, living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom and den.
No, it's not where Bill Gates stays when he's in town. It's Microsoft's equivalent of the concept car, showing off things that are possible today and could be affordable -- maybe even prevalent -- within the next three to five years.
When you walk into the home, you're greeted by "Grace," a disembodied voice named after computer pioneer Grace Hopper. Grace gives you a rundown on what's happened since you left, including the news that your electric scooter will be charged in 37 minutes, your daughter got an A on her math test, and you have four voicemail messages.
Microsoft envisions a near-future where everything is connected to the cloud. That means your home will learn a lot about you, including your routine. It can remind you to take your medicine and automatically send a message to your relatives if you do anything out of the ordinary like come home early or leave your doors unlocked.
Hundreds of tiny sensors are located throughout the home, tracking everything from whether your suit is at the cleaners to when a plant needs more light. Knowing what's in your fridge and pantry, the home suggests a suitable recipe, which Grace can read out while you cook.
Microsoft's Home of the Future has been in existence since 1994 and gets a makeover every two years. Nothing on display is actually in Microsoft's product roadmap, but the company believes that much of the technology will make its way into middle-class homes in the coming years. -David Goldman
We've become so tied to our gadgets that a mere hour without them can make us stressed and worried that we're missing something important. A London-based industrial designer wants to change that with text messages imprinted into the skin. Seriously.
Clara Gaggero, who heads Vitamins Design, received a call from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in late 2009. The company asked her firm to "to help solve the problem of mobile phones becoming intrusive," she says.
So Gaggero spent almost a year developing SkinDisplay. It uses piezoelectric technology -- a technique through which an electrical current can stiffen material -- to display raised-up letters on the back of a phone (think Braille). The raised-up message includes the caller's name, a short reason for their call, and one to three dots to indicate urgency.
Receivers merely press a thumb on the raised message, and it's imprinted into their skin -- easy to check on the sly.
"If you're in a meeting and you hear your phone ring, you immediately get stressed out because you can't answer it. Is it an emergency? Is something wrong with the kids? We wanted to give the phone a chance to be discreet," Gaggero says.
She and her team spent two months shadowing 15 people to document their mobile phone behavior. This included tracking a couple on a romantic dinner, a technophobe math teacher and a teenager who sent about 100 texts a day.
"We wanted it to fit in with real-life interactions," Gaggero says.
After several months, she finally presented the work to RIM in late 2010; the BlackBerry maker, in turn, filed to patent the technology a few months later. Gaggero says she doesn't know what RIM will do with the technology, and the company declined to comment for this piece. Here's hoping it won't become vaporware! -Julianne Pepitone
reposted from CNNMoney.com
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