Unless you’re in the minority of people who don’t care to post their whole lives online, you probably leave a lot of information about yourself and your typical daily routine out there in cyberspace. The Future Control project from designer Dor Tal is a set of smart objects that can predict what’s going to happen to (and around) you next.

The objects are to be paired with a smartphone and a proprietary app. The app looks at at the user’s social media networks to find info on the user as well as his or her interests and any groups, friends, organizations or events that might affect the user’s daily life. Allowing the app access to more of your information will, naturally, give it more ability to predict what will happen in the course of your day. Do you always stop off for a coffee at the same time every day? Based on your credit card information, the Future Control can predict that – but telling you something you already know isn’t that spectacular.

What’s really cool is what the Future Control does with the information. The objects – a smartwatch or tiny projector – scour information from your networks and contacts to predict how certain events will go. In the video above, the app analyzes texts between team members to predict that their presentation will not be ready on time so that you, the user, can reschedule the presentation.

The relevant information can be displayed on a wall if you’re at home or the office, and controlled with hand gestures. When you’re on the go, the wristwatch can project the necessary messages right onto your hand. This brilliant concept was part of Dor Tal’s graduation project as an exploration of humans’ age-old obsession with trying to predict the future.

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Gorilla Glass has invaded just about every smartphone on the market, but it’s about to get even more awesome. MIT’s Mobile Technology Summit included information on what is coming next for the world’s most amazing glass.

The material is already super-strong, scratch-resistant and durable, but Corning wants to make it anti-reflective and antimicrobial. In the picture above the glass appears to be missing a large circle from the middle, but it’s actually just coated with Corning’s anti-reflective coating. Imagine being able to play games on your phone outdoors on a sunny day!

But even more exciting than the anti-glare feature is the fact that the future Gorilla Glass will also be antimicrobial. Considering that we take our smartphones literally everywhere with us – even the bathroom – it can’t be a bad idea to make the screen a little less funky germ-wise.

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While 3D printing typically takes place on a horizontal flat surface, a couple of inventors have created a mechanism that allows 3D printing to take place without a dedicated print surface. With no support material needed, it’s technically an anti-gravity 3D printer.

Petr Novikov and Saša Jokić are the brains behind Mataerial, a 3D printer that can work without a dedicated print surface. It looks a lot like a robot arm from an automobile assembly line. Its specialized print heads use a filament that is much thicker and dries quicker than typical 3D printing devices.

While still innovative and captivating, Mataerial doesn’t do detail well and can’t quite capture the intricacies that a typical 3D printer can. But the possibilities created by this giant extremity are almost endless.

The post 3D Printer is Like an Anti-Gravity Make-Anything Machine first appeared on Gajitz.

Back in 1967, the 21st century seemed like a magical future world in which we would all have robot servants and be able to do anything and everything from the comfort of our own homes. While that second part kind of did come true (this writer ordered a case of toilet paper from Amazon last week and it came right to my front door), the future actually looks quite a bit different than the people of the 60s imagined it would.

Back then, legendary journalist Walter Cronkite had a weekly 30-minute program called “The 21st Century,” in which he would describe for his enraptured viewers all of the amazing technology that would exist in about 40 years. The March 12, 1967 episode was all about the 21st century home and the then-unbelievable services that would be available to future Americans.

As Cronkite tours a mock-up of a futuristic home, he explains how the home will be self-sufficient, running on its own private fuel cell and recirculating its own water supply. The predicted living room looks a lot like an actual 21st century living room (minus the distinctly 60s aesthetic). There is a huge 3D television, a surround sound stereo system, and a console from which all of the home’s various gadgets can be controlled – although our “control console” looks more like a smartphone or a laptop computer.

One prediction which unfortunately did not come true for most Americans is Cronkite’s assertion that the standard work week would be 30 hours and all workers, as a rule, would be granted month-long vacations. But he also predicted that more of us would work from home, and the home office of the 21st century would be a truly high-tech wonder.

Cronkite shows off the console and screens that will allow business people of the future to read the news, check the weather and even keep up on their stocks, all from a home office. He also predicts video phones, which never really worked out in reality but Skype and FaceTime come pretty close. One thing he couldn’t predict is the horrible pop-up ads for mail order Russian brides that interrupt your checking the news, weather and stocks.

One of the weirdest parts of the future-home tour is the kitchen. Cronkite predicts that cooking will all be automated, with some kind of automated chef selecting the ingredients for pre-programmed meals and then assembling and cooking them in a microwave oven. The dishes are all plastic and molded on the spot, then after the meal they are melted down to be recycled and used again at the next meal. So he missed the mark by a bit there, but as for the rest of the program – it comes remarkably close to how we actually live in the 21st century.

The post The High-Tech Home of 2001 as it Was Imagined in 1967 first appeared on Gajitz.

The Jetsons promised us self-making beds, and they’re here at long last. Spanish furniture company OHEA has invented a bed that goes from slept-in and mussed up to neat and tidy in 50 short seconds. Which is probably about 15 seconds longer than it would take you to do it yourself, but what are you, a robot housekeeper or something? When the bed is activated, a mechanical arm smooths out the sheets and covers. The pillows are lifted up and straightened, then dropped back onto the bed after the bed is tidy.

There is no danger of a Fifth Element-type entrapment from the bed making itself while you’re lying in it. The self-making bed has two settings: manual, which activates the bed only on your command, and automatic, which starts making the bed after it has been vacant for three seconds. It would be pretty annoying to come back from a midnight bathroom trip to find the bed in the middle of its cycle, though.

The post Real Self-Making Bed: Where Have You Been All Our Lives? first appeared on Gajitz.