This week’s SmartHome roundup features a partnership to bolster smart home innovations, a cloud-connected home, and a house that talks back.

GE & Quirky’s collaboration

We can expect more innovative smart home appliances from both GE and Quirky, as the two companies have expanded their partnership.  The companies will be co-developing and launching 30 new products on their connected home device line over the next five years.

As part of the expanded partnership, GE will take a minority equity stake in Quirky with a strategic investment of $30 million, plus in-kind services, to drive faster innovation and scale in what’s expected be a $25 billion connected devices market, according to GE.  The company will also help promote the said products, support the WINK platform which is designed to be the standard communication platform for connected home appliances, and develop several premium countertop appliances.

Quirky was able to raise $79M in this Series D round of funding from GE with the participation of current Quirky investors Andreessen Horowitz, Norwest Venture Partners, RRE and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

“Invention and manufacturing are GE’s lifeblood. We’ve been impressed by how Quirky opens and speeds invention and making, and we are excited by the response from major retailers and communities so far. As GE grows its core by connecting its brilliant industrial machines to the Internet, we think it is important that consumers experience connected things in easy-to-use, everyday ways. The Quirky partnership allows us to re-invent our co-branded consumer products in delightful ways by opening up our brand to more ideas and new audiences,” Beth Comstock, GE SVP and chief marketing officer, said.

Talking smart homes

As home appliances get smarter and more connected, we may be facing a future wherein our homes will now be able to talk to us.  The Intelligent Home is a prototype smart home in Lake Nona, Florida that features a smart kitchen that tells you what to eat if you’re trying to lose some weight, or will read out recipes based on the ingredients you have available in your pantry or refrigerator.  It also has a smart mirror that knows your weight, blood pressure, and the last time you worked out, and can tell you if you need to lose weight.

Though this may sound a bit creepy or annoying, depending on what your home appliances actually say to you — this may soon be our future as we strive to live healthier and more connected lives.

The Cloud of Things

Imagine if you could keep your home clutter-free, but at the same time have everything you want and need on hand.  Sounds impossible?  Right now, maybe, but in the future, we can be looking at homes equipped with interactive posters that store all the media you need.  Objects and Interactions submitted a project called The Cloud of Things, which pertains to a technology that greatly utilizes the use of the cloud.  What this does is make all your media, from books, videos, songs, art, available digitally.

This project fuses cloud storage and the physical storage of things.  The project is described to work like this: a person packs his stuff in a transparent bag equipped with RFID chips for tracking.The packages will then be picked up and transported to a facility where everything is scanned and turned into digital copies.  After scanning, your items will be stored.  You will then get a digital, interactive poster to access the digital copies of your stuff.

So if you need a book that you put into storage, just use the poster to get your copy, no need to go to the storage facility to retrieve the book itself.  It’s a great way to minimize clutter at home, as well as properly store you goods, and keep track of where your things are.