Any architect, builder or scientist can speculate about what the house of the future might be like. But Grace can tell you.

Grace is a talking house. Her high-tech gadgets and innovative uses of everyday objects, along with advances in design and construction, will change the way we think about our homes - and live in them. Grace isn't the only one exploring how technology can make our homes more efficient, safe, comfortable and fun. Here, a sampling of home innovators' best ideas.

Making high tech work for you

Grace is not a real house. More formally known as the Microsoft Home, she exists inside an office building on the company's corporate premises in Redmond, Washington. But once inside, it's easy to imagine you're in a trendy, futuristic home.

Picture this: You enter the house, and Grace's voice, coming from hidden speakers, relays your messages. In the kitchen, you put down a bag of flour on the sleekly engineered stone benchtop. Grace sees what you're doing, and projects a list of flour-based recipes on the benchtop. Once you choose one, Grace recites a list of ingredients. She knows what's in the pantry, thanks to RFID technology (the kind of radio-frequency identification system that lets you go through a road toll by using a tag).

There's also a notice board in the kitchen made of "intelligent fabric" that functions like a touch-screen computer. You can stick up postcards or invitations, and surf the internet with the touch of a finger. The invitation could be RFID-encoded, so sticking it up opens an online reply window. It's part of Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT), which seeks to to unchain the computer - or more accurately the information it provides - from the desk in the corner of the bedroom.

The day when your home will be like a family member is not that far off, says Pam Heath, a manager in consumer strategy and prototyping at Microsoft. This notion of seamless computing, in which technology is everywhere yet nowhere (except when we want it), underlies most future-home thinking. At the Andersen window company in Minnesota, advanced technology manager Jay Libby envisions windows made of smart glass that can be transformed into a television.