Greetings from the present, Techies! We’ve time traveled here to Today from Yesterday, to tell you about all the new and exciting things that are coming Tomorrow, courtesy of CES 2014!

Is that a smartphone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

On this episode of Technically Speaking, Joe and Jacob report LIVE FROM CES… er, wait, no. It’s not actually live. And neither of them are actually at CES. But you get the point… Anyway, where was I?

Oh right! CES! And what was the buzz about during CES this year? Surprisingly, it wasn’t smartphones or televisions or laptops, but “The Connected Home“. We found a lot of great products that we loved that mixed home security and home automation in a way that traditional systems never did. Are consumers are going to be either elated and confused, as the myriad of products and protocols comes onto the market at near the same time? (We counted no less than 9 different wireless connectivity protocols on-site at CES. What is Qualcomm thinking?) What do you think? Are you interested in any of these devices, or do you think it’s just a gimmick? Let us know!

Next, we move onto a smarter way to build homes – and if you listen to our show regularly, you can probably already guess what we’re thinking – 3D Printing of course! Unfortunately, we don’t know enough about concrete to make a judgement on the longevity of this particular construction technique, but given the success and prevalence of traditional concrete homes, it’s likely that this type of structure will surprise us with it’s versatility. We like this particular system design, because it appears to easily scale-able. The scale model print-head is already functional, and scaling up simply requires employing traditional crane-and-gantry structures. Is this the future of home construction? We don’t really know, but we suspect it’s success will be highly dependent upon the quality of materials.

Finally, on the latest iteration of the Brainstorm, we respond to a post on the BrachioBoard forums about what factors affect fuel efficiency in cars. And woops! We got a little carried away! What is the bigger contributor to fuel consumption – weight, or aerodynamics? Why do Power and Fuel Consumption appear to be inversely proportional? And what technology will we see in the future that will improve fuel economy? Find out more when you listen!

We were really excited about this week’s topics, but we want to know what you think! Does a smart home intrigue you? So, thoughts? Let us know with an email, a comment on Facebook, a shout-out on Twitter, or a comment below! Or, if you like our answer, leave us a review on iTunes!

Run Time: 1:33:03

Music: “The House of the Rising Sun” – The Animals