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As more people move into cities, natural resources decline, climate change heats up, and the "sharing economy" continues to pick up steam, our notions of family will continue to shift.

five different types of families of the future: the Multi-Gens, the Silver Linings, Ruralites, the Tandem Tribe, and Modular Movers. The firm also work out how different brands might service each family type

The Multi-Gens are exactly what they sound like--multiple generations of families living together.

ay you’re a time-starved man with a hankering to dress better. Just sign up on Trunk Club, one of whose style experts will call or email you shortly after to talk about your vision for your wardrobe. A few days later, a bemused FedEx employee shows up at your door bearing a trademark "trunk" (made of cardboard), which contains 10 or so items of clothing.

Finding someone who knows style is less important than finding someone who understands sales and relationship management

We have between 40 and 50 now, and 90% are women. They tend to have a background that includes sales, but rarely retail.

Gimenez’s take is “shoppable Instagram:” an app that uses image recognition and a large collection of retailers — 400-500 merchants selling over two million items from upwards of 15,000 brands — to create a more engaging and ultimately more fruitful social commerce experience.

Social commerce, the idea of buying products listed on social media sites, is huge in Asia.

“When you see anything online or on Instagram, the frustration is that you can’t shop even when people are using it as merchants,

What makes this device very interesting is that it is extremely cheap to make. Replicating the human skin involves creating a device that can detect pressure, touch, proximity, temperature, humidity, flow, and pH levels all at the same time. In order to achieve this, one would expect that highly sophisticated sensors and circuits will be used. That does not happen to be the case. This team used common household items such as sticky notes, napkins, aluminum foils and sponges to create the paper skin. The whole device cost only $1,67 to make.

“My vision is to make electronics simple to understand and easy to assemble so that ordinary people can participate in innovation.”

Compared to various pricey sensors out there, the paper skin looks to be a good alternative with many potential applications. According to test results, it has already been seen that the paper skin performs on the same level as the more expensive sensors currently available.

Mattel unveiled its new, $300 3D Printer, the “ThingMaker,” which will allow children to print their own toys at home

While there are affordably priced 3D printers available today, the software that works with them can sometimes have a learning curve that can hinder adoption. With the new application, live now on iOS and Android, the goal was to make it easy enough for anyone to design their own toys – even younger children

The idea isn’t just to print an object and be done, however – instead, kids will print parts that can be assembled to form larger creations, like dolls, robots, dinosaurs, scorpions, skeletons, bracelets or necklaces, for example

A team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex have developed the world's first functioning sonic tractor beam able to operate outside of a lab environment.

These waves create an "acoustic hologram" (read: force field) capable of moving pea-sized objects without physically touching them. Adjusting the output of individual speakers allows the researchers to move, rotate and hold items at will.

Microsoft’s own virtual assistant Cortana, aim to help pave the way for the future of communication, productivity, and interactions with businesses and brands.

In Skype, the company showed off rich Cortana integration which put the assistant directly into the app where she could help users do things like identify the persons, places and things in your messages, underline them, and then display more info in a card-like interface when clicked.

She is also able to help you perform a variety of tasks, like adding items to your calendar, booking travel or hotel rooms, or even pre-populating conversations to friends with text.

MoviePass, which opens up to 75,000 wait-listed users today, is an invite-only subscription-based service that lets you pay between $19.99 and $34.99 a month to watch up to one in-theater movie per day

Unlike Netflix viewership, theatrical attendance tends to heavily peak twice a year, during Oscars season and the summer blockbusters.

Spikes says this demographic is also more likely to drive post-theater purchases, such as DVDs, soundtracks, and branded merchandise. To that end, he says MoviePass will be exploring options to offer these items through its service in the future