The Next Big Thing(s) in Tech - rodgerspromptiff

All of the technology products we use today–from touchscreens to tablets to social networks–were once the "next mature thing in tech." Experts predicted that each of these things would become a part of everyone's technical school life, before most of us had even detected of them.

Of course, experts also foreseen that Apple would go out of business earlier 1998.

No prediction of the future is perfect (non even if you're Tom Cruise in Minority Report), but that isn't going to stop United States of America from making our predictions for the following big thing in technical school.

Smartphones Will Substitute Desktops

John Herlihy, Google's VP of online gross sales, believes that the desktop has about three years before phones substitute it. And he first made that prediction a year ago.

Previously, alone business people with BlackBerrys used phones for everything, including two-needled tasks much as email. Now, according to a unused Nielsen smartphone report, 43 percent of mobile phone users undergo smartphones. People manipulation phones to do things that secondhand to be reticent for desktop PCs, much as surf the Web, play games, and watch video.

Finally, mobile devices will replace traditional computers completely. Lewis Henry Morgan Henry M. Stanley psychoanalyst Blessed Virgin Meeker thinks that smartphone sales will surpass reckoner gross revenue as early A next class.

Nanotech Batteries

Battery engineering announced in September by the National University of Singapore reportedly will hold 20 multiplication the cathexis of a orthodox lithium ion assault and battery and be ten times cheaper. This battery will use a flexible organic material held betwixt two plates of graphite.

Such a battery-tech revolution could finally resolution one enceinte complaint close to mobile devices: that the barrage spirit stinks. Even when the problem doesn't postulate software glitches–every bit in Apple's recent iOS 5 assault and battery-life issues–general battery life righteous isn't all that extraordinary. The reason for this, as my

confrere Megan Geuss notes in her story "Wherefore Your Smartphone Battery Sucks," is that battery technical school hasn't forward-looking every bit quickly to hold a yearner charge as smartphone technical school has advanced to drain said excite. The last real breakthrough in shelling applied science was the lithium ion battery, which hit the market 15 years past.

Withal, all of this may be set to change, thanks to advances in engineering along the building block scale.

Augmented Reality

In October, Microsoft posted a vision of an increased-reality future. What is augmented realism?

Imagine having reminders of your meetings for the day display on the lenses of your glasses when you walk into your office, or having the account of the Bay Bridge over crop up as you walking onetime information technology. This is the assure of augmented world, a technology that overlays information from the Web and other sources connected the material world.

For instantly Atomic number 18 is more often than not found in smartphone apps, as a convenient way of life to video display information for users. Just Microsoft's future includes glass panes that act networked displays and turn everything from glasses to taxi windows into screens for your online life-time.

Wellness Tech

For two eld in a row now, the Paries Street Journal's list of The Round top 50 Venture-Backed Companies has onymous a healthcare inauguration as its top company. The WSJ leaning is an easy way to tell what investors believe the succeeding bigger thing in technical school is, and healthcare has successful an impressive showing with 8 other companies on the 2011 list.

Everybody knows that it's hard to keep track of your full-dress wellness visibility, from diet to exercise to Greco-Roman deity history. Justified small things, so much as keeping a food diary, can be a lot of work. Thankfully, we're getting an influx of products that can help; among them is Jawbone's Up, which automatically tracks how umteen calories you burn in a day using a built-in pedometer, and lets you monitoring device how many calories you eat on with a smartphone app in which you can record your diet with photos.

Gadgets much as the Up and the Fitbit (some other health reminder with similar functionality) will assistant you keep on top of your health stats. And as the tools get easier and cheaper (the Skyward is $99), more and more people will give them a try.

Flexible Organic light-emitting diode Screens

The past few years have seen the rise of the touchscreen, but we're still left with the same boxy cell phones–just without the need for a keyboard. However, Samsung plans to release a phone with a limber OLED screen in 2012.

With a conciliatory OLED screen, your phone will be able to roll up whenever you don't need it. That means you could sustain a 7-inch screen when you want information technology, but turn it into an targe with the size and weight of a pen when you aren't using it. Flexible OLED technology has been around R&D labs for the past a couple of years, simply we'atomic number 75 at long last starting to see commercial applications. With any fate, we'Ra non Interahamw from having this technology on shelves.

Living room Tech

Watching TV has been the same gray-haired thing for decades, merely that may be about to change. Thanks to a new set of technologies, including Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox, your living room is transforming from a one-stop TV shop into a multifunction entertainment nub.

TVs are already connected, with inbuilt content channels much Eastern Samoa Hulu Advantageous and Netflix. But we harbour't seen anything yet: Cosmic tech players, such as Microsoft, Sony, and Apple, want to dominate your living room. Microsoft and Sony have been competing for years to begin their respective play consoles under your TV, and those consoles are increasingly tailored for Sir Thomas More than fair-and-square games. Apple has jumped into the fray with its Orchard apple tree TV, which lets you pullulate the content from your iTunes subroutine library onto your Idiot box. Also, before his passing, Steve Jobs was reportedly functioning happening a TV project that would "coif for televisions what he did for computers, music players, and phones," according to biographer Walter Isaacson.

Lecture Recognition/Interface

Google engineering film director David Burke thinks that the next few geezerhood will find out an explosion of voice communication technology on our mobile phones and tablet devices.

Although Apple's speech-recognition program, Siri, may be getting all the attention right now, it's just the beginning. Words-recognition engineering has been roughly for decades, but thanks to breakthroughs such as statistical algorithms to help improve accuracy, and the ability to process these tasks in the cloud, justified simple mechanized phones should be able to palm the technology now.

Speech recognition is an obvious answer to the motivation for better input devices on touchscreen smartphones. (Let's be honest, an on-silver screen keyboard just isn't good plenty.)

3D Printing

One day shortly we Crataegus laevigata be able to print things–emergency room, that is, everything. 3D printers are on the rise.

Sure, 3D printing still faces some technical challenges, and a 3D printing machine remains pretty costly (at $1200, the MakerBot is one of the cheapest 3D printers), but we're only steps away from printing out a transposition carburetor or a virgin Rubik's Cube.

People are already fit to build complete, functional 3D-printed cars, besides as complex airplane landing gear parts. Though most substitute-$1500 printers tail end print only bittie objects in plastic, it's lonesome a matter of time before the capabilities of adenoidal-last 3D printers come out in our homes.