It’s customary
this time of year to wax poetic about the past year and get all mushy about
things you’d pretty much forgotten. But we don’t need that, right? We’re all
forward-thinkers here, aren’t we?
So here is an
alphabetical list of things you’ll likely hear about more often in the months
ahead. At the very least, you’ll have some new words to drop into conversations
to show how much you’re already plugged into 2012.
Here we go-
Augmented
reality: Sure, it’s been around awhile, dating back to when yellow
”first-down” lines were first overlaid on football fields for games on TV. But
using apps to layer virtual information over a real-world environment—think
reviews that pop up on your screen when you focus your phone on the
restaurant–is about to go mainstream. Coming soon: Google Goggles, glasses
which will give the person wearing them all kinds of info about what they’re
looking at.
Biometrics:
There are so many things besides your sparkling wit that make you who you
are–your DNA, iris scans, voice patterns or facial features—and the science of
using them to identify you is getting more and more James Bondian. Now IBM is
predicting that within a few years, we won’t need passwords, even at the ATM.
Car-sharing:
It looks like sharing
things—particularly cars—is going to become as big a part of urban living as
food trucks using Foursquare. Car-sharing companies, such as RelayRides and
Getaround, connect people who need a car for a few hours to people willing to
rent theirs. They’re operating in only a handful of U.S. cities right now, but just
this month Getaround landed a $1.7 million federal grant to roll out in
Portland, Oregon.
Digital
assistants: Used to be that “personal digital assistants” referred to
little handheld devices with calendars and phone directories to help you get
your life organized. But voice-activated Siri on the iPhone 4S has given us a
taste of what digital assistants of the future will do—adjust our calendars,
read our email, archive our photos and documents and, above all, give us
weather reports. Now it really is personal.
Electric
cars: The truth is, there’s been nowhere near an electric car boom. So far
Nissan has sold only 20,000 of its all-electric Leafs worldwide and Chevy fell
short of its goal of selling 10,000 of its hybrid plug-in Volts this year. But
Ford, Honda and Toyota all plan to launch electric vehicles in 2012 and Nissan
announced this fall that, along with scientists at Kansai University in Japan,
it had developed the technology to fully charge an electric car in only 10
minutes.
Foodspotting:
This smart phone app that provides you with reviews and photos of specific
restaurant meals before you order them has been downloaded more than a million
times. And it may have finally come up with ways to make it a profitable
business.
Gamification:
Well, it doesn’t sound like much fun, but the whole point of “gamification” is
to make everyday transactions feel like a game. So, more and more businesses,
particularly retailers and restaurants, are starting to use the same sort of
enticements that bring players back to games over and over—awards, badges, even
leader boards.
Higgs boson:
Earlier this month scientists at CERN, an atom smasher in Switzerland,
announced that they may have “glimpsed” something known as Higgs boson. Big
deal, right? Actually, it’s a very big deal because it would explain how matter
has mass, which is why it’s become known as the “God particle.” This has
prompted much speculation that Higgs boson may finally be discovered in 2012.
Ice Cream
Sandwich: I love them, too, but what’s so innovative about an ice cream
sandwich? But this one’s not edible. It’s the new operating system for Android
smart phones and tablets and it’s likely to make Google an even stronger player
in the mobile market. Why ice cream sandwich? Simple. It follows previous
Google operating systems Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread and
Honeycomb. What, no Apple Pie?
Jawbone’s
Up: Created by the same company that gave us Bluetooth headsets, it’s a
wristband that tracks your sleeping and exercise habits. Unfortunately, within
a month of its launch in November, Jawbone was already responding to complaints
about performance issues. If the company can get the Up back on track, it
should tap into one of the country’s hottest trends: Wearable tech that monitors
how we’re treating our bodies.
Klout:
This is a San Francisco company that has plunged into the dicey territory of
trying to measure the actual influence people have on others on social
networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Klout actually hands out
scores ranging from 100 if you’re seen to move the masses, to 1, if no one
cares what you say. For all the shots Klout takes from its critics, companies
seem to be paying attention to it.
LEDs:
Some people still get feisty about wanting to hold on to their incandescent
light bulbs, but face it, they are one of the more inefficient inventions
ever—90 percent of their energy goes to producing heat, not light. The true
21st century light bulbs are LEDs (light-emitting diodes), which consume
one-tenth the energy of incandescents, but can last at least 50 times longer.
And scientists are finding all kinds of cool uses for LEDs, from producing
lights that look like glowing sheets of paper to using LED lighting in the
latest commercial airliners to help passengers fight jet lag.
Museum of
Me: Last year Intel came out with an
mobile app that’s clearly in tune with the times. The Museum of Me takes all of
the stuff you’ve posted on Facebook and turns it into a short video set in a
museum. It’s been ripped as disturbingly narcissistic, but if nothing else, can
make you realize that you really need to get out more.
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