3 Products That Will Change The World Of Technology

It’s 2012, we’re over half way through too and some of you technophiles, movie geeks and sci-fi fanatics can rightfully argue that even though we have some amazing tech devices in our lives today, they’re still a far cry from those hover boards and hover cars we saw in those sci-fi movies from decades ago.

Well, I think these next three products are getting us closer to ‘the future’ than we would like to think or care to know!:

Google’s Project Glass

Now some of you may have already heard of Google’s latest venture into consumer electronics but this one really does have the capacity to be a real game changer. This product is Google’s effort to create a ‘Augmented Reality Head Mounted Display’ or ARHMD device which, in layman’s terms is a device which you wear like a pair of glasses but has a transparent screen that displays information like local weather or an incoming call, all in real time.

The product itself had been churning round the rumour mill for many months but was more or less officially unveiled at Google’s I/O press conference in San Fransisco last month with an introduction (video below) to rival any of Apple’s show stopping announcements. Google has actually already began taking a very small amount of pre-orders for the device and is expecting to ship sometime next year to the lucky North American residents.

This device, when it does finally come to the masses, really is quite ground breaking. Admittedly, the concept of Augmented Reality has been around for years but it’s implementation into wearable (and pretty futuristic looking) glasses makes it something more.

This really is Science Fiction movie or video game stuff. The idea of having information being displayed right in front of you, almost as if it were floating, and the ability to make choices and changes, beit an phone call or Google search with your voice, all while not touching a single screen. They have implemented a touch pad though onto the side of the device, as everything can’t be done with voice control. The product is set for mass market availability in 2014 so we have to wait just that little bit longer for our slice of the future.

 

Leap

Now this product really has me excited. Having been in development for 4 years, the leap device is now up for pre-order. What it is is an iPod-sized device that plugs into your computer via USB that creates a 3D interaction space of 8 cubic feet that lets you interact with and control software on your laptop or desktop computer.

Many have referred to it as ‘Kinect on steroids’ and I think that description is bang on! This thing is mind-blowing. it’s said to be 200x more sensitive that any touch free products on the market and this astonishing calculation doesn’t seem to far off. To be honest, I could keep writing trying to explain just how impressive this device is but the video will do a much better job than me (damn video!) here it is:

The device is set to ship in February 2013 but will only set you back $70!!

 

Flexible Displays

Now I know this one is a bit of a curve ball and it’s not necessarily a standalone product but bear with me! It’s no mystery that many of the world’s major smartphone manufacturers are creating and testing many different forms of bendable and flexible displays. This concept isn’t entirely new but the reason it’s on this list is that it won’t be long, even as early as next year, before we start to see devices with roll-able or flexible displays.

Back at Nokia World in October of last year, Nokia showed off a prototype product they liked to call their ‘kinetic device’. The device was extremely flexible and Nokia showed clever ways of using this flexibility to control the device such as bending down the sides of the screen, causing the centre to push up which in turn, selected the item located in the centre (again, the video will explain it a lot better!)

Back in March of this year, Samsung announced that is it going to begin mass production of their version of flexible displays (pictured above) but the really interesting bit is that Apple are allegedly going to be one of the biggest buyers of these new screens. Now obviously this particular rumour must be taken with a whole container of salt but you never know, the iPhone 6 (or whatever the hell it’s going to be called!) might be a roll-able, bendable and flexible piece of Apple kit!

The smartphones of tomorrow will be as revolutionary as the smartphones of today are to the ‘bricks’ from a decade ago. With roll-able displays, phone might be able to have the physical dimensions of a pen, that, when needed, can be rolled out like a scroll and typed on and interacted with only to be rolled away again and tucked back into a shirt or pant pocket, even behind your ear if you like! Screens like this really will change how we consume and interact with media and will be here before we know it.

So there you have it, my take on what tech products I think are going to change the world (of technology anyway.) You may look back on this article in years to come and say ‘hey, he was pretty damn close’ or ‘he couldn’t have been more wrong if he tried’ but as I like to finish many of my feature pieces….only time will tell!

Let us know what you think in the comments!