2014 Technology Trend

source: mashable.com

7 Huge Tech Trends to Expect in 2014

Major innovations and tech sea-changes were few and far between in 2013. Unfortunately, what usually follows major advancements are refinements. These days, innovation tends to happen on a nano-scale, which means most people cannot see or experience that evolution.

LCD display technology, for instance, has been around for decades; the changes we’ve lately seen in screen size, width and resolution have, mostly, refined that original idea. Same with Flash-based and solid state storage. We make the technology smaller and more stable but rarely change the fundamentals.

Like 2013, 2014's tech trends may not fundamentally change our lives, but they will improve, alter and, on occasion, impede and frustrate our day-to-day activities.

Bear with me a moment as I gaze into our hazy digital future. Here are a few predictions to emerge from the gloom.

1. Smart Home Tech Explosion

Image: Nest Protect Smoke Detector

We've discussed the "Internet of Things" for a few years now. Finally, that pithy catchphrase is becoming a reality, though not necessarily how we expected.

When I spoke to appliance manufacturers in early 2011, most applauded the prospect, however, insisted the idea would go nowhere without standards or a common appliance language. As a result, early smart home solutions were overcomplicated, closed-loop affairs that were costly to install and confusing to use.

Nest, the smart home thermostat, proved web-connected appliances and systems could be simple, that is, if they relied on an existing communication language (Wi-Fi) and comprehensible and already-adopted interfaces (iOS and Android).

Granted, Nest was not the first to do this. Home security camera manufacturers like DropCamapplied this concept years ago. But while not everyone wants webcam-based home security, every home needs a thermostat. Now Nest is selling smoke detectors, which not only use the same infrastructure to communicate with homeowners, but which connect with other in-home Nest devices, as well.

Similarly, Lockitron lets you lock doors via smartphone. The product has helped encourage other companies, such as Schlage, to introduce their own Internet-ready home security devices.

In 2014, other companies will follow Nest and Lockitron’s lead. They'll shed the last vestiges of proprietary networks and control centers, and along with an explosion of in-home sensors, will help propel the smart home conversion trend in 2014.

2. Privacy Backlash

Image: Getty: JEAN PIERRE CLATOT, AFP

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2013 was supposed to be the year we gave up on privacy.Instead, Edward Snowden set the National Security Agency's (NSA) veil of secrecy ablaze. As a result, by the end of 2013 we all felt exposed. Now many of the companies we trust with our data are under siege, urging the U.S. government to reform its information collection policies. The populace looked on in horror.

There is no easy fix. At least for now, the law (well, at least one judge) dictates NSA phone record-collection practices are constitutional.

If the law won't help us, and companies like Verizon, AT&T, Google, Yahoo and Facebook can't, I predict people will take matters into their own hands. In 2014, they'll look for ways to either pull back from social media and smartphone use or use tools that will help shield their activities.

Expect a new class of privacy protection companies and services to arrive in 2014, ready to meet what is sure to be a growing need.

3. Ads in Everything

We're already used to copious product placement on the sets of our favorite TV shows. Reality TV, sports broadcasts and even most major news segments are sponsored by brands. Scripted content still follows stricter regulations, but as the economics of content change, everything from websites to music companies will look for new ways to connect advertisers with audiences.

The trend took off in 2013 with brand-supported content (Mashable has a program, too). Simply, it's a way for media companies to produce worthwhile content with advertiser backing. Advertisers get to support topics with some connection to their brand ideals and consumer bases.

That success will embolden other product and media categories that have typically steered clear of blatant brand integration. Scripted TV shows will build entire scripts around brands and products. In 2014, you'll laugh about a Coca-Cola joke in Modern Family and guffaw when Mollyserves Mike a Big Mac. In the post-CD, all-digital world, music is struggling to find a viable economic model. In 2014, expect pop artists to sing the praises of Nike sneakers and Rice Krispies.

It'll seem kitschy, but in the end reflects strategic commerce in lyrical and scripted disguise.

4. Cloud Wars

Image: Getty: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND, AFP

You'll hear a stronger desktop PC death rattle in 2014, as consumers finally embrace cloud storage. Consequently, they'll soon need a lot more than the 5-20 GB standard with most mobile services.

Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google will get serious about marketing and advertising consumer cloud storage, access and work options. They'll also compete more directly, which may result in a price-per-gigabyte war.

Microsoft kicked the competition off in 2013 with 200 GB of free cloud storage — with a Surface 2 tablet purchase.

However, most consumers in 2013 still didn't understand how cloud-based storage works. The disparity of tools, interfaces and storage options is "clouding" what should be a clear picture: The days of storing locally are nearing an end.

In 2014, cloud storage producers will conduct an education, pricing and marketing offensive. By the end of next year, external hard drive sales will decline and cloud storage adoption will have skyrocketed.

5. Hello, 4K Content

Image: Getty: JOHN MACDOUGALL, AFP

You may wonder why, when I was so against 3D TV (dumbest idea ever), I'm so supportive of the latest HDTV craze, 4K. Simply, 4K HDTVs (also known as "Ultra HDTVs") offer screen resolution approximately four times greater than your standard 1080p HDTV. At CES 2013, I saw a number of giant-screen 4K sets. The images were so sharp, clear and brilliant that it was like looking out a window.

TV manufacturers have, throughout 2013, worked on lowering the prices for these incredible sets, but have (smartly) refrained from over-marketing them. They learned a hard lesson with 3D TV, which was heralded as the next big thing. However, despite HDTVs having already saturated the marketplace, manufacturers hoped consumers would swap out their still relatively new HDTVs for what amounted to a new feature. Most did not. Even those who did found the often proprietary lens technology frustrating, with little 3D content to enjoy, anyway.

However, resolution is something consumers understand and, better yet, can enjoy without special, nausea-inducing glasses. Once they transitioned from 4:3 (aspect ratio), 480i (resolution), tube-based TV to 1080i pictures and content (and 1080p Blu-ray discs), there was no going back.

4K TV prices will continue to plummet in 2014. I’ve already seen very low-priced off-brand 4K sets, but consumers should steer clear of those. When 60-inch 4K sets from Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Vizio and others drop below $2,000, consumers will start buying. Part of that demand will be driven by media companies, some of which are already shooting big budget films in 4K. Mind you, none of those film have made it to 4K Blu-ray. For now, that library is, almost comically, filled with nature films.

In 2014, 4K content won't explode, but it will steadily rise in availability. By next Christmas, 4K TVs and the Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in 4K will grace quite a few holiday wish lists.

6. Drone Wars

Image: Getty

With one brief 60 Minutes unveil and a short video demo, Jeff Bezos and Amazon thrust drones into the forefront of national consciousness, proposing to use drones as part of an unmanned robot delivery service.

But they didn’t start the conversation.

For years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been examining amateur and commercial drone use. The short story is the FAA has, at least for now, approved just onecommercial drone for use in national airspace — and that's in the Arctic. It has since selected six additional U.S. sites for unmanned aircraft research.

In 2014, the conversation will continue. Amateur drone flyers, like the ones we chronicled earlier this year, will flaunt FAA regulations and fly by more and more national monuments (capturing amazing footage in the process) and anonymous spaces. They'll practice surveillance and try to launch their own drone delivery services. Local authorities and the FAA will scramble to find and ground these flyers.

Meanwhile, more visible national retailers and delivery services, such as Amazon and, maybe, FedEx, will air their frustrations and press the FAA to take a fresh look.

Consumers will remain highly distrustful of any camera-toting technology buzzing over their heads, and the FAA will waffle between commercial demands and consumers desire for privacy and safety. We will not emerge from 2014 with a consensus on drone use.

7. Promising Advancements in Nanotech

Image: Getty: JEAN PIERRE CLATOT, AFP

Molecular-level technology has shifted from theory to potential practical applications. The ability to manipulate particle-level material holds promise for everything from biomedicine to consumer electronics.

The breakthroughs achieved in 2013 will pale in comparison to those we expect in 2014. Researchers are longer simply trying to prove nanotech theories; they're competing to see whose application takes the lead.

Breakthroughs in cancer, Alzheimer’s, vision and hearing loss, data storage and manipulation could all be on the menu in 2014. Look forward to miracles at a micro scale.

With 365 days and 8,760 hours in the year, there’s no telling what other surprises 2014 has in store for us. Will a new social network rival Twitter or Facebook? (Nah.) Will tablets get bigger, smaller, thinner and fatter? (Oddly, yeah). Will wearable technology be bigger in 2014 than in 2013? (Sorry, my crystal ball clouded up on that one.)

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: iStockphoto, dvarg

Crowdfunded Technology

source: toptenz.net

Top 10 Pieces of Technology 2013 Crowdfunded to Success

POSTED BY DUSTIN KOSKI 

Everything is becoming increasingly democratized, especially technology. The opportunity exists for every citizen with disposable income to be a part of the march of progress, and sometimes the investment has — get this – actually paid off. From advances in gaming to the health industry, the ever-expanding impact of these advances will reach people from all walks of life. We’re in an exciting age where a momentous new trend is still its infancy, and we get to bear witness to its constant growth and maturation.

10. Piper Home Security

Amount Funded: $309,119

We start with a relatively modest amount, and yet the technology being invested in is of such sufficient importance, and the product produced was of such sufficient quality, that it deserves its place amongst such great projects. Piper’s home security system is basically a combination of different home monitoring devices (a camera, thermometer, humidity checker, etc.) that has an app for your mobile device that allows you to check up on it at all times. This allows the homeowner on vacation or elsewhere to better monitor for intruders, home damage, or other home maintenance issues.

9. Matterform 3D Scanner

Amount Funded: $471,082 Canadian

Greatly simplifying the process by which objects are rendered in 3D interfaces for easier or more tangible for online study and display, the Matterform 3D offers a consumer/hobbyist model at $599. The demand for such a device was such that the Matterform acquired over six times its goal during its fundraising period. While this product is entering what’s already a crowding market, it’s good that crowdfunded projects are forcing the market to create better products.

8. Beddit

Amount Funded: $503,571

Between our stressful jobs, our flexible lifestyles, and the huge amount of daily information that occupies our nightly thoughts, many of us find it difficult to get a good night’s sleep. While there are devices that help you monitor how well you’re sleeping, as Business Insider reported, they are all quite flawed. Their measurements are incomplete, or they can very likely interfere with your sleep. Beddit is a monitor placed under your mattress which monitors your movements, breathing, etc. to give you a more accurate impression of your quality of sleep. They are set to be priced at $149, which is well worth the value of getting better sleep.

7. Oculus Rift

Amount Funded: $2,437,429

This is a video game headset used to fill your vision and respond to your head movements, to better immerse you in the game environment. It’s certainly not an original idea, but it was only half as expensive as the next leading brand, and certainly did the most to get people interested in that type of gameplay again. This device was obviously much more funded than some ranked higher, especially if you include the $16,000,000 added in by private investors. Still, it is intended as a somewhat frivolous device and, at present, has significant limitations, such as problems with accessing menus to perform some of the gameplay.

6. LifX

Amount Funded: $1,314,542

The group LifX Labs was hoping for $100,000 for their LED lightbulb project. They finally reached their goal … after an hour. In fact, by the sixth day, they had to put a freeze on the page to keep up with their ability to send out all the preorders. In November, it was announced that Best Buy would distribute this product.

The appeal of this bulb is that its wi-fi connection allows you to use your smartphone to adjust its brightness and color, as well as preset when they will make those adjustments. Currently, the product has something of a rivalry with Phillips Hue, but the way crowdfunding is competing and getting something of a leg up on a major like this is quite something.

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5. 3Doodler

Amount Funded: $2,344,135

Another invention that more fun than useful, the 3Doodler is like an airbrush or hot gluegun, that creates strings of plastic that can be easily shaped into 3d art. The device produces some very cute pieces and is, according to Gigaom’s review, addictive to use. It also represents great advancement potential in the field of affordable 3-D printing. Although there is the concern that it is uncomfortable to draw with for prolonged periods, loud, and stinky (the last one a complaint you don’t hear so much about modern technology,) but it’s still a creative and fun new device.

4. Canary Home Security

Amount Funded: $1,961,663

Another product that crowdfunding created to advance the technology of home monitoring,Canary is in many ways a more tested version of the Piper Home System. They check essentially the same things with some advertised differences. For example, Canary will be able to monitor air quality to a greater degree than Piper, but Piper has the edge in detecting the size of a moving object. So if you have a pet at home, you’d probably prefer to pay the Piper. But making the Canary more significant is that it beat the Piper to the market by three months and had more resources to promote the product, and thus was able to make a stronger impression on consumers.

3. Pebble Smartwatch

Amount Funded: $10,266,845

As you can see, the Pebble was by far the most crowdfunded project on this list. But it didn’t quite overtake the top two in terms of utility and potential. Essentially, it’s a utilitarian mobile device. It has a small, grayscale monitor without any of the usual animations for when you change applications and whatnot. This is handy, as it allows the device to work faster and frees up space. You can check and send all the messages you ordinarily would with other mobile devices, at a lower price and with less lag. Hopefully this emphasis on interface function over frills will catch on.

2. Scanadu Scout

Amount Funded: $1,664,574

This device was rather ridiculously touted as a “medical tricorder” to give it more of a science fiction mystique, which is quite silly given the significance of its intended purpose. Nevertheless, it worked, as the device hit its target budget after one day, and has since received $10.5 million more in private funding. The device is a handheld monitor that detects a person’s vitals (blood pressure, temperature, etc.) Given the extreme expense ofhealth care and the shortage of time that hospital workers have, anything that can expedite the process without sacrificing quality of service should be pursued. As of November 2013, the product was still undergoing clinical trials before it would be released commercially, with thousands already preordered.

1. Form 1

Amount Funded: $2,945,885

3D printers are proving to be a way for consumers to have access to previously unaffordable products. The most current high-profile example of this is Paul McCarthy printing out a prosthetic hand for his son Leon, saving tens of thousands of dollars in the process. While the FormLabs Form 1 3D printer is not the cheapest consumer grade 3D printer (it’s about $750 more than the leading brand Makerbot 2) it was found by Wired to be much better at doing detailed work, producing work quickly without losing quality, not making a racket, and not stinking up the joint. It thus represents represents a great step forward in the day when such useful products will be nearly as affordable as 2D printers.

Computer In SD Card Size

source: theverge.com

Intel announces Edison, a computer the size of an SD card

By Sean Hollister

i

Intel built a processor for wearable computing, and now it has a tiny computer where that processor can live. At CES 2014, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced Edison, "a full Pentium-class PC" that's the size and shape of the SD card you might otherwise put in your camera. It's powered by a dual-core Quark SOC, runs Linux, and has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, according to the company. Intel even has a specific app store designed for Edison, and a special version of Wolfram that will come to the tiny computer.

To demonstrate the potential for Edison, Intel showed a concept for a "Nursery 2.0." In the concept, a baby was wearing a Mimo onesie outfitted with sensors tracking things like temperature, and Edison was used to display that information on, of all things, a coffee mug. When the baby was comfortable, blinking lights on the mug show a happy green smiling face, but when something is wrong that face turns red. A much more useful application, however, involved using Edison to switch on a bottle warmer when your baby starts to stir, that way it's ready come feeding time.

Infographic : Most Popular Books

Big Bang Disruption

source: wired.com

The Faster a New Technology Takes Off, the Harder It Falls

• BY LARRY DOWNES AND PAUL NUNES

Image: mjaniec/Flickr

First, a eulogy: The bell curve is dead.

That familiar model for technology adoption (first popularized by the noted sociologist Everett Rogers) — with clearly defined market segments adopting new technologies in predictable groupings — no longer applies. Following this work, Geoffrey Moore wrote in 1991’s Crossing the Chasm that successful new product introductions followed Rogers’s five discrete stages, moving from early adopters to mainstream users only after crossing a sales “chasm” in which the marketing message changes from the new and exciting to the familiar and incremental.

But today, new products and services enter the market better and cheaper right from the start. So producers can’t rely on a class of early adopters and high margins to build up a war chest to spend on marketing to larger and later markets. For better and for worse, thanks to near-perfect market information, consumers are too savvy for that. Everyone knows right away when some new offering gets it right — or, conversely, gets it wrong.

The bell curve, once useful as a model of product adoption, has lost its value as a planning tool. This kind of disruption has its own unique life cycle, and with it its own best practices for marketing and sales, product enhancement, and eventual product replacement.

Markets take off suddenly, or they don’t take off at all. Since adoption is increasingly all-at-once or never, saturation is reached much sooner in the life of a successful new product. So even those who launch these “Big Bang Disruptors” — new products and services that enter the market better and cheaper than established products seemingly overnight — need to prepare to scale down just as quickly as they scaled up, ready with their next disruptor (or to exit the market and take their assets to another industry).

While every Big Bang Disruptor has its own unique trajectory, the examples in our study suggest a new model for the adoption of better and cheaper innovations, one that is radically different from the traditional view of and Rogers and Geoffrey Moore. The life cycle of Big Bang Disruption looks less like a gently sloping bell curve and more like a cliff: as dangerous to competitors on its way up as it is to innovators on the way down.

We call it, for obvious reasons, “the shark fin.”

The process of Big Bang Disruption begins as a series of low-level, often unrelated experiments with different combinations of component technologies. This relative calm may give incumbents the false sense that nothing is happening, or in any event that whatever might be happening is not doing so quickly enough to warrant a competitive response.

Yet when the right combination of technologies is assembled and paired with the right business model, takeoff is immediate. Customers from a wide range of segments, including mass market consumers, adopt the disruptor as quickly as its producers can supply it. Market penetration is often nearly instantaneous.

Next, as the disruptor quickly approaches saturation, adoption drops at nearly the same pace with which it took off, leading to a period of rapid if uneven decline. During this period, early warning systems, careful planning, and the agility to quickly scale up and then down are essential both to capitalize on the opportunity of a Big Bang Disruptor as well as to survive the chaos it can bring to existing markets.

The Rise and Fall of Microsoft’s Kinect

One example of this process was the introduction of an add-on device for Microsoft’s Xbox 360: the Kinect. It initially sold for $150, but it revolutionized home gaming — capturing the imagination of diehard players and casual gamers alike. And while it appeared to come out of nowhere, antecedents could be seen in and out of the gaming industry. Integrating motion and other sensors with facial recognition, for example, had long been in development in many industries, especially in security systems.

Speech recognition, likewise, had already been used in products and services supporting hands-free computing tasks such as automated phone support and in applications including GM’s in-vehicle OnStar system and the popular Siri, which Apple acquired in 2010. Facial recognition had been used for high-end military applications for years and was the subject of extensive experiments by the advertising industry.

Even other game consoles, notably Sony’s PlayStation 3, had experimented with handheld controllers fitted with motion sensors. Sony’s add-on device, the Move, sold fifteen million units in its first two years.

No one, however, had ever put all these components together or integrated them with a catalog of new games designed specifically to take advantage of the powerful hardware and software Microsoft used for Kinect. The new device looked less like its predecessors than it did a technology from the future.

Kinect was an enormous hit, selling eight million units in just the first sixty days. According to Guinness World Records, that made Kinect the fastest-selling consumer electronic device in history. A little over a year after launch, twenty-four million Kinects had been sold, pushing sales of Xbox 360 consoles and games along with it. In 2010, Microsoft took the top spot in the fiercely competitive console market for the first time since Xbox 360’s launch in 2001.

For Big Bang Disruptors, however, catastrophic success invariably leads to rapid market saturation — and with it decline and sunset. Within six months, the pace of Kinect sales dropped precipitously. Though stragglers continued to buy the product in peaks and valleys over the next year, the product had largely fulfilled its mission in its first ten months. For Microsoft — and other game developers — it was time for another innovation.

Big Bang Disruptors like the Kinect, however, can have second lives as new innovators deconstruct them and recombine their parts into something new. Kinect continues to find unexpected uses outside of gaming, thanks in part to Microsoft’s willingness to make its developer tools and interfaces widely available. Telemedicine researchers in the UK, for example, have adapted Kinect for remote tracking of hand and finger movements to guide patients recovering from strokes. Kinect’s technology is also being used in the construction of miniature satellites, where Kinect will handle in-orbit docking.

Farther afield, the economies of scale that comes from production of millions of Kinect units has made it cost-effective to use some of its components for a fast-evolving market of health, fitness, and monitoring devices. Companies including Fitbit, Jawbone, and Nike, as well as other startups, are selling low-cost wearable computers that use accelerometers and other sensor technology to track and record an increasingly wide range of vital signs and measurements, including steps taken, calories burned, heart rate, temperature, and sleep patterns.

With the shark fin, companies that have long operated as the flippers of their industry, controlling its speed, direction, and destination, suddenly find themselves the pinball, bouncing around at the whim of forces outside their control. To ensure their future as the former and not the latter, they need to understand where Big Bang Disruptors come from, how they enter and exit the market, and what they leave in their wake.

This is the first book selected for the inaugural Book Club at CES, as their book of the year. It will be released January 7. 

Excerpted from Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation by Larry Downes and Paul Nunes, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright 2014 by Lawrence Downes and Paul Nunes.