Looking forward: The top 6 tech trends of 2008

With the approach (and arrival!) of every new New Year, I always get hit with a wave of press releases from high-tech consumer product companies. These letters often brim with lavish, even wacky promises about their new stuff. “Revolutionary!” they say. “Magical!” they promise. It’s actually a lot of fun. Plus, in the process, the e-mails and letters prove that the poet Alexander Pope was right back in 1733: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

Unfortunately, of course, hope is not always linked to common sense. For example, it is unlikely that one company’s wireless modem will “change the world as we know it,” as one promised. I’d be happy if the thing just turned on when I plugged it in. Which it didn’t.

But never mind: Here are some incredibly cool products that are about to be released, or just have been. A few might even change the world. My hope springs eternal.

You’ll play smarter sports.
Tennis purists moaned when the idea of an electronic line judge was introduced to the game (the new computerized Cyclops system uses computers and sensors to decide whether or not a ball is in or out). But most agree that since the first line judge’s faulty call was reversed, it has been a welcome addition to the game. The same is true for ultra-slow-motion replay for football games and electronic timing that can really separate the winners from the losers in NASCAR.

• Thermablade
  The physics are unassailable: A warm piece of metal glides more quickly across ice than a cold piece. It’s true in Olympic bobsledding and luge (where they actually limit the metal runners’ heat for that reason), and next fall, it will be true in the NHL. Thermablade has introduced a patented heated skate blade technology that takes advantage of this fact: When a blade is warmer than the ice beneath it, it melts the ice, creating a thin, slippery layer of water between the blade and the icy surface. Riding on those “water ball bearings” is faster than riding on cold ice. So the Canadian company Thermablade decided to heat their blades with small, “smart” batteries and electronics hidden in the skate’s white blade holder; and it worked: The company found that Thermablade reduces gliding resistance up to 55% and starting resistance up to 75%. The blade is heated to 5 degrees Celsius (5 degrees above freezing) by the batteries and stays warm for at least 75 minutes of playing time. Currently being tested in the NHL. www.thermablade.com for more info

Kazuya Tahara

• Adidas Intelligent Ball soccer ball
  Imagine what will happen to the world’s most popular sport — soccer — when parents no longer get to argue about whether or not little Johnny’s ball crossed the goal line — or in the case of the big leagues, whether or not Italy actually won the World Cup. In 2008, Adidas will introduce the Intelligent Ball, with a revolutionary new system from a company called Cairos Goal Line Technology. A walnut-size transmitter, armed with a microchip, is suspended by flexible filaments inside the ball’s empty center. If the ball crosses the goal line (where electric wires are buried just beneath the grass), the transmitter affects a magnetic field created by those wires. The moment the magnetic field is affected, the referee gets a signal sent instantly to his watch, confirming the goal. Available some time in 2008. www.adidas.com for more info

Your GPS will go real-time.
The biggest difference between a standard GPS device for your car and the revolutionary new Dash GPS: The Dash talks back. All other (conventional) GPS devices receive information from the U.S. government’s 19 satellites orbiting above the earth. But the Dash doesn’t just receive, it also gives — sending anonymous, real-time information about your car’s location and speed out to all other Dash users, through land-based cell phone networks. The information exchange is similar to the way a BlackBerry gets real-time e-mail. The result: Traffic information is shared with other Dash users who are driving at that same moment, giving everybody instant, real-time updates. Information is made even more realistic, because months of real road history is loaded into the Dash’s memory — a road’s real traffic history, not its theoretical speed limit. Best of all — if the traffic changes suddenly, you’ll know instantly, and the Dash GPS will give you alternative routes.Available in early 2008. $599 plus $9.99 monthly service; www.dash.net

You’ll have a pet robot.
At the last few Wired Magazine Nextfest conventions (sponsored in part by General Electric, which owns this network), more convention space was devoted to robots than to almost any other kind of technology. The most realistic expression of that trend is coming to a mall near you.

The real breakthrough is in the staggeringly lifelike responses that the Ugobe Life Forms “Pleo” robot, a baby dinosaur pet, makes to standard human touch. You literally feel as if you are relating to the little beast — rub it under the chin, and it extends its neck for more, closes its eyes and purrs like a cat. Offer Pleo a leaf, and it will bite gently into it, and pull back playfully, like a dog with a stick. Pleo responds to music, touch, tickling, cradling and other interaction with recognizable “emotions.” Most amazingly, Pleo adapts its behavior as it gets “older.” How? Pleo’s on-board infrared camera-based vision system recognizes objects and colors and helps it navigate. It has 8 skin sensors, 14 force-feedback sensors, two 32-bit microprocessors and an infrared mouth sensor that detects food. Pleo has more on-board processing power than Apollo 13. And it’s a lot cuter. $349; www.pleoworld.com

Your plasma or LCD TV will suddenly seem old-school.
Just when you thought you understood TV technology and had decided on the best one for you, along comes another technology breakthrough that will soon make your existing TV pale by comparison (Read more here: Sony’s sexy new tube: TV of the future? )

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Called OLED (for Organic Light Emitting Diode), the technology uses organic matter to create the image, not illuminated gas (plasma) or partly shaded fluorescent light (LCD) or even flashing mirrors (DLP). The organic matter in question, which is just under the screen’s surface, is stimulated into creating color with electric current. There are no lights to enhance the color — the colors literally stream out from the electrified organic matter. The image is dazzling, because unlike all other television technologies, there is no backlighting or shade, there is only color.

You saw the largest version in the United States here on the TODAY show set, and at 11 inches (and about $1,750 or 200,000 yen), OLED has a number of huge advantages. First, it uses very little electricity to create the image. Next, since there’s no backlight, there’s no bulk — the screen is only 3 mm deep (most so-called “flat-screen” TVs are about 4-6 inches deep). Also, the highly accurate, crystal-clear picture is created instantaneously, so there is no blur, delay or lag, as with plasma or LCD. The OLED also has an exceptionally wide viewing angle — you can see the image clearly, at almost a 90-degree angle to the screen. The country’s first OLED TV comes out in 2008. www.sonystyle.com for more info

Your next laptop will be tiny, cheap and powerful.
The EeePC is the future of laptop computing — it’s powerful, small, and lightweight (see image above). And it’s a variation on Nicholas Negroponte’s revolutionary $100 computer (which now costs about $180), but much more successful. Just introduced in the United States in November, 350,000 of the 2.5-pound ASUS-built computers will have sold by January 1, 2008. The attraction: EeePC is revolutionary because it uses a flash drive (no moving parts) instead of a hard drive, and it has simple software that works with both Mac and PC operating systems. And yet it’s of the highest quality — ASUS’s factory also builds Apple’s iPods, and the computer has an internal Wi-Fi connection that lets you log on at any hot spot. It handles the basics of computing — e-mail, shopping, sending pictures, basic word-processing and spreadsheets — for the whole family. It even has a built-in camera for free online video conversations. Granted, it only has a 7” screen, but for most kids and traveling businesspeople, it’s plenty. Starts at $349; www.eeepc.asus.com

oralb.com

Your toothbrush will keep tabs on your
dental hygiene habits.  
The Oral B Triumph with Smartguide is the latest iteration of everything wireless — we’ve gone from speakers, music, and phones to ... toothbrushes. And surprisingly, it’s not hype — it truly helps you brush better. It helps you brush longer and more effectively, without brushing too hard (as people apparently do) and hurting your gums. What makes the Oral B remarkable is that it wirelessly transmits key brushing data to a “Smartguide Monitor” which in turn gives you information like which part of your mouth still needs brushing and whether or not you’re pressing too hard. The biggest difference, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that brushing for two minutes as your dentist recommends takes a lot longer than you’d guess. My internal clock was way off, and I had the impulse to stop at about 45 seconds. The monitor keeps you honest. Now if they’d only cut the slightly disturbing choir music from the Triumph’s Web site, they’d be all set. $149; www.oralb.com