1)Nano-wired helmets
The Pentagon is experimenting with helmets wired with nano-sensors. The idea: if a soldier is wounded, first responders will be able to download details of the impact — and its likely consequences — as soon as they arrive on the scene.
How long before this technology moves into football helmets for design?
2)Magic carpet
Researchers at Intel Corp. have come up with linoleum kitchen tiles wired with weight sensors connected by radio signals to the Internet. They can measure not only the weight of the people going about their business in the kitchen. They can also determine the length of their strides and distribution of their weight.
Why go to such lengths? They’re designed to monitor elderly people, and send alerts if increased wavering signals the risk of a fall.
intel magic carpet
3)DragonRunner ‘ThrowBot’
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are laboratories for a new generation of robots, including the “ThrowBot,” a cheap 9-pound unit that rolls around dangerous territory, capturing information.
Look for these data-sweepers to show up in American cities, maybe in sports stadiums. They’re four-wheeled emissaries of the surveillance society.
4)Citysense
s there a lot of action in your neighborhood at 3 a.m.? Sense Network’s Citysense allows users to look at cellphone usage patterns to gauge the flow of foot traffic in a city. The service will be available first in San Francisco and New York.
What’s more, by studying urban movements, Sense can sort users into behavioral “tribes” — people who follow similar patterns, from neighborhoods to night clubs. So if the dots congregating down the street are red or blue, it might be lively — but not for your tribe.
city sense
5)Compulsion TV
Imagine a TV that allows you to click on an image — a woman’s bracelet, her sweater, her shoes — to reach the item’s e-commerce site. This is Internet marketing brought to TV and DVDs. Many of us wouldn’t click even once. But it could be a breakthrough for the home shopping set.
6) Face recognition
It’s been a sci-fi standard for generations – show the photo of a face to a machine, and it comes up with the name. Digital spies, of course, would love to use such technology to identify every face in airports. That’s still far away. But for hobbyists, simple face recognition will help sort out who’s who in family photos.
Google’s Picasa is already offering a version of this technology. (New beards must cause problems. And forget about twins.
face recognition
7.)Supermarket smart carts
A decade after failed attempts to computerize shopping, supermarket chains in the United States, Germany, and South Korea are rolling out new smart carts. The idea: Shoppers swipe their loyalty cards and a suggested shopping list pops up on the screen, based on their historical patterns.
If this works, markets could offer shoppers customized discounts. The challenge will be to convince shoppers that sharing this data is worth the benefits — and that this trove of information won’t be sold to marketers elsewhere.
8)Newscred
This online news site tracks and analyzes the credibility of news organizations and blogs — as ranked by readers. Fine, you might say. But what if readers on right and left trash the reputations of media they don’t agree with? Newscred has to adjust its algorithms for such behavior.
9)Travel-time maps
Why measure by miles? New cartographers at Google and elsewhere will be cooking up new generations of maps that combine a variety of data. One site in London compares housing prices to travel time, and driving to public transportation.
One glance at that kind of map, and you may see that you’re farther from work than you thought.
10)Mopeds
Who said emerging technology couldn’t be re-emerging? In the oil crisis of the ’70s, Americans bought a half million of these low-powered motorbikes with pedals. With oil prices up, mopeds could make a comeback for all those potential cyclists who would appreciate a push up the hills. Gas mileage for mopeds routinely tops 70 miles per gallon.
