Five Friendly Tech Trends

Tech Hero

There are only two reasons I care about a given technology: It’s either useful to me, or it will harm me. This same philosophy can be applied to advice, cooking, politics, or the exercise routines I don’t do enough of. I’ve spotted five trends in tech that are worth caring about in 2009.

1. T-Rays: Sort of like x-rays, terahertz radiation (T-rays) lets you see into things such as the human body, or packages and purses. T-rays aren’t as penetrating as x-rays, but repeat exposure carries no risk of cancer. T-Ray scanning machines would be excellent for airport screening, dental scans, and surface body scans.

2. Medical Hydrogel - Tissue engineering made simple. This stuff helps the body regrow bone tissue, tooth tissue (yes, I guess that’s a tissue), organ tissue…it really is interesting! Lots of clinical trials ongoing right now in different arenas. Search Quintura.com for “Hydrogel Tissue Engineering” to learn more.

3. Home TV 3D - Ok, you’re going to need some bucks for this one, but Phillips is set to manufacture a 3D TV and others are sure to follow. This is not holographic 3D, it is perceptual 3D. The brain is “fooled” into thinking that it’s seeing a 3D image. Apparently this tech can display anything in 3D that you can throw at it. Now THAT would be an interesting thing to play a video game on.

4. Web Browser Dominance- If you surf the web, this matters. I predict FireFox to get into a pretty hard battle with Google Chrome. Internet Explorer (IE) will remain useful in specific intranet security situations, but IE’s chronic problems with the correct rendering of web pages could marginalize it for consumers as they discover the internet surfing experience offered by these other browsers. From W3C Schools, here is the November 2008 summary, by percentage, of what browsers people are surfing with:

IE7: 26% (steady)
IE6: 20% (and falling fast)
FireFox: 44% (and rising)
Chrome: 3% (contender)

5. I’m a Mac, and I have a cold - Viruses targeting the Macintosh have been few and far between. In our office we use antivirus software primarily to prevent files sent to us from PC users that are infected from being passed on to other Windows users we collaborate with. That’s going to change in 2009. Keep an eye on securemac.com.