1) First on my list is 3D printing which has come ahead leaps and bounds in 2013. I've had a strong interest in the "Make" movement for a few years and have dabbled with Arduino's and other similar projects. 3D Printing and the Makebot have been on my watch list for a couple of years now. In 2013 a lot more companies came to light and things got a lot more interesting.
Companies such as Stratasys, Cubify, Afinia and Makerbot grew and printers started to be found online for under $1000. Industry even helped schools by sponsoring a mission to put a 3d printer in every school. I even got asked at work for recommendations on 3D printers, which is a lot better than being asked about which laserjet to buy. And also I fell in love with all the impossible 3d things which were made available at shapeways. 3D printing will be bigger than we imagine, mark my words.
2) Personal Drones. Forget about those evil military drones over in Pakistan, they've been around for years. What I am talking about are the personal kind. Sure the AR Parrot has been around a couple of years, but this year (with incredible new accelerometers and microcontrollers) we've seen a boon in mini drones.
I've been fascinated by the number of crowd funded projects around drones and would seriously consider getting one if I had a spare $500 or so. But I'd want to have a nice camera hanging off there too. A quick search on youtube brings up tons of amateur drone footage and one of my favourites is this drone rescue from Hadleigh Castle in Essex, UK.
3) 4K Displays (Ultra HD) - It seems that the love affair with 3D televisions and monitors has finally faded. Personally after seeing Avatar at the movies and coming out feeling like I'd been on a 6 hours cross channel ferry crossing I wasn't that impressed with 3D projection. The idea of sitting at home and wearing active glassed made no sense to me. I am a Luddite towards that 3D technology, however I was impressed by what everyone had to say about 4K displays.
Although I did not purchase a 4K in 2013, I did watch quite a few videos about them and watched what little was available at the trade shows. I thought it was going to be a few years out before we saw 4K, then out of the blue Seiki, a Chinese company with a headquarters in California started shipping affordable 4K displays and the tech community went wild. So in just a couple of years the focus on Smart 3D TV's was challenged and now 4K units with 4 times the resolution were hitting the shelves. So sure it would help if there was more content for these boxes, and that will take some time. But for those of us who like to game occasionally the idea of seeing 4K resolution makes me salivate. Sure we'll all need beefier video cards and deeper pockets, but it's nice to see some new tech which you want to lust over. CES 2014 has been full of new 4K displays and cameras that record at that resolution, so more content should be on the way soon.
4) Wearables. Well it's been a year of fussing over Google Glass, although I don't feel it lived up to the hype. Samsung brought out Android based watches which worked with the Galaxy line. The stories here seemed to revolve about more units being returned to the store than being kept by the consumers. I am not sure if that was correct or not. The mythical iWatch from Apple still didn't materialize.
But there were successes too, like the Pebble Bluetooth epaper watch. Starting off as a Kickstarter with a simple goal of $100,000 (for production costs) the company bought in pledges of over $10 million. By Christmas the devices were on sale at BestBuy and several other electronics stores. My friend Matt owns one, and he loves it. Having seen it in person I think it looks a little dinky, but it's the function which makes it worthwhile. Sure it's a clever lower power epaper watch, but it also can have apps written for it and can deliver messages to your wrist silently (with a little vibration). Matt says the real thing that makes his life better is that if he's driving and an email arrives he can quickly glance at his watch to see the subject line and doesn't have to dig out his phone. The same can be said in a meeting or office environment. However I have noticed him looking at his watch as if he's impatient to leave, when all he's trying to do is check his email. I expect a lot more of these devices in 2014, although I am not sure if I can bring myself to wear one.
5) Virtual Reality. Okay I guess this should really be a wearable too. I mean the Oculus Rift and the new Crystal Cove virtual headsets are about to go prime time and knock your socks off.
If you haven't seen them in action then I recommend watching this demo. I really wish these had been around a few years back when my wife and I spent time in the virtual world of Second Life. It was a lot of fun, but would have been even better with VR glasses. Second Life was designed as an exploration of virtual environments and the immersion of a VR headset would have been incredible. Of course some of this technology has been around for years, but limited in function and by price. Now the video game manufacturers are on board I think that we may see a greater uptake of these headsets... and then it's only a small jump until we are all absorbed into the Matrix.
I can't wait to see where 2014 takes us.
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