And now, couch potatoes rejoice!

Thanks to a new technology known as WHDI, or Wireless Home Digital Interface, the world of television is changing. This comes as all televisions – or at least television channels – are going to be undergoing brand new make overs, with all of them set to change over to digital in 2009. With Wireless Home Digital Interface, you will be able to mount big screen monitors right on the wall of your living room, bed room, et cetera, as well as surround sound speakers – without a great big mess of unsightly wires. Housewives all over the world are going to be rejoicing right along with their television watching husbands and children (that is a huge bit of generalization, but I’m sure you guys know what I mean). These little boxes will work with high definition TVs and they, too, are set to be available by 2009. Amimon Ltd., a company operating out of Israel, developed these little beauties. Companies like Panasonic, LG, Toshiba, and others are now planing to follow suit and develop their own wireless systems.

Wii enhancements: Wee!

There’s good news for gamers, yet again. The Nintendo Wii is possibly the greatest gaming system ever in life (warning: the preceding was a completely biased opinion and no, the author does not care), and Nintendo has plans to make it even better. Hot on the heels of the wildly popular Wii-Fit, which is has revolutionized the lives of fat-bottomed (warning: the preceding was a Queen reference, who caught that?) gamers everywhere, Nintendo intends to enhance the standard Wii-mote with a wee, teeny box called the Wii MotionPlus. It’s supposed to enhance the Wii-mote’s response and precision, and to make playing games on the Wii an overall more intense experience – namely because it is much more motion sensitive. Nintendo’s also introducing Wii Music, which lets gamers play fifty different instruments, just the way they are really played. The balance board is going to double as part of a drum kit – it will be the bass drum. Ba-dum ching, baby.

Can your cell phone kill you?

Recently in Moscow, over a dozen people were either injured or killed outright. The cause? They were struck by lightning. The underlying cause? Well, a lot of authorities there are blaming it on cell phones. For instance, one woman was struck by lightning while she was talking on her cell phone. People are actually blaming these strikes on several different pieces of portable technology; they consider MP3 players and other music devices to be just as much to blame.

Now, I definitely do not intend to make light of this situation; I used to live in fear of being struck by lightning. However, there is no real scientific proof that the weak electromagnetic fields put off by cell phones and other hand held, metal made devices could lure a stroke of lightning, even though evidence does support the fact that people carrying metal objects when they are struck by lightning may be more fatally wounded.

Still, it bears the question – who wants to be out in the middle of an electrical storm talking on a cell phone anyway?

Gamers, geeks, and Internet fr33ks: rejoice!

Experts in Australia have apparently created a new technology that is supposed to allow people to surf the Internet one hundred times faster than they do now. For that matter, a professor working with the product says that this probably won’t cost users anything.
The new technology evidently works to increase and improve the performance of optic fibers; the professor involved likened it to a scratch on a piece of glass, wherein the circuits will use the glass as a kind of path that the information will follow.
It’ll be a while before this technology reaches the market, but right now tests have conclusively shown that, in its current stages, this new technique has made surfing the web sixty times faster. Researchers on the product believe that with some more development, it can easily be one hundred times faster.

Eco-friendly washing machines ftw!

When you stop and think about it, it’s really about time that the overall design of washing machines get a new make-over. Xenos is taking a huge step in that regard – they have created an economically friendly washing machine. It is completely water efficient – namely because it uses plastic instead of water. It has been proven that a combination of friction and the cleaning solvent used are what ultimately gets clothing and fabrics clean. Keeping that in mind, Xenos uses a mixture of those factors and only 2 percent of water to get the job done. Apparently, you’ll be able to use one cup of water, a bit of your detergent of choice, and a butt-load of plastic chips that are used over and over again, all of which will work together to basically beat the dirt out of your clothes and get rid of stains. That’s right, the plastic chips will actually absorb stains.

This machine isn’t on the market yet, but the tests done on it thus far are showing some real promise. Not only is it water efficient, for instance, but the process of actually washing clothes followed by the way the chips themselves are extracted so they can be reused (for about one hundred times) leaves the items in the washer pretty dry, so you either won’t need to use your dryer at all, or you’ll only have to use it a bit for thicker fabrics.

Text messages are officially taking over the world.

PhoneTag – and various other companies – have this new thing now, in the ever widening world of telephone technology. Voice recognition software in cell phones isn’t all that new, but this looks awesome. They have services that can convert your voicemail messages into text messages; they will transcribe your voicemail, and then send to – well, anywhere, really. You can get it sent to your email and/or your phone, plus you can sign into your account on the company’s web site and retrieve your messages. Different companies offer different services, like the ability to have people send you silent messages, so your phone doesn’t even make a sound or anything, plus there are some features that will let you play an MP3 as sort of a soundtrack to your message. Most of them will let you put these services on home and business phones as well as cell phones. I had occasion to read about a lot of the companies offering things like this, and from what I saw, people were digging places like SpinVox, PhoneTag, and VoiceBox, more than companies like CallWave, mostly because the latter makes you change your voicemail number. Anyhow, people seem to like them because you don’t have to take down messages before and you can read through them even in places where you’re not supposed to have your cell phone switched on, like the movie theatre and malls and things.

Go iGoogle yourself.

Google’s upping the ante and it looks like they’re seriously attempting to compete with social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook. They’re all about supporting OpenSocial now and they are finally – finally – reworking that bland homepage. I guess they’ve finally started listening to people’s complaints about it. These new improvements to iGoogle are an answer to public opinion as well. They plan to incorporate some of the elements and features already implemented in Gmail to spice things up a bit. iGoogle will have chat functions similar to Gmail and there will actually be real gadgets. The tabs are going to run up and down on the left side rather than on the top and you’ll soon be able to see what your friends are doing, via news feeds similar to what you can find on MySpace. Another social networking site ... I don’t know though. Google might be asking for trouble, throwing themselves into the ring with MySpace.

New Advances in Lasik Surgery

There’s good news for people with bad eyesight and about four thousand dollars burning a whole in their pockets.
More and more people are wearing glasses and/or contacts these days – we’re probably going to evolve that way. A couple hundred years from now – if the whole joint hasn’t burned up and burned out by then – babies will probably get fitted for glasses as soon as they pop out of the womb. It’s a technological hazard. We spend a heck of a lot of time looking at computer screens. On an average day, I spend at least nine hours staring at WordPerfect (shut up, I know it sucks but I like it) or web pages while I research the effects of green tea or specs on a 2005 Benz.
Lasik eye surgery is becoming a popular alternative to glasses and contacts, especially since people are having to get bifocals and the like earlier in their lives than ever. The FDA has improved a new, very advanced machine used in laser eye surgery, though. It’s called the Allegretto Wave Eye-Q and it can cut into or shape the cornea in half the time other, older machines take. It even nixes the worry most people have about lasik – that they’ll move during surgery and end up playing Captain Jack Sparrow for Halloween for the rest of their lives. If the eye happens to move, this machine stops. Use of this machine also makes it possible for patients to recover faster.

One Step Closer to Controlling the World

It’s official: gamers are one step closer to really being able to (kind of) play God. This gamer is all tingly from the possibilities. No, it’s not a new, let’s-decide-who-lives-or-dies video game. It’s the next step in playing video games. Emotive Systems is coming out with a new headset system that’s designed to pick up your brain’s electrical activity. It can also pick up the movements of your facial muscles, as well as those in other spots. You can literally think about killing off a villain, and boom. It’s done. These will be out for Christmas, at $299 a headset.

Budgets ANd Buying Technology

When you are thinking about buying something new, think about what you need it to do, and then do research online before going into a store. You can set a budget up before you go to the store. If you limit yourself to that budget, you can save money, as the budget will give you that ability to shake off most salesman's pitches!

Technology as Religion

The weirdest thing about technology is perhaps its effects on pop culture. By taking what is actually happening in technology, throwing in some urban legends, and extrapolations based on the history of technology, pop culture is experiencing an interesting regenesis. Even more interesting is that pop culture and science have formed an interesting symbiosis: Ideas put forth by pop culture are integrated into science, which are then put back into pop culture for someone else to pick up. And this symbiosis shows up in weird places.

Consider the effects of Star Wars on religion. The Force has spawned a renewed interest in Eastern religions, which have their own version of spiritual forces permeating the universe. This has created a renewed interest in religion in general, which, of course, has been expressed in more and more films and books.

Interestingly, this has given rise to a techno-shamanism, where not only the computer doesn't impeded spiritual awareness, but actually assists it, allowing expression and discussion of personal beliefs. Although it would not be fair to say that the computer has been universally embraced, it would be fair to say that it has created its own discussions on whether or not it's a good thing, and what the end result will be. And that exploration will define who we will be as a species.

Building Communities Through Communication

It's interesting that technology has created tighter communities than there used to be. We are now capable of doing whatever we want and still maintaining contact with those communities. The advent of the cell phone, instant messaging, and e-mail are arguably some of our greatest accomplishments, as they allow communication as long as the person is near an electronic device.

E-mail is something that a practically unlimited number of uses, as it allows for sharing information in a myriad of forms, from URL links to documents to images. It's just a matter of compiling the information, putting it in a form that can be transmitted and then transmitting that information. It can be used to quickly move information around, and move up almost any decision-making process.

Cell phones have become incredible tools. Besides enabling communication almost everywhere, they can be used to take pictures and provide vocal information, either storing that information until a cell tower can be found, or for immediate transferral.

Instant messaging has some limits, but its ability to share files with some short snippet of information can explain the file being shared. Also, it can be used to discuss some information, offering better context for the information provided, and thus clarifying the communication.

Alone, they are powerful. Together, they allow a practically unlimited ability to communicate. And that ability to communicate creates tighter communities.