Augmented reality is a fancy term for overlaying digital graphics or information over a real-life scene from a camera in real time.
There are already some smartphone apps that can do augmented reality – for example, apps that translate text from your phone’s camera in real time.
However, going around holding up a smartphone all day is far from an ideal way to view augmented reality.
So Google developing a new product, called Google Glass, that instead overlays information or graphics onto the lenses on a pair of glasses. While delays have set back its release until May of next year, it’s a product that already has developers and even the AFL watching with interest.
Like the flying car, home automation is one of those technologies that forever seems to be just around the corner. In the ‘80s, processing power and memory were the issue. In the pre-Wi-Fi ‘90s, it was the need to use physical wires to network your house. Through the 2000s, the thought of allowing Windows Vista to control every appliance in your home was enough to put anyone off.
At the IFA 2013 consumer electronics show in Berlin, both Samsung and LG demonstrated home automation systems that overcome many of these earlier practical limitations.
Under LG’s system, users ‘tag-on’ their Wi-Fi-enabled smart appliances using NFC, by touching their smartphones against a tag-on symbol.
Users will then be able to remotely control their smart appliance using a smartphone app called SmartAccess.
Other apps and services perform self-diagnosis and inform the user of any issues, have their appliances automatically respond to data (for example, a fridge responding to weather forecasts) fed to it over the internet, or download additional features and settings (for example washing settlings).
Samsung’s solution is similar, but uses Wi-Fi and an app pre-installed on Samsung smart TVs as the solution.
Mobile phones are constantly coming down in price. A smartphone that would have cost you over $800 outright in 2008 can now be yours for less than $100.
Before mobile phones, many in the developing world had no access to computers, cameras, internets or even traditional fixed line telephones are – for the first time ever – getting access to all of these technologies with the smartphone.
The impact of mass produced, cheap smartphones on emerging markets and the rollout of internet through 3G and 4G mobile phone network equipment is likely to be profound in ways we can’t predict.
With the potential volume of devices involved, it should come as little surprise, then, that the low-end smartphone market is a key target for both Mozilla’s Firefox OS and Google Android KitKat.
All of these technologies are set to compete in 2014. But will they succeed or fall over after the first furlong? That’s ultimately up to you, the consumer, to decide.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
