As summer heats up, keep your eye on these hot tech trends. Some may even come in handy for your summer barbeque.
1 – Get everything instantly
We already enjoy the luxury of streaming movies on demand Waiting for the big broadcast networks to schedule everything will soon seem quaint – like listening to Victrolas and transistor radios.
We expect rocket-fast service now more than ever. Uber allows us to hail cabs instantly. Amazon Prime now delivers a growing number of items in 24 hours. Need it faster? Instacart provides 2-hour grocery delivery. And about that barbeque … Postmates is positioned to deliver your meat, ketchup, invitations, and grill from your local businesses in minutes.
2 – Pay with biometrics
Fingerprint scans have already emerged at local grocery stores and Disney resorts. Now face scans allow shoppers in China to leave their wallets at home. Face++ software uses facial recognition for both payment and identity confirmation.
3 – Talk to chatbots
More companies are employing chatbots to provide personalized help to customers. Looking for a movie? Find out where to catch your top choices with Fandango’s Messenger Host. Need to get through the afternoon? Tell My Starbucks Barista what you want to drink. You can also get your medical questions answered by MedWhat or team up with a bot to solve a mystery on Disney’s Zootopia game.
4 – Get connected with the Internet of Things
With smart homes, an explosion of apps, and super handy platforms like IFTTT, everything is connected now
Control more of your future world with your home hub and phone. Having a dinner party? Amazon’s Alexa can give you 23 recipes for Chicken Cordon Bleu. Then she’ll send a shopping list of the ingredients to your smartphone. Looking for upbeat music? Tell her which playlist to you want to hear. And if you’re at the store and forgot what you already have, access the view from your smart-fridge camera with your phone.
5 – DIY 3-D printables
Now that 3D Printers are available to the public, the sky’s the limit. For about $220 the Monoprice printer arrives fully assembled from Amazon and ready to use … so you can have that Arduino part, flower pot, or fidget spinner without popping off to the store again.
6 – Look for quantum computing
Quantum computing could revolutionize computing and encryption over the next 5-10 years.
Traditional computers store and transfer data in bits – electrical circuits that can be switched on and off to correspond to the ones and zeros of binary code. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, in place of circuits. A photon, electron, or nucleus all have the potential to be used as the basis of a qubit.
Each microparticle is kept at an extremely cold temperature (just above absolute zero) in a state that allows it to represent both one and zero simultaneously. This, combined with the phenomena of entanglement and tunneling, allows the computer to work with greater quantities of information at the same time.
Quantum computing will soon help scientists everywhere …
- create faster machine learning
- decode encryptions
- and work out solutions to complex problems in areas as diverse as finance and weather.
D-wave is building out 2000-qubit computers of the future right now.
7 – Wear your tech
Apple Watches keep us on schedule and Fitbits keep us in shape.
Now we can also preserve our happiest summer memories with videos recorded on Snap spectacles. And if you’re looking for live surgical help, industry training resources, or navigation aids for the next parachuting experience, you may want to investigate the new Seethru augmented reality glasses from Laster, one of a growing number of competitors to Google glass.
Which trends will you follow this year?