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Will 2012 be the year the electric car takes off? Image courtesy of Flickr user Dominic's Pics

Part II of the ABCs of 2012.

It’s customary this time of year to write paeans to the past 12 months and get all mushy about things you’d pretty much forgotten. But we don’t need that, right? We’re all forward-thinkers here, aren’t we?

So I’ve created an alphabetical list of things you’ll likely hear about more often in the months ahead. At the very least, you’ll have some new words to drop into conversations at the New Year’s Eve party to show how much you’re already plugged into next year.

Here you go, the ABC’s of 2012 (Part I):

Augmented reality: Sure, it’s been around awhile, dating back to when yellow ”first-down” lines were first overlaid on football fields for games on TV. But using apps to layer virtual information over a real-world environment—think reviews that pop up on your screen when you focus your phone on the restaurant–is about to go mainstream. Coming soon: Google Goggles, glasses which will give the person wearing them all kinds of info about what they’re looking at.

Biometrics: There are so many things besides your sparkling wit that make you who you are–your DNA, iris scans, voice patterns or facial features—and the science of using them to identify you is getting more and more James Bondian. Now IBM is predicting that within a few years, we won’t need passwords, even at the ATM.

Car-sharing: It looks like sharing things—particularly cars—is going to become as big a part of urban living as food trucks using Foursquare. Car-sharing companies, such as RelayRides and Getaround, connect people who need a car for a few hours to people willing to rent theirs. They’re operating in only a handful of U.S. cities right now, but just this month Getaround landed a $1.7 million federal grant to roll out in Portland, Oregon.

Digital assistants: Used to be that “personal digital assistants” referred to little handheld devices with calendars and phone directories to help you get your life organized. But voice-activated Siri on the iPhone 4S has given us a taste of what digital assistants of the future will do—adjust our calendars, read our email, archive our photos and documents and, above all, give us weather reports. Now it really is personal.

Electric cars: The truth is, there’s been nowhere near an electric car boom. So far Nissan has sold only 20,000 of its all-electric Leafs worldwide and Chevy fell short of its goal of selling 10,000 of its hybrid plug-in Volts this year. But Ford, Honda and Toyota all plan to launch electric vehicles in 2012 and Nissan announced this fall that, along with scientists at Kansai University in Japan, it had developed the technology to fully charge an electric car in only 10 minutes.

Foodspotting: This smartphone app that provides you with reviews and photos of specific restaurant meals before you order them has been downloaded more than a million times. And it may have finally come up with ways to make it a profitable business.

Gamification: Well, it doesn’t sound like much fun, but the whole point of “gamification” is to make everyday transactions feel like a game. So, more and more businesses, particularly retailers and restaurants, are starting to use the same sort of enticements that bring players back to games over and over—awards, badges, even leaderboards.

Higgs boson: Earlier this month scientists at CERN, an atom smasher in Switzerland, announced that they may have “glimpsed” something known as Higgs boson. Big deal, right? Actually, it’s a very big deal because it would explain how matter has mass, which is why it’s become known as the “God particle.” This has prompted much speculation that Higgs boson may finally be discovered in 2012.

Ice Cream Sandwich: I love them, too, but what’s so innovative about an ice cream sandwich? But this one’s not edible. It’s the new operating system for Android smartphones and tablets and it’s likely to make Google an even stronger player in the mobile market. Why ice cream sandwich? Simple. It follows previous Google operating systems Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread and Honeycomb. What, no Apple Pie?

Jawbone’s Up: Created by the same company that gave us Bluetooth headsets, it’s a wristband that tracks your sleeping and exercise habits. Unfortunately, within a month of its launch in November, Jawbone was already responding to complaints about performance issues. If the company can get the Up back on track, it should tap into one of the country’s hottest trends: Wearable tech that monitors how we’re treating our bodies.

Klout: This is a San Francisco company that has plunged into the dicey territory of trying to measure the actual influence people have on others on social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Klout actually hands out scores ranging from 100 if you’re seen to move the masses, to 1, if no one cares what you say. For all the shots Klout takes from its critics, companies seem to be paying attention to it.

LEDs: Some people still get feisty about wanting to hold on to their incandescent light bulbs, but face it, they are one of the more inefficient inventions ever—90 percent of their energy goes to producing heat, not light. The true 21st century light bulbs are LEDs (light-emitting diodes), which consume one-tenth the energy of incandescents, but can last at least 50 times longer. And scientists are finding all kinds of cool uses for LEDs, from producing lights that look like glowing sheets of paper to using LED lighting in the latest commercial airliners to help passengers fight jet lag.

Museum of Me: Earlier this year Intel came out with an mobile app that’s clearly in tune with the times. The Museum of Me takes all of the stuff you’ve posted on Facebook and turns it into a short video set in a museum. It’s been ripped as disturbingly narcissistic, but if nothing else, can make you realize that you really need to get out more.

Video Bonus: As some commenter said, we’ll be laughing at this demo video for Siri in 10 years.

Video Bonus Bonus: A little Siri humor to round out the year.

Part II of the ABCs of 2012.

I like “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as much as the next guy. Well, actually, that’s not true. I think I’d be perfectly fine if I never heard it again. Believe me, I’ve tried to make it part of my Christmas canon. I’m okay with the first few verses,  but then it goes all 18th century on me, with the milking maids and the leaping lords, and then I’d rather be listening to dogs barking “Jingle Bells.”

So in the spirit of innovation, I figured I’d roll out a new gift list for the “Twelve Days of Christmas”, assuming your true love lives wants to give you something a little more useful than 11 pipers piping.

Day 1: Yes, you’d be the only person on your block with a partridge in a pear tree, yet, in the end, after all your friends have taken pictures with their cell phones, it would just sit there.  If  your true love wants to really rock your world, he or she would give you a Pocket Boom, a sweet little device that can turn any surface—a window, a cardboard box, a piece of fruit—into a speaker.

Day 2: Think about it, which would you trust more with your mental health, a turtle dove or a light bulb that can help you get you through those tough times when your Circadian rhythms are out of whack?  Sounds like a no-brainer. The latter is an LED bio-bulb and it’s being designed by a Florida inventor to allow you to control the production of melatonin, your body’s sleep hormone.

The Zeo sleep manager

Day 3: While we’re on the subject of sleep, I don’t think three French hens, even if they can speak another language, are smart enough to explain to you how you slept last night.  But a Zeo Sleep Manager can. It tracks how much time you spend each night in REM sleep, deep sleep and light sleep.

Day 4: A confession: For much of my life I thought that on the fourth day the true love showed up with four calling birds.  Not that long ago I found out that it’s four colly birds, meaning four black birds. A sleek gift, for sure, but what’s with all the birds. By my count, that’s 10 birds in four days. What are you going to do with 10 birds?  Better they should give you something useful, like batteries.  Does that sound lame? Okay, not just any batteries, but ones that can charge 10 times faster than ordinary batteries and last 10 times longer.

Day 5: Five golden rings would be none too shabby.  Except, once again the song is actually talking about birds, in this case, ring-necked pheasants.  Enough with the birds.  Personally, I’d rather have something practical, you know, like a gizmo that keeps potato chips really fresh. Now there’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Day 6: I’ve never thought of eggs as a good gift, even if you toss in the geese laying them.  It might simplify your breakfast choices, but wouldn’t you rather have a perfect cup of coffee. Now that’s possible with a device called a coffee refractometer and an app that goes by the name ExtractMojo.

Day 7: Seven swans a-swimming can be a charming—for about 10 seconds.  After that, it’s boring stuff.  It would be different if they did synchronized swimming, but that’s apparently too much to ask.  If it’s beauty you’re after, a more contemporary choice would be a “sonic skin cleansing system.” Because your face deserves a system.

Day 8: Sure, it would be great to have eight maids, but not if all they do is milk. No floors, no laundry and, no doubt, no windows.  You’re better off with a good old Roomba. And now there’s a device called Brainlink that lets you upgrade your robot vacuum with sensors so it stops running into walls.

Day 9: Ten drummers drumming…what kind of gift is that? Have you sat through one drum solo?  Imagine 10. (You know if one does a solo, everyone will want one.) And if you’re into drum solos, your true love should show your ears some love by getting you some cool headphones that keep the sound under 88 decibels. That’s well above conversation levels (60 decibels), but sanely below the sound of jet engines (120 decibels).

Day 10: You get 10 ladies dancing and you’ve got a nice little party going. That’s when you’d realize that what you really need is an EDDIE, Microsoft’s automated party photographer.

Day 11: As much as 11 pipers piping sounds like a lot of fun, I’d rather have a good plumber. At my age, I prefer to focus on what can go wrong.  And so often, when things go wrong in our house, a plumber gets involved. My 21-year-old son doesn’t appreciate this level of wisdom, except in one regard.  He knows the bad things that can happen to an iPhone. So here I’d recommend replacing the pipers with a LifeProof, the iPhone case that’s waterproof, dirt-proof, snow-proof and shock-proof.

Day 12: Finally we come to the lords a-leaping. Undoubtedly, they had their day, but face it, lords have fallen out of fashion, let alone leaping lords. If, however, you appreciate the athletic commitment a roomful of leapers represents, perhaps I can interest you in a shoe that keeps your feet feeling fresh. It does this because the sweetener xylitol has been added to the soles. Xylitol is a sugar that creates a cooling sensation when it comes into contact with moisture.

That’s right, shoes that makes sweaty feet feel minty.  Take that, Five Golden Rings.

Video Bonus: For old time’s sake, here’s version of “12 Days of Christmas” that sounds way better than the one you hear in the elevator, compliments of the acapella group, Straight No Chaser.

Have a gizmo holiday!

How close are we to living to 150 years old? Image courtesy of Flickr user Ed Yourdon

Now that Jimmy Stewart will be reminding us again that it’s a wonderful life—although I’m still waiting for my neighbors to show up with a basket of cash—allow me to pose a question:

If it’s so wonderful, how long do you want it to last? Until you’re 90?  100?  150?

I’m serious about living to 150. Recent research is making scientists increasingly bullish about slowing the aging process. I’m not referring to some little pill that will make you stop craving the Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s or thinking that jogging your memory qualifies as exercise. I’m talking about a treatment that could actually stop your body’s tissue from aging.

What has longevity experts excited is a study released by the Mayo Clinic last month, one that focused on so-called “senescent cells” in our bodies. These are cells that can no longer divide, and they tend to be embedded in tissues showing signs of aging, such as arthritic knees or plaque in our arteries. But scientists didn’t know if the inflammation in these tissues was a result of  aging or if something else caused the inflammation, which spurred aging.

The Mayo scientists seem to have solved the riddle. When they were able to remove senescent cells from mice, the little rodents were revitalized. They could run on treadmills longer and had larger fat deposits. That may sound unhealthy, but the reason our skin wrinkles as we age is that it loses fat.

This is clearly a breakthrough, but don’t going tearing up your will just yet. A lot more testing needs to be done before a senescence purge can be tried in humans. That said, scientists may be able to find a chemical that can search and destroy the youth-sapping cells.

Several drug companies are said to be “very enthusiastic.” I feel younger already.

Staying alive

Even minus an anti-aging drug, medical advances have made it more likely we’ll experience what aging experts call a “compression of morbidity,” meaning most people won’t spend years seriously ill in a nursing home until they die. Instead, a lot of us will live longer in reasonably good health before things go south quickly.  Back in 1950, there were 2,300 people in the U.S. older that 100; by 2050, according to some estimates, that number could hit 600,000.

Whoa, that’s a lot of really old people. No doubt, it would ratchet up our expectations of how productive an 80-year-old should be. Some scientists, such as Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, feel the push toward doubling our life expectancy reflects a “deep selfishness.” Wolpe thinks there’s a “natural wisdom” in death because it makes way for a new generation of innovators.

On the flip side is science writer Sonia Arrison, who thinks that once we’re routinely hitting 125 or so, we’ll start reaching our true potential as a society. In her book, 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith, she contends that the combination of deep experience and still vital minds and bodies will make what we now call the elderly a “tremendous resource.”

As she put in an interview with The Futurist: “Think of all of the older people you know who are super smart and have tons of experience, but then they die and it’s lost, and the next generation has to rebuild. If we didn’t have to lose all that experience as quickly, we wouldn’t have to keep rebuilding.”

The world that Arrison imagines would be a very different place, where siblings could be 60 years apart in age and 80-year-old women could have babies. Strap on your seat belts.

Everything old is new again

Here are a few of the latest advances that could bring us longer, healthier lives:

• Going for the jugular: German researchers have devised a way to produce artificial blood vessels on a 3-D printer.
• So that’s what prunes smell like: Thanks to scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, old people will be able to regain their sense of smell.
• No guts, no glory: A team of researchers from Cornell and the University of Pittsburgh have managed to “grow” the first artificial intestine in a lab.
• Better the second time around: Commonly prescribed bone drugs could extend the life of hip and knee replacements.
• Sweet!: A new type of sugar could actually help prevent heart disease.

Video Bonus: If you think it’s not such a bad thing to die of old age, spend a little time with Aubrey de Grey.

The Question: Would you want to live to 150?

How much technology is too much? Image courtesy of Flickr user caribb

If you haven’t already, sometime in the next week or so you will buy a gadget or some electronic device and you’ll likely have one of two reactions: Didn’t I just buy this? Or, when did this thing happen?

Not that the sprint of technology kicks into another gear this time of year; it’s just that this is when most of us get loopy with gadget overload and wonder how we’re going to keep up with the pace.  And at least some of us still aren’t sure if change at warp speed is such a good thing.

Take the group of people who were surveyed recently in the U.S., Germany, India and China by Underwriters Laboratories, the product testing firm. Almost half of those who responded said they think high-tech manufacturers bring new products to market faster than people need them.  That would suggest that the pace of innovation is too fast for a lot of consumers.

Or we may not be talking about innovation at all. There is so much emphasis, particularly in the U.S., on pushing stuff to market that more often than not, what we’re getting are tweaks of existing products. Face it, we now live in a beta world where there’s always another fix coming along. Case in point: Only a month after launching its Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon announced it soon will roll out a software upgrade to make it work better.

Rob Chandhok, president of the Qualcomm Innovation Center would agree. In a recent blog for Fast Company, he wrote, “…I think people often confuse the pace of innovation with the pace of change. What has clearly accelerated in the pace of change. Is this pace producing better stuff? Or just more stuff?”

Will you miss losing your keys?

Then there’s the persistent dilemma of technology racing ahead of rules. It’s become a familiar pattern: A new device or software allows us to do things we couldn’t do before and, just like that, we’re invading someone’s privacy. The latest flap is over face recognition software tied to a mobile app called SceneTap. It tells someone, based on images from overhead cameras in bars, the breakdown of men and women in a place, plus the age mix. That’s right, in real time, someone can get that kind of critical bar-hopping intelligence before he even leaves his couch.

This has Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) so worried that he’s asked the head of the Federal Trade Commission if the agency should regulate face recognition software. The cycle goes on.

Another sad consequence of rapid-fire change is that a lot of perfectly decent devices will soon be doing fast fades. CDs didn’t even last 15 years; vinyl LPs lasted 80.  Soon on the hit list, predicts tech writer Rajiv Makhni, will be car CD players, credit cards, wallets, keys, TV remotes, wrist watches, gaming consoles and, of course, landline phones.

So take a moment to pay respect to what remains of your old-school devices, the ones from the days when you replaced something only when it was way beyond repair. Hug your toaster today. You may want to unplug it first.

Just what you needed

I bet you didn’t see these coming:

• Your goose is cooked: The iGrill is a wireless meat thermometer that sync’s with your iPad and tells you, from as far as 200 feet away, if your meal is done.
• Does that include face plants?: Recon Instruments has created goggles that record all the data from your day of skiing.
• Your pizza smell enchants me: Scientists at the University of Singapore have come up with something they call a Sound Perfume, but it’s been described as a “ringtone for your nose.” It’s a pair of glasses that sends your selected sound and smell to anyone else wearing the glasses.
• Remember, always round down: Also from Singapore, a computer that can estimate your age.
• But can it cut off crust?: A team at the Technical University of Munich has invented a robot that can make sandwiches.

Video bonus: Take a trip down memory lane with Walt Mossberg,  who’s been writing about personal technology for the Wall Street Journal for 20 years now.

The Question: What old-school device do you hope never changes?

The Presto ordering system. Image courtesy of E La Carte.

I have seen the future of restaurant dining and it does not involve a waiter named Justin telling me about the rockfish.

No, it’s more like ordering a steak from a vending machine, only it takes longer to come down the chute.

Okay, I may be exaggerating—slightly—but we’re starting to see the touch-screen culture encroach into the world where we tell actual people what we’d like to eat.

Exhibit A is a device called Presto, produced by a Silicon Valley company called E la Carte and the brainchild of Rajat Suri, who dropped out of MIT to turn it into a business.  It’s a tablet—one that actually preceded the iPad—that allows diners to order their meals by tapping on the screen, play games while they wait for their  food, then pay by swiping a credit card whenever they’re ready to go.

It’s already in play in about 100 restaurants, with interest from at least 150 more around the country, according to Suri. To help make that happen, E la Carte received a nice little boost of $4 million in venture capital from the co-founders of Groupon a few months ago.

Those sold on tabletop tablets say they’re a win-win. Customers can order meals as soon as they sit down, spend their waiting time with time-killing games, and pay as soon as they’re done if they want—without having to worry about what a waiter might do with their credit card. For restaurants, the devices cause tables to turn more quickly—three minutes faster on average—and allow them to capture more data about diner preferences. Plus, people seem to spend more money when they punch in their orders, thanks in part to friendly little prompts such as “Want fries with that?” and the knowledge that the little machine will not look at their bellies.

But not everyone’s a winner. Suri insists his tablet is not meant to eliminate servers—someone has to bring the food to the table and as yet, Presto can’t fill glasses. But part of the pitch to restaurants is that it cuts both labor costs and training time.  Which brings us to…

Exhibit B, another restaurant tablet, called Ziosk, produced by TableTop Media in Dallas. It’s similar to the Presto, except it also lets you read the news and watch movie trailers. Another difference is that it  lets you order only drinks and desserts so you’re still giving your meal order to a server. This summer Chili’s restaurants started rolling out the Ziosk all over the country.

That makes sense. Family chain restaurants would seem to be a sweet spot for tabletop tablets, higher end restaurants where service is part of the signature, not so much. But that brings us to…

Exhibit C, Inamo, an Asian restaurant in London. It doesn’t rely on tablets with seven-inch screens; instead your whole tabletop is interactive, with the menu flashed down in front of you by overhead projectors. Touch the table to see photos of the food and drinks, and tap away to order. While you wait for the delivery people, aka servers, to bring your meal, you can choose a virtual tablecloth for your setting or watch what’s the chef up to on the Kitchen Cam projected in front of you. Or you can play Battleship.

Ah yes, Battleship and bok choy, a dining combo for our times.

Thoughts for food

Here are other innovations in the world of food and drink:

• I know what you like: Ness Computing has developed an iPhone app that trumps most mobile restaurant directories because it makes restaurant recommendations based on both personal preferences and your friends’ comments gleaned from Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
• A head comes with it?: It’s a few years old now, but Foodspotting, the mobile app that lets you see what meals actually look like, is a hot commodity, attracting $3 million in venture capital.
• Or you can get a cup of water: Burger King is rolling out in almost 900 of its restaurants a soda fountain called Coca Cola Freestyle. You’ll have a choice of more than 100 beverages—sodas, bottled water, sports drinks, teas.
• Beware of paper cuts: GreenBottle, a British company that invented the first paper milk bottle has stepped it up a notch and is planning to launch the world’s first paper wine bottle next year.
• No more anticipation:  A Harvard scientist has developed a film that apparently will keep ketchup from sticking to the inside of bottles.

Video Bonus: To see how the tabletops work at Inamo, you can either watch a slick video review with a lame soundtrack or you can check out a home movie version by some dazzled diners.

The question: Would you rather dine out without waiters?