Sometime in the next 5 years the device will be essentially the same, but no longer called a “phone”. I expect a brand will be the new moniker, like Hoover or Band-Aid.

Your “smartphone” will be your digital conduit everywhere, but when you get home it will sit in a holster (or on a charging pad) by the front door.

It will be seamless paired with your home system, either because they are the same system, or because they are linked – either could happen depending on what the market gets to choose from.

Seamless – anything you were doing on your phone, and anything your phone knows, will already be in the home system. The trend towards this is already strong.

But here’s the twist – I envision a third device, a ring. It works within so many metres of your home. I’d like to think 100m, but technology will decide. It sends location and activity data, as well as recording sound, to your home base. This completes the picture.

It works where your phone doesn’t –  swimming, sex, showering, sleeping.

Example – you take the dog for a walk and you encounter Mr Jones and his Chihuahua. You’ve left your phone on charge and are only popping out for 10 minutes…

• Your journey is recorded
• That you are with your dog is recorded (device in the collar)
• Your dogs behaviour is recorded (based on your ratings of past walks)
• Your interaction with Mr Jones and FiFi are recorded (FaceBook friends)
• If there is something urgent to attend to, your ring flashes and vibrates. You are only 100m away, false alarms are tolerable and sometimes welcome (a family member can trigger it)
• If you hold the ring to your ear it can talk?

When you are at a friend’s house the ring will also work within a set radius. Example – at a BBQ party with people who are mostly your FaceBook friends:

• Every physical interaction is recorded via GPS locations
• Every conversation is recorded via your ring
• You can replay the occasion, especially so if there are linked cameras at your friend’s home

Safeguard – anyone can set their ring to “do not record” and this is abided by friend’s devices and local cameras. Recording an evening would be considered risky and rewarding and uncommon.

I don’t think websites will be going away any time soon, but I do think that within 2 years a new way of navigating them will emerge: a Siri for site navigation.

After enabling it from a top-level menu or a prominent button, when visiting a site you simply talk to your screen to get to the page you want more quickly.

“Search for grey singlets size 11 with a pocket” and the search results appear.

“How long will a singlet take to be delivered” “What is your postcode” “90210” “5 working days or 1 day with an additional fee”

“Take me to your latest Instagram pics” and it does.

The reasons for this prediction are:

• There’s a definite need, especially on mobile. One voice command can cover a sequence of taps and page loads
• If it starts as a WordPress plugin, that covers a lot of the web
• The microdata requirements will have other uses, like Google Shopping
• Website navigation is quite limited in scope, so it is very achievable
• One of Apple / Microsoft / Amazon / Google will quite likely offer 3rd parties access to their AI / chatbot abilities
• At the very least there is a market from government websites, who will want to cater for the visually-impaired
• The same system can be used for when people haven’t actually visited your site, but make a general query to an all-rounder chatbot

Combined with a universal login like Facebook, the navigation bot can already know your delivery address and so on.

The product is called Here, and you can learn about it at KickStarter…

$249 ear buds, so not too different to what people are paying just to listen to music with.

Using the computational power of your smart phone, you can:

• turn up/down the volume of the world around you
• equalize the music at a live concert to suit you – such as turning down the bass
• turn down specific frequencies, like the rumble of a jet plane or train – or a crying baby?

More at Wired.

Push hard on my skin, and you’ll find that the source is two lumps of glass, metal, and plastic embedded in my right hand: a years-old magnet in the ring finger and a newer NFC chip in my thumb webbing. Before getting the magnet, I read paeans to the coming cyborg revolution. After putting it in, I had people tell me my hand would fall off. Since getting the NFC chip in June, I’ve read that I’m carrying the Mark of the Beast and found instructions for how to disable it with a taser. Well, I come from the future, and I’m here to tell you: transcending the limits of the flesh can be downright dull.
Source: The Verge 

The woman writing above can sense/feel local magnetic activity – whether it is microwave ovens, hard drives, regular metal or other magnets. It has added another dimension to her senses, and likes it – although her friend who had the same magnet inserted is now over it.

And her NFC chip – it is pretty much useless at present, not enough uses for it. And situations where she would love to use it, like replacing her employer’s security keycard, aren’t an option because it is non-standard. Still it is interesting that she purchased the chip and installation kit online and inserted it herself.

You can guarantee one day there will be an Apple of implanted chips that will provide you with secure identification that can’t easily be stolen from you. Just not yet (except for that Spanish nightclub a decade ago!)

I’m really going out on a limb with this prediction – but to achieve some things with human bodies we will need to adjust.

Right now Google Maps has cars that drive down every road and capture street images. They achieve this by using a special camera mounted on a small tripod above the vehicle.

They also have a “self-driving” car which has a 64-beam laser on the roof:

The car has been driven for thousands of miles without an accident, but the key to this is 360-degree views.

When humans want to combine computers with their real-world activities, they might find that products like Google Glass are too restricted – that you need to look at something for the system to know it is there.

I suggest that the need will arise for a 360-degree sensor system, using cameras and/or lasers, microphones and so on. The only easy place for it is on top of your head (or perhaps a necklace of sorts.

Eventually ways will be found to make it look cool, perhaps like elongated skulls wearing beanies. There won’t be much use for it when you are at home, so it will be removable.

This image is the closest I have found to how I imagine the iWatch will look:

I think the screen will be 180 degrees long. Turn your wrist to see the bottom of the screen.

Actually it won’t quite be 180 degrees, because opposite the on-screen watch will be a fingerprint scanner (works best with the thumb of your other hand) that will double as an on/off switch. It will be at the place where you would check your own pulse.

The on-screen watch will be the only visible part of the screen (probably be a separate screen) unless you touch the scanner / or if an alert is being displayed along with a vibrate.

Regarding charging, I think the iWatch will come with a night stand that charges the watch while working as a bedside alarm clock. Many people take their watch off when they go to bed, and it isn’t hard to achieve.

Battery life will be one week, but much less if you use various apps. One week will be when you only use it as a watch and bluetooth connection to your phone.

Price will be $349-$399

Making news recently was the idea (from an American teen) that simply using Garamond as the main government font, millions of dollars could be saved:

Using the General Services Administration’s estimated annual cost of ink — $467 million — Suvir concluded that if the federal government used Garamond exclusively it could save nearly 30% — or $136 million per year. An additional $234 million could be saved annually if state governments also jumped on board, he reported.

Unfortunately the readability of printed Garamond means this idea is unlikely to be adopted.

But here’s another idea that will not only save in print costs, it will also massively reduce the bandwidth associated with online writing:

Abbreviate the world the to just “t”. 

I am convinced that adjusting to this reduction would be quick and painless. Try it:

T quick brown fox jumps over t lazy log.

In the latest issue of Wired is an excellent article on wearable tech, like Google Glass, Pebble and so on. It seems to me that the winners are losers of the near future are quite easy to predict, due to one important factor – wearable tech is hard to hide (for now).

However gorgeous a Bluetooth earpiece, it fundamentally says that its wearer might need to make or receive a call at any time—and for most people, that’s not a cool message to send. It makes the wearer look like they jump at the world’s beck and call rather than engaging with it on their own terms.

Bluetooth earpieces haven’t taken off. For example, sales were predicted to grow by just 3% in 2012. By comparison, corded headphones for listening to music are a recent success story. What’s the difference? Well, as is pointed out above, it comes down to your social environment. Bluetooth earpieces are fine when you are pacing about solo in your office, but unacceptable for a dinner date. Corded headphones are only used when you are in solo mode and not socially interacting.

Google Glass is too in-your-face. Like earpieces, people know you are wearing Google Glass and will rightly decide that they don’t have your full attention. Until a similar product can be made that is indistinguishable from regular glasses, it won’t take off. There might be an exception though – sunglasses. I can imagine tech being incorporated into sunglasses and people taking them on or off to suit the environment.

Wristwatches, however, are already fully entrenched into society, and we are used to people glancing at them. We are also used to people glancing at their smart phones. Because a smart watch is too small to do much that is meaningful when you have company, it will be successful.

Likewise with rings – too small to matter. Nobody is going to stare at their ring for 30 seconds, no matter what is being displayed on it.

Another factor is connectivity. Bluetooth isn’t perfect, and having that permanent (wireless) connection running across and through your body makes some people uncomfortable. I expect that many people will take a long time to convince that they need to be permanently wired.

And of course battery life needs to improve. Having to recharge our tablet and phone every day is most I am willing to tolerate. I won’t recharge glasses, a watch and a ring as well.

So, my predictions for current technology:

Google Glass FAIL
Any smart glasses FAIL (except perhaps if they are sunglasses)
Smart watches WIN (but only if the battery lasts for a week)
Smart rings WIN  (but only if the battery lasts for a week)

Wearable tech for soldiers / sports / business WIN

FAIL means that uptake will be limited to tech geeks and people that have an extra need for the device due to work or sports.

In the future, big hits will be wearable tech that you can’t see/tell someone is wearing. Primarily that means Google Glass that looks 100% like regular spectacles.

In the distant future, perhaps 15-20 years from now, the big hit will be imbedded tech. That means a video camera that looks like a freckle, or is built into your eyes. That means enhanced vision. That means bionic hearing. That means embedded sensors, comms and drug delivery systems. When nobody knows you have it, it will really take off.