Some of the products we’ve seen this year make us feel like the future has already arrived. We don’t yet have a jetpack to fly from place to place, of course, or a personal teleportation system, but these ideas are a taste of tomorrow today.
Samsung Galaxy Gear
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear wasn’t the first true smartwatch, but it’s easily the most marketed, bringing your own watch-faces and social notifications to a wrist watch.
In fact, the Galaxy Gear manages to extend the smartphone experience, letting you go all Dick Tracy on the world by speaking directly into the watch to make phone calls. It will even capture photos, though we haven’t quite worked out when snapping a pic from your wrist might come in handy.
Google Glass
Google’s vision of the future isn’t available here yet – try next year, people – but we did  try out its goggle concept recently, and it’s very cool.
Wearable technology is already shaping up to be the next big thing (see Galaxy Gear watch, above) and Google’s Glass takes the concept to the next level by incorporating a tiny screen for viewing web pages. You can access maps, capture images and make phone calls, Â just by talking to a pair of glasses worn over your eyes.
Man, this stuff is like witchcraft.
Ford MyKey electronic key
Traditional car keys let anyone switch on the car and use the automobile as they normally would. Ford’s new “MyKey” system allows you to program the car for specific drivers, so you can control how the car is driven, even when you’re not in it.
Young drivers, for example, may be be given a key programmed to limit driving speeds or volume levels on the audio system. A key can even be setup so that safety technologies can’t be turned off.
Garmin HUD
In the future, cars will have neat-o displays that pop up from the dashboard to present speed, distance, location or any other data relating to the GPS.
We’re not there yet obviously, but Garmin has found a way to bring the future to cars by creating a heads-up display (HUD) that talks to the Garmin GPS or Navigon GPS software on smartphones.
When run, the Garmin HUD sends the image to either a plastic screen or a plastic slip stuck to the windscreen, thereby giving the impression of a holographic heads-up display.
Find out more about the Garmin HUD…
Dyson’s filterless vacuum
You might not realise it, but the reason so many vacuum cleaners lose suction is because we don’t clean the filter. Sure, we clean the dust and particle chamber because that’s where all the crud goes, but not the filter itself.
Dyson has found a way to save us from our our laziness by developing a way for the filter to clean itself. It achieves this through a new design, by which the membrane that acts as the filter is moved quickly enough to let the dust particles travel into the chamber. When the filter never clogs, the vacuum (in theory) never loses suction.
Now if only Dyson could make it so the dust and stuff we suck up just goes to a magical dimension so that we never have to see it again.
Find out more about Dyson’s innovative idea…
