Top Tech Trends on Tap for 2011

From 3-D TV to the iPad, 2010 was an exciting year for innovation. As 2011 draws nearly with the potential to be filled with moreover surprises that could change the way we live, we take a sneak peek at what's expected to hit it big in the New Year:

The works well previously 2010

Although computing tablets have been in the works well previously 2010, the stars when all is said and done aligned when the iPad hit the market before this year. Since the tablet market is for all that relatively new, there is a lot of room for growth and tablet manufacturers are ready to make their big move.

"Nevertheless, considering most of the TV manufacturers have committed to 3-D and nevertheless see it as a way to help spur demand, it is expected that more efforts to push the innovation will occur in 2011," Inouye said. "We might start to see more 'universal' 3-D glasses ; this was one of the points cited as a miscue by the TV manufacturers."

4G networks promise data speeds several times faster than most of us are currently used to and the innovation is expected to become mainstream in 2011.

"4G is going to hit like a brick wall," said Mike Morgan, senior analyst of mobile devices at ABI Innovation. " Verizon is going to step in and make a big splash with 4G at once year. When Sprint launched the EVO on a 4G network before this year ... it sold three million units in half a year, which is huge. Verizon is twice the addressable market with five times as many phones, so imagine what will happen once Verizon embraces 4G. At that time Apple will have to step in. Everyone is going to be walking around with a 4G phone."

"Technically, smartphone users on a 4G network could use up their data plan allotment for the entire month in just 28 minutes," Morgan said. "It could get expensive, so phone companies will have a challenge on their hands."

The checkout line

Shoppers in parts of Asia are tapping their smartphones instead of swiping credit cards in the checkout line, thanks to a innovation called nearly field communications. The growth of NFC in mobile devices in that part of the world is so dominant nevertheless that in South Korea, Visa is making a conventional plastic card optional for new clients, according to Mike Morgan of ABI Technology.

"When NFC takes off in the United States, expansion will happen quickly," Morgan said. "By the end of 2011, expect to see people in front of you at the drug store tapping their phones to pay."

First, now, mobile providers have to install contactless chips in the hardware of new devices or build the research into SIM cards. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that the at once version of the Android mobile operation system - dubbed Gingerbread - will proudly tout NFC. Blackberry manufacturer Technology in Motion as well plans to follow suit by incorporating NFC in Blackberry handsets in the nearly future.

Speakers will be big news in 2011, according to DuBravac of the Consumer Electronics Association. "Outside of the MP3 market, audio has been dwindling for years as shoppers sought out big TVs, not speakers. In the last year, nevertheless, sound bars have done so then and however, wireless speaker technologies on the horizon are expected to impact the consumer appetite in 2011. Speakers will have the ability to stream audio over a wireless network directly from a user's iTunes."

Speaker to get audio

This means you no longer have to plug your iPod or MP3 player into a speaker to get audio. Speakers would have direct access, via wireless networks, to your music files and play them whenever you want.

Although these types of speakers are not but on the market, DuBravac said that Apple is expected to launch ones with so-called "AirPlay" capabilities included in the nearly future. AirPlay is already being used to give users the ability to instantly and wirelessly stream videos and audio from iTunes to other devices just as Apple TV.

Two-dimensional quick response, or "QR," codes are becoming increasingly embedded into digital and print marketing campaigns, giving consumers access to related digital information on the Web. When an image of the code is captured by a quick response scanner or mobile phone camera, the user's device is connected to an abundance of information, social media sites or coupons related to the product or marketing campaign. QR codes have already started to make their way to billboards, TV programming and print ads.

For example, someone who spots a movie ad in a newspaper can take a picture of the 2-D code with their smartphone and at that time a movie trailer will promptly open on their handheld device. Afterward, the user would be presented with a menu to buy tickets or get more info about the movie.

The inclusion of built-in Wi-Fi

Cameras are expected to become furthermore feature-laden at once year with the inclusion of built-in Wi-Fi, which would allow users to upload images to photo-sharing and social networking sites during they are on the go. Cameras with GPS capabilities give photographers the chance to geo-tag their photos with location coordinates - longitude and latitude - so when it's uploaded to a site, it reveals specifically where the photo was taken. This information could at the time be linked up to Google Maps or other road trip software.

Internet gaming, or "cloud gaming," is quickly becoming the at once big thing in the gaming world. With the release of the first major cloud gaming service, OnLive, gaming has taken a step away from the home console into the expanse of the Internet.

With cloud gaming, all of the graphics processing more often than not performed by the console or computer is done on remote servers. This means the entire program is streamed across the Internet in the same way that music and video are however streamed across the Web. This allows complex, high-resolution games to be played on less powerful and much cheaper devices than ever earlier. In some degree, players don't purchase the game - they purchase access to it.

Apple recently replaced spinning hard drives with flash memory in its MacBook Air to save on speed, and many companies are expected to follow suit in the nearly future. In the meantime, the release of Google's Chrome netbook expected for debut by mid-2011 is touting less hard drive space and will rely more on cloud storage.

" Internet-enabled devices will by all means help the TV category overall at once year," said DuBravac of the Consumer Electronics Association. "Consumers and companies are for all that trying to figure out the true potential for these types of TVs, nevertheless it has the potential to lead to some actually dynamic things."