Sarah-Lee Man­mo­han

Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

Tech­nol­o­gy en­thu­si­asts flocked to the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show (CES) in Las Ve­gas to be the first in line to meet and greet the new and ex­cit­ing tech­no­log­i­cal ba­bies of 2012. Many an­tic­i­pat­ed the next step for smart­phones and tablets while oth­ers were ea­ger to catch a glimpse of the lat­est hy­brid cars and smart TVs. Among al­ready ex­ist­ing tech­nol­o­gy, ad­vance­ments and up­grades were seen in note­book PCs and busi­ness soft­ware. In­ter­ac­tive tele­vi­sion sets com­mon­ly known as the smart TV were present ex­hibit­ing their re­cent part­ner­ship with Skype. The TV re­sem­bles a gi­ant com­put­er screen and pos­sess­es the unique abil­i­ty to in­te­grate users and oth­er de­vices in the room with the In­ter­net. Its view­ers are able to ac­cess videos and pho­tos on­line, stream movies and browse the world­wide web, con­nect­ing to their favourite web­sites such as Face­book and YouTube or even down­load apps of their choice (like An­gry Birds). Skype grants the con­sumer the priv­i­lege of re­ceiv­ing their calls with­out hav­ing to leave the room.

For in­stance, when watch­ing a foot­ball match, Skype calls go di­rect­ly to the TV al­low­ing callers to con­verse with the user by sim­ply mut­ing the vol­ume on their tele­vi­sion. This way, the caller and the view­er ben­e­fit. The view­er can still watch the match and the caller is com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to the fact that the view­er is tuned in­to a foot­ball match dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, un­less of course, a goal is scored! Mi­crosoft Cor­po­ra­tion is ex­pect­ed to re­lease their lat­est op­er­at­ing sys­tem (OS), Win­dows 8 some­time in ear­ly 2012. Ru­mour has it that Win­dows 8 is Mi­crosoft's best OS to date, hav­ing a small­er du­ra­tion for boot-up time and can be used on both the desk­top and touch­screen in­ter­faces. Al­so, con­sumers need not pur­chase new com­put­ers to op­er­ate Win­dows 8 as it is ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with ex­ist­ing hard­ware that us­es Win­dows XP or Win­dows 7. Nat­u­ral­ly, the touch­screen in­ter­face is ex­pect­ed to make the Win­dows 8 ex­pe­ri­ence more user-friend­ly, giv­ing ease to en­ter­ing da­ta and ma­noeu­vring around the PC with the fin­gers. Mi­crosoft has in­clud­ed in Win­dows 8 some­thing else to look for­ward to, a fea­ture called Snap which en­ables the user to view mul­ti­ple apps all at once along­side the oth­er at what­ev­er size win­dow they de­sire.

Next on the agen­da is the bang­ing new sen­sa­tion of note­books that def­i­nite­ly say 'thin is in.' Ul­tra­books are a to­tal­ly new ad­di­tion to the PC fam­i­ly and some de­scribe them as the new breed of note­books, try­ing to keep the rel­e­vance of a PC alive in the age of smart­phone tech­nol­o­gy. Ul­tra­books are 'uber' thin, su­per light­weight and some are even scratch re­sis­tant like the HP's En­vy Ul­tra­book. With a width of less than an inch, a weight lighter than three pounds and rapid start up time, these ba­bies hold the porta­bil­i­ty, con­ve­nience and chic of a tablet, but pack a more pow­er­ful punch than the tablet's pro­cess­ing speed and have their own built-in key­board. Xbox's Kinect will re­lease their most re­cent in­no­va­tions aside from full-body gam­ing lat­er this year, Kinect­Fu­sion and Face Cake Kinect Dress­ing Room. They have catered for both gen­ders as Kinect­Fu­sion mod­i­fies the man's gam­ing world and Face Cake Kinect Dress­ing Room pro­vides a vir­tu­al dress­ing room for the ladies. Kinect­Fu­sion us­es the Kinect cam­era that process­es im­ages of re­al­i­ty to pro­duce a 3-D mod­el of the en­vi­ron­ment. The cam­era scans im­ages of peo­ple and still life act­ing al­most like a 3-D pho­to­copi­er. In some cas­es, the im­ages scanned can be emailed and print­ed out in­to ma­te­ri­als such as met­als and plas­tics that will give a 3-D mod­el of re­al­i­ty. Med­ical Sci­ence stu­dents for ex­am­ple may ben­e­fit great­ly from this tech­nol­o­gy as they can ac­quire their own per­son­al mod­els of the hu­man body for their study.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Kinect­Fu­sion can aug­ment re­al­i­ty, that is, add some­thing to re­al­i­ty, vir­tu­al­ly. By merg­ing the re­al and vir­tu­al worlds, users can be­come im­mersed in­to their video games. The gamers would be able to play as them­selves and cre­ate new lev­els by scan­ning their liv­ing room or street in­to the game. If you're amazed by that piece of tech­nol­o­gy, wait un­til you hear about Face Cake Kinect Dress­ing Room! Kinect has ex­pand­ed be­yond gam­ing and en­ter­tain­ment. The soft­ware not on­ly al­lows users to shop on­line, but to try on their clothes vir­tu­al­ly be­fore pur­chas­ing them, right in the com­fort of their liv­ing room. Once the home shop­per brows­es the items of in­ter­est, with the click of a but­ton, they can see how the out­fit looks on their bod­ies by stand­ing in front of the Kinect cam­era. Pho­tos can be tak­en whilst try­ing on the cloth­ing and up­loaded to Face­book where their friends may give fash­ion tips and ad­vice on whether or not to pur­chase the cloth­ing. An­oth­er ad­van­tage is that Face Cake Kinect Dress­ing Room al­lows ex­treme­ly del­i­cate pieces of cloth­ing to be worn vir­tu­al­ly that the shop­per will not be al­lowed to wear in re­al­i­ty, pri­or to pur­chase. Oth­er eye­brow rais­ers ranged from wa­ter­proof tablets to wire­less charg­ers, so­lar-pow­ered key­boards and to im­proved 3-D glass­es-free tele­vi­sion sets. Just as we are nat­u­ral­ly evolv­ing every day with our ecosys­tems, so is tech­nol­o­gy. At the end of it all, mankind's main goal is to raise the bar by in­creas­ing our qual­i­ty of life and mak­ing our lives more com­fort­able. As a re­sult, each year we con­tin­ue to wow our­selves with our in­ven­tions and won­der what will they come up with next?