In Depth: 10 technologies that really could change the world

We're told that kinds of technologies changed the world - Popular Mechanics' list includes the stapler - but today's researchers are working on ideas even more ambitious than joining several bits of paper together.

New technologies could replace fossil fuels, turn your house into a power station, save thousands of lives - and maybe even create new lifeforms.

Here are 10 technologies that have the potential to change the worldover again.

1. Phones

In developing countries the phone is more important than the PC: mobiles are used for banking, and for forecasting the weather (a critical business when a farmer has to pick the best time to sow or reap a precious crop). But phones can do even more.

For example, in Africa cell phone tower data is used to map people's movements - and that mapping can help track diseases such as malaria and identify patterns of transmission.

Phone location data might also be useful in dealing with natural disasters, improving public transport or just helping retailers make shopping malls more profitable.

• Is Firefox OS the key to bringing smartphones to the world?

2. Digital imaging

As imaging technology improves we'll see our worldnever before, both outside and inside. DARPA recently showed off a 1.8 gigapixel surveillance drone that can watch 25 square kilometres at a time, while advances in medical imaging tech enable doctors to look inside patients with unprecedented levels of detail.

• Sattelite broadband can speed things up too. Here's what you need to know

4. Mind-controlled prosthetics

DARPA calls it Targeted Muscle Re-innervation, or TMR for short. We call it astonishing: TMR makes brain-controlled prosthetic limbs almost as responsive as real ones, providing sensory feedback that enables prosthetic users to riffle through a bag or grab an object without having to look at it.

electronic eyes to entire exoskeletons, the combination of serious technical talent and enormous piles of cash is bringing us ever closer to a cybernetic future.

YouTube : //youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=

• While you wait for your robot arm, the robots are working on their writing skills

5. 3D printing

3D-printed guns and drugs may get the headlines, but the real effect of 3D printing is likely to be less sensational and much more useful.

It's already helping to revolutionise manufacturing by slashing research and development costs, and in the longer term it might mean that instead of ordering online and waiting for couriers to deliver, we'll just print products at home - maybe even food.

That's good for the environment but could have disastrous consequences for many people's jobs.

• Just how scared of the Prism surveillance program should you be?

8. Serious solar

Solar technology has been held back by several issues: solar panels are hefty, pricey, and of course they don't provide energy when it's dark. The biggest problem, though, is efficiency: as National Geographic reports, they only capture 10 to 20 percent of the sunlight that strikes them.

The future? Nanotech that makes the panels much less reflective, much cheaper to produce and much more efficient. Other ideas include tiny antennae on devices that capture solar energy and instantly convert it to power, solar panels that can actually store energy, and nanotech paint that turns entire buildings into solar energy collectors.

• Need some more juice for your phone? Solar, wind-up and hydrogen cells battery boosters explored.

9. Biohacking

There's a controversy brewing on Kickstarter: the Glowing Plant project plans to engineer glow-in-the-dark plants, and some experts are worried: they fear that this is the thin end of a very big and scary wedge.

As Nature reports, "they fear that distributing the plants could set a precedent for unsupervised releases of synthetic organisms, and might foster a negative public perception of synthetic biology - an emerging experimental discipline that involves genetically engineering organisms to do useful tasks."

Biohackers could engineer entirely new lifeforms, good or bad, and the emerging sector is almost entirely unregulated. Friends of the Earth has called for a global moratorium on the release of synthetic organisms "until the proper regulations and safety mechanisms have been put in place".

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6n6jJ9zhbBU

• Scientist give rats Terminator vision - didn't they read James Herbert?

10. Genetic scanning

The MyGenome iPad app is a glimpse of the future, enabling you to analyse the full genetic makeup of someone. For now that someone is the developers' CEO, but if DNA sequencing prices continue to plummet - the cost per person has dropped US$2.7 billion to US$5,000 in ten years - then full genome analysis could be in many of our futures.

That could have profound implications: we could discover if we're prone to particular kinds of cancer, or if we have higher than average risks of various unpleasant conditions, or if particular drugs could kill rather than cure us.

Angelina Jolie's recent preventive surgery was an example of DNA sequencing in action: Jolie has the BRCA1 gene, which means she has a high risk of developing the breast cancer that killed her mother.

As Carole Cadwalladr writes in The Guardian: "revealing our full DNA will revolutionise medicine - but it will also raise huge ethical questions about what we do with the information".

• You can't control your genes, but you can enhance your body with this wearable tech

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Updated: Sony tweets new smartwatch teaser as a tipster weighs in

Update: In addition to Sony's own tweets, an in-the-know source has spilled a few beans over what he/she says is a very real gadget.

Speaking with CNET, the source claimed Sony's new watch will be a successor to its SmartWatch MN2SW. The new SmartWatch will supposedly run some version of Android, own a larger touch screen than the MN2SW and feature a 3-icon layout beneath the display.

While that'swell and good (and still pretty vague), one interesting tidbit is that the device could come packing NFC, meaning easy syncing between phone and watch.

We should knownext week, so keep an eye on the clock, so to speak, for Sony's Tuesday media event.

Original article...

Over on Twitter, Sony is raining down clanging great hints about its plans to launch a new smartwatch.

Ahead of an event in Shanghai next week, Sony's official Xperia Twitter account has been posting such missives as:

"One in three smartphone users want smart wrist wear" alongside the neither big nor clever hashtag #itstime.

Clues everywhere

Also tagged in the tweet is Mobile Asia Expo 2013, which kicks off next week - there's a Sony media event planned for Tuesday.

Putting two and two together, we've come out with four and decided that Sony is probably going to launch a new Xperia-branded smartwatch at Mobile Asia Expo 2013 on Tuesday next week.

Of course, Sony already has the LiveView wearable remote, but in the light of the Pebble and the many and varied rumours of Apple's plans to launch an iWatch, we wouldn't be surprised to see Sony give the smart watch segment some love.

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Facebook White Hat security bug briefly exposes user contact info

The Facebook nightmare of a security bug exposing the contact information of some of its more than 1 billion members has come true, the social networking company admitted today.

The good news is that the impact was minimal, outing only 6 million members' email addresses and phone numbers in a very roundabout way, and Facebook has already corrected the White Hat glitch.

"No company can ensure 100 percent prevention of bugs, and in rare cases we don't discover a problem until it has already affected a person's account," Facebook said in a statement.

"A bug may have allowed some of a person's contact information (email or phone number) to be accessed by people who either had some contact information about that person or some connection to them."

Inadvertently stored information

Facebook's friend recommending service, which asks to use a member's third-party contact lists and address books, is the source of this White Hat bug.

"We try to match that data with the contact information of other people on Facebook in order to generate friend recommendations," explained the company.

"Some of the information used to make friend recommendations and reduce the number of invitations we send was inadvertently stored in association with people's contact information as part of their account on Facebook."

No evidence of malicious hacking

There is no evidence that this bug was exploited maliciously, according to Facebook, which said it has not received complaints users or detected anomalous behavior.

That's probably because it would have taken a little work for a chance to access the exposed information.

"If a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through our Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection."

"This contact information was provided by other people on Facebook and was not necessarily accurate, but was inadvertently included with the contacts of the person using the DYI tool."

Facebook immediately disabled the DYI tool and fixed the issue within 24 hours, however, it's still emailing the 6 million potentially affected users.

It stressed that "no other types of personal or financial information were included and only people on Facebook – not developers or advertisers – have access to the DYI tool."

"Your trust is the most important asset we have," Facebook said at the conclusion of its statement. "We are committed to improving our safety procedures and keeping your information safe and secure."

• Read how Facebook's Instagram is having a much better week.

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Cloud computing for dummies

No-one quite knows the term 'cloud computing' came , but it seems appropriate when you think that it's essentially about removing data and various IT functions your office to another plane.

Of course the data isn't really floating in the clouds, but residing in the service provider's data centre, which could be located anywhere between the edge of the M25 and the edge of Bangalore. The crucial points for the user is that the data is secure, stored in a way that complies with their own country's regulations, and easily accessible.

There are a handful of models, the most basic of which infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). This involves replacing equipment used in-house for storage, hardware, servers and network components with corresponding elements hosted by the service provider at their data centre.

IaaS advantage

The big advantage of IaaS is that it usually allows the customer to pay only for the capacity that they use – the utility computing model – rather than making big investments in equipment that may never come close to capacity use. It also makes it possible to scale activities up and down as needed, and can be used when you're able to automate some tasks.

Second is platform-as-a-service (PaaS), which operates for computing platforms such as an operating system, database, web browser or network capacity. Again, customers rent virtualised servers and services on which they can run applications, and it is popular for the development and testing of new apps.

Next is the increasingly important software-as-a-service (SaaS), in which customers can use software and databases that run on the service provider's infrastructure and platforms. It can usually be accessed any PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone, and often runs on licensed subscriptions, with a company getting a specific number of users per licence. This may not be as flexible as the utility computing model, but it is often easier to increase or reduce the number of licences than with in-house software.

Most of the applications run on servers that handle the service for a number of customers, but users see only their own operations.

The big advantages of SaaS are that it keeps down costs, the service provider takes responsibility for the software maintenance, andusers have access to the same version, rather than some having the latest while others wait for upgrades. This can be a big factor in ensuring that they work together more effectively. It is also a great asset in supporting mobile working, as employees are able to view and amend data anywhere.

This has spun off into the growing number of enterprise social collaboration services, which are set up on the cloud to help people share information at a distance.

Saas concern

The one big concern with SaaS is that data sits on the host's servers, which may be a sensitive issue if it covers people's personal details, financial data or company intelligence, and may even break legal regulations.

Finally comes network-as-a-service (NaaS), in which the customer uses the connectivity services of the provider.

There is also plenty of talk about private, public, community and hybrid clouds.

The private cloud is operated for one company and can be managed internally or by a third party with access through direct connections. It's expensive and requires a lot of work in setting up, but can be customised to specific requirements, and facilitate a single sign-on, in which anyone on the company's network gets automatic access.

Public option

On a public cloud the services are provided over a network for public use with access through the internet. The levels of security are not so strong and there's less flexibility with the services, but it is also less expensive.

A community cloud shares infrastructure between a group of organisations that have some common concerns and requirements, and tends to be more important in areas such as the public sector.

The hybrid cloud uses two or more clouds, often public and private, or cloud services and in-house installations. It sounds more complex but it is increasingly popular as companies use it to meet their specific requirements at the optimum cost.

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In Depth: 10 technologies that are completely ruining your fun

The world can be a sad and scary place, so it's important to find fun wherever you can.

For some of us that means calling in sick when there's a new Call of Duty to play; for others it's hurling a battered Ford Fiesta down a back road at 300mph; and for many of us it's listening to music or going to a show.

Unfortunately for us, tech can be used to make our favourite things considerably less fun. These are our least favourite buzz kills the world of tech - have we missed any of your major offenders?

1. BlackBerry

Back in the old days, work was something you did at work. It didn't follow you home and demand the latest sales figures when you ate your dinner, it didn't sneak on board the plane when you went on holiday and it didn't flash LEDs at you when you spent quality time with the kids.

Then RIM invented the CrackBerry, turning work into an always-on, inescapable activity.

2. Browser detection

Used wisely, browser detection is a good thing - you don't want a full-fat, Flash-heavy website if you're on a small phone. Unfortunately it's largely used unwisely, showing tablet users sites designed for teeny-tiny screens and yelling WE HAVE AN APP WE HAVE AN APP DO YOU WANT TO BUY OUR APP GO ON IT'S AN APP BUY THE APP BUY THE APP BUY THE APP when you're trying to find a bus timetable.

4. Social media

The list of social media fun-killers includes strangers' boring baby photos, constant product pimping and stupid games, but the big fun-buster is when your friends grass you up by tagging you in their updates, photos or check-ins. It ruins sickies and "I'd love to come, but I'm going to a work thing" excuses, and makes it awfully hard to avoid Boring Dave when the people you're with have just told him your precise location.

6. Compression in music

There are two kinds of compression ruining music: there's the compression that takes the original audio, throws bits out and creates a smaller MP3 or AAC file, and there's the compression that's used in studios to make music sound louder.

Both make music sound worse, the former by making everything sound squishy and the latter turning even delicate acoustic tracks into something that soundsMuse driving a heavily armoured space tank. Every March, Dynamic Range Day tries to stop such tomfoolery and gets completely ignored.

YouTube : www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yXvX8sA_Kg

7. Google

Did you know TV legend Bob Holness played the sax in Baker Street? tap tap tap "No mate, that's an urban myth, it was Raphael Ravenscroft." Damn you, Google! Damn your quiz-killing, bullshit-quashing, argument-ending eyes!

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Snapjoy switching off 6 months after Dropbox acquisition

Just six months after Dropbox acquired the photo-sharing service, Snapjoy has announced that it will be shutting down on July 24.

Snapjoy provided users online storage for their photos, as well as the ability to organise and pull in photos their other online photo libraries, such as Flickr and Picasa, into one central place. Users could share their albums and photos, or keep it private.

"After two years of building Snapjoy, the time has come for us to shut down the service. It's been a journey unlike anything we'd imagined, and we can't thank you enough for your support and input along the way," the company wrote on its blog and in an email sent to users.

Users will be able to export their photo albums until July 24, when the service shuts down completely. The company said thatfiles will be permanently deleted afterwards.

The Dropbox photo future

Cloud storage service Dropbox acquired Snapjoy in December 2013. Although Snapjoy had stopped taking on new signups that point, users were still able to use the service.

At the time of acquisition, Snapjoy had written on its blog: "By combining forces with their amazing team, we can leverage the technology and scale of their platform and focus on what matters - delivering an incredible photo experience to over 100 million people."

With the announcement over the weekend, it is yet unclear how this will impact Dropbox services or what Dropbox has planned.

Just before the Snapjoy acquisition, however, Dropbox had begun rolling out a photo tab in its mobile apps, which indicates that it may be moving to offer new photo storage services within the Dropbox interface.

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The biggest technology mistakes made by SMBs

Small business owner/ managers understand that IT plays a vital role within their companies. However, many SMBs are still making simple mistakes with the management of their IT systems that are costing them money and market share.

Acting on some simple tips can transform your business one that just uses IT to one that leverages the power of IT to deliver tangible results.

Avoid using involuntary IT managers

According to a study AMI Partners sponsored by Microsoft small businesses are losing more than US$24 billion in productivity each year when nontechnical employees, referred to as 'involuntary IT managers' are tasked with managing their companies' IT solutions. Ensure your business has qualified people managing your IT systems.

Bridge the knowledge gap

Small businesses often suffer this symptom. Simply buying a server doesn't immediately bring tangible benefits, as you have to place this technology within the day-to-day operation of your business.

Also, try and ensure you don't have just one person that is tasked with 'IT'. When they leave your business they take their knowledge with them.

No integration across systems

Where IT is concerned avoid hardware and software silos. Integrating your IT together is infinitely more efficient.

Think about the separate systems in your business and how these could be more closely aligned. Often, this can also mean a reduction in the IT in use with corresponding maintenance cost savings.

Open source, open wallet?

In a bid to reduce overall costs, many SMBs look to open source applications and platforms. Many of these can be useful, such as the Zoho suite of office applications.

However, care must be taken when using open source platforms for mission critical systems. The maintenance costs and ongoing upgrades can be substantial. Ensure you understand the total cost of ownership before committing to an open source platform.

The cloud is not a panacea

There is no doubt that cloud-based services are highly attractive to SMBs. The whole SaaS (software as a service) market has exploded over the past few years.

However, the cloud should be approached with care. Often, business will develop hybrid systems that keep some of their data and services in-house, with others moving to the cloud.

Carefully assess any move you are contemplating to the cloud, and ask if the cost saving, efficiency gains and security justify the move.

Not backing up critical data

IT consultants have been attempting to get SMBs to understand the importance of robust data backup regimes with little success. And the impact can be catastrophic, as the London Chamber of Commerce estimate that 90% of companies that suffer a major data loss go out of business within two years.

With access to masses of online backup platforms, SMBs can easily protect themselves these events.

Managing BYOD

The BYOD (bring your own device) to work phenomenon shows no sign of slowing, and a major mistake that SMBs make is not paying attention to the IT issues that BYOD brings.

According to a survey carried out by Trend Micro, half of companies that allow BYOD have reported security breaches. Their survey revealed that 83% of companies that do permit BYOD have policies in place that require employees to install security software as a precaution.

Paying close attention to the security of these devices is of paramount importance for SMBs in particular.

IT is an essential resource that SMBs can't operate without, but it is easy to make mistakes with the myriad of technologies available to your business.

A careful study of your existing systems, and how these will evolve will give youthe information you need to avoid the most costly IT mistakes.

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