Ruling the Tech World

It seems like every few months a new gadget is being unveiled as the new hot item; but in the tech world, very few have staying power.

PC World has put together a list of the eight gadgets it thinks will hold their own in 2010. From video games to watching TV, you’re involvement with the tech world can be enhanced with just a few new toys. First up is a new video game controller and this one will impress even the casual gamer. Microsoft has developed a sensor bar that sits above or below your television, similar to that of the Nintendo Wii. But unlike the Wii, which requires you to still hold a controller, this sensor will have voice and facial recognition and 3-d motion tracking. While this particular controller will be exclusively for the x-box 360, Play Station 3 is expected to come out with something just as good. To see the rest of the list just keep reading. But choose wisely, tech innovation waits for no one and what’s here today will more than likely be gone tomorrow.

FROM PC WORLD
PROJECT NATAL
Nintendo had better watch its back, because Microsoft has announced a new controller for the Xbox 360—a controller that allows you to play without a controller. Dubbed "Project Natal," the new Xbox 360 controller looks similar to the Nintendo Wii's sensor bar: a small bar that sits above or below your television and tracks your movements. But Microsoft has one-upped the Wii by adding 3D motion tracking, voice recognition, and facial recognition to Project Natal. We don't know how accurate and effective Project Natal will be—that's for the thousands of gamers who buy it next Thanksgiving to find out. What seems sure is that even though the product will hit the shelves far into 2010, it already has enough hype among gamers to ensure big sales numbers. But Project Natal won't be the only must-have gaming controller next Christmas. This fall in the PlayStation 3 world, Sony will release its wand-based "Arc" motion controller, which has a solid chance of cranking up just as much buzz. And it will certainly stoke up the forum firefights between the PS3 and Xbox fanboys.

SEZMI
Ditching cable TV and moving to online TV is a great idea, but no matter how you do it, you miss out on lots of broadcast TV (live news, sports, local programming). Sezmi may be the first service to fix that. Sezmi is a service based on a set-top box that not only streams video from the Web and from your PC, but also catches over-the-air local broadcast TV via a supplied in-home antenna. On the remote control, each family member has their own button, which will take them to their personal Sezmi channel—complete with on-demand shows tailored to their personal tastes. There's no need to worry about overloading the Sezmi, either, as each box is packed with a whopping 1TB for recorded shows. The service is in trials in the Los Angeles market now, but is expected to go nationwide later this year.

DELL’S ALIENWARE
Up until now, serious gamers had to tote around huge 17- and 15-inch monsters—or stay put. Dell's Alienware, however, seeks to remedy this problem with its forthcoming game-oriented laptop, the M11x. The 11.6-inch laptop (yep—11.6 inches!) is practically netbook size, with a 1336-by-768-pixel high-def screen, a built-in Webcam, and a SIM card reader for mobile Web access. The M11x currently has no optical drive (though an add-on will eventually be offered), but it can play games like Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at a whopping 30 frames per second. The ultraportable-size gaming notebook will cost just under $1000, fully loaded. That's right, a portable, power-packed gaming laptop—there's no question that the M11x will make waves.

THE BACKFLIP
AT&T says that 30 percent of its handset sales last year were messaging phones. Motorola's latest Android-powered phone, the Backflip, may be AT&T's "it" messaging phone this year. Not that there's a big market it for it or anything--just the legions of American kids who text-message and Facebook pretty much all day long. As such, the Backflip features a full QWERTY keyboard that can be flipped out so that both the keyboard and the touchscreen face the user. The phone also has a "backtrack," or mousepadlike touchpad on the back of the touchscreen to control the cursor on the screen. The phone packs only a midsize processor, but the messaging crowd doesn't really need lots of power. We expect the Backflip to reach a $100 (subsidized) price point by the end of 2010. How will Moms and Dads say no?

NEXUS ONE
While the new Nexus One is no more a "Google phone" than the HTC G1, it is probably the best Android phone on the market today. And Google has done such a good job of associating itself with the Nexus One in the minds of most consumers and much of the media that this "Google phone" is bound to sell like hotcakes in 2010. And make no mistake: It is a very nice phone. Is it an iPhone killer? Well, It's slimmer than the iPhone, has a slightly bigger and more hi-res OLED screen, as well as a noticeably faster, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, among other things (like Google Voice support). At the very least, the Nexus One represents a truly viable alternative for iPhone users, especially after the Verizon Wireless network begins supporting the "Google phone" later this year.

IPAD
Our favorite Cupertino company is sure to have a huge hit with its rumored tablet when (there's really not much "if" left at this point) it is released this year. Apple is widely expected to announce the tablet at an Apple event scheduled for Wednesday, January 27. We believe we already have a pretty good idea of what the new device will look like—namely an iPhone on steroids. But what the machine will actually do might surprise us, as Apple has been known to do.

LENO IDEAPAD
Forget tablets; Lenovo has introduced a new hybrid notebook: the Lenovo IdeaPad U1. The IdeaPad U1 is a 3.8-pound laptop that runs Windows 7 and has a 128GB solid-state drive—but wait: If you pull off the 11.6-inch screen, you get a Linux-running multitouch tablet PC with 16GB of flash memory. That's right—not only is it a laptop and a tablet, but it runs both Windows and Linux. The 1.6-pound tablet powers up within 3 seconds of being removed from the base, which can then act as a 3G wireless hub for the tablet. Many consumers will be trying to decide between a laptop or a tablet this year, but the hybrid Lenovo IdeaPad U1 might well settle the argument by providing both. The U1 is priced at just under $1000.

IPHONE 4G
It hasn't even been a year since the iPhone 3GS, and people are already looking toward the next iPhone, which some speculate may be called the iPhone 4G. The iPhone 3GS offered only incremental changes to the iPhone 3G's hardware—and it looked exactly the same. Rumors suggest that the iPhone 4G will be available as early as May or June 2010, and may have a new design, a faster processor, a 5-megapixel camera, and an OLED screen—features that would rival those on Google's Nexus One. Other rumors hint at a removable battery, video chat support, and a redone app store. The rumors aren't totally out of left field—an army of Androids are marching into the smartphone market. We believe this will force Apple to upgrade its iPhone more drastically, and sooner, in order to stay competitive in a quickly-changing market.