Top ten technology breakthroughs of 2008

The top ten technology breakthroughs of 2008 are:
10. Flexible Displays are likely to be a reality by 2010 or 2011: For years, researchers have worked on thin, paperlike displays that can be folded, rolled or sewn into the sleeve of your hoodie. Flexible displays could change the way we interact with the info-universe, creating new kinds of cellphones, portable computers, e-newspapers and electronic books.

9. Edible Chips:Soon, tiny edible chips will track when patients take their pills (or don”t) and monitor the effects of the drugs they”re taking. Proteus, a Redwood City, California, company, has created tiny chips out of silicon grains that, once swallowed, activate in the stomach. The chips send a signal to an external patch that monitors vital parameters such as heart rate, temperature, state of wakefulness or body angle.

8. Speedo LZR: Speedo’’s new LZR swimsuit blends new materials and a dose of NASA rocket science to boost the speeds of elite swimmers - legally.

7. Flash Memory:Flash memory is a mainstay of most consumer electronics products, from ultralight notebooks to digital cameras and media players.

6. GPS:This year, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has been used in many new technologies, from the iPhone 3G and the T-Mobile G1 to notebooks such as Fujitsu’’s LifeBook series.

5. The Memristor:The disocvery of the “memristor,” or memory transistor will make it possible to develop computer systems that remember what’’s stored in memory when they are turned off. That means computers that don”t need to be booted up and systems that are far more energy efficient than the current crop.

4. Video-Capable SLRs”This year, two new cameras, the Nikon D90 and the Canon 5D Mark II not only capture top-notch still images, but let the photographer shoot high-definition videos as well.

3. USB 3.0:USB 3.0 will be 10 times faster than the current USB 2.0 standard, and will increase the amount of electrical current that can be delivered through a USB cable.

2. Android:The T-Mobile HTC G1 phone scores with its operating system, Android, the free mobile operating system from Google. It’’s the first mobile OS to make its debut in years and the G1 is just the first of what will be many phones that use it.

1. Apple’’s App Store:Apple’’s App Store has made creating and distributing mobile applications for cellphone users easy - jumpstarting the mobile-app development market and creating clones such as the Android Market. It even forced Research in Motion to offer a BlackBerry Application Storefront.

Notebooks sales overtakes desktop PC in India

For the first time, the sale of notebooks or laptops has overtaken the desktop PC in 2008.
Indian computer market has been increasing at a very fast pace. The country's personal computer market saw nearly 6.5 million units sold in 2007, a 20 per cent year-on-year growth, spurred by automation drive of firms and increased consumer spending on notebooks, market research firm IDC said.

Indian computer market is transitioning from desktop- centric to a notebook-centric growth, with the notebook PC shipments accounting for 27 per cent of the total client PC share.
Now the newly released IDC report has confirmed that India sold more laptops that the desktops.

But there is another reality. The word recession seems to have badly hit the Indian market as the 20 percent year on year growth is nowhere to be seen. The personal computer market in India according to the IDC report grew at meager 1.7 percent.
An IDC report about how the Indian computer market performed says that client PC shipments grew 1.7% during July-September (3Q 2008) compared to the same period last year, to touch 2.268 million PCs.

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