The advent of computing systems as our constant companions, the miniaturization of electronics and the innovation on the power efficiency front have made it more and more probable to enjoy the true virtues of mobile computing. The last mile on this front is a total wireless power solution and Technology Review mentions on how the technology of resonant coupling may perhaps present the solution.

An excerpt from Technology Review

There are currently solutions out in the market that do make wireless transmission quasi-wire-free. For example, there is the WildCharger pad makes charging devices as simple as putting them on a tray.

The following years do hold a lot a promise on this front and combined with equipped smart electronics, they could usher in an era where charging would no longer requires human intervention.

An excerpt from ZDNet

The Nanochip design is a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System, or MEMS, device. A descendent of IBM’s Millipede device, it uses polarization instead of Millepede’s heat to store data.

An array of tiny probes – looking like phonograph needles, if any of you have ever seen one – less than 25 um in diameter, changes the state of the recording medium. The probes are movable – similar to the mirrors on DLP chips – so they can write more than one location. Since there are many thousands of probes, they have a lot of bandwidth.

The firm uses technology based on a combination of phase change and atomic level probes. The products are expected to be in the market in 2010 and are supposed to provide competition to flash memory.

MEMS based devices have been in the research labs for a while now. The advantages they offer are significantly lower costs compared to present day fabrication facilities.

Nanochip has received funding from Intel Capital as well. So there is much being expected here.

But yes, its a prototype and perhaps there is no point deliberating much on this until the products are there in the market. Here’s wishing for the best in compact memory innovation.

An excerpt from Technology Review
A team of engineers has developed a modified knee brace that captures energy that would otherwise have been lost while the wearer walks. The generator produces about five watts–enough to power 10 cell phones simultaneously.

“If you want power, go where the muscles are,” says Max Donelan, a professor at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, who led the research. “We thought, maybe there’s a smart, selective way to do energy harvesting when muscles are normally decelerating in the body.” Donelan’s research appears in the February 8 issue of the journal Science.
By careful observation of the motions and forces applied for walking, Max Donelan has conceived an idea on capitalizing on the positive work done in executing a part of the walking motion and switching the device off when it could add more effort.

Perhaps there is a cue here to how to think of solution to our energy problems in actually first seeing where energy is getting wasted. The concept used here is similar to the one used in hybrid cars that convert the kinetic energy from braking to charge batteries instead of having them dissipated as heat energy (friction).

The new device could come really handy in field operations and a less heavy model may well be a precursor to similar tech down the line.

A video of the Knee Power Generator is available at YouTube.

It is the chipsets of today that showcase and drive the technological innovations on the computing front for tomorrow and Michael Copeland of CNN has brilliantly captured that in his brief blog.

He talks about Wireless devices proliferating like never before, making synchronization of data across various portable devices a breeze. It is more of a reality than fiction and would require no computer to act as a middle-man.

By factoring in power requirements as well, hardware developers are creating chip packages that could fit in virtually any electronic device and take the advantages of wireless connectivity. Its ironic to think that all the while till now mobile computing was about hooking up to your phone connection or a local Wi-Fi access point. True mobility does refer to wire-free access anywhere ( think Intel’s WiMax plans).

And couple that together with wireless data transmission technologies such as Ultra Wide Band and you have immensely power technology waiting to sweep the mobile devices landscape.

Technology review has a great up write-up on the technology trends that shaped the hardware side of 2007. Names like Apple, Microsoft led the fray with UI innovations as in the iPhone and the platform PC. Its great to see that some of the big names are investing heavily in improved interfaces for computing.

The article also focuses on the coming of multi-core processors and especially the design of software to take the advantages of multi-core systems. The year saw initiatives from Google, IBM and Yahoo in promoting the fundamentals of distributed computing paradigms in the academia. Its a fact that applications, especially one garnered towards the web have to take advantage of the scalability and reliability aspects of distributed computing.

Technologies that the article does not talk about are Virtualization and the rise of VMware. Its a technology that allows more utilization of server hardware by separation of the software from the hardware allowing for multiple servers to run on the same hardware. Big player in the OS space such as Microsoft, Sun announced their entry into this arena and in the end more competition will only mean greater value for the enterprises.

On the UI side a great deal more has to be done to make the Web truly ubiquitous on the mobile. Google, with its Android SDK that will hopefully debut on devices in second half of 2008, will be looking to milk the best from the developer community to bring in the best apps for mobiles yet. But I believe that greater innovation on the UI side is a must to really take web applications on the mobile mainstream. That and of course the bandwidth improvement.

Advertising will continue to be the main source of revenue online and the coming year will perhaps see the shift from the desktop from to the mobile. Of key importance will be how advertisers get on with their job unobtrusively on the mobiles. With limited viewing space, it will be another front for great innovation. A company called Zumobi had introduced the tiled approach to bring in Ads and a different UI experience as well.

Overall, 2008 has a lot to anticipate at the tech front.