Tech developments I would like to see in 2008!

Now that 2008 is only a couple of days away is the right time to write about the developments I would like to see. I am not in favour of votes for the best of each category of 2007. We have all bought and used stuff this last year, we have also already done our choices for Christmas, so what’s the point? After all these things are so much down to personal taste that it is hard to announce a single product or site as the best in its category and clearly above everything else. So many CPU cycles have been devoted to Facebook vs MySpace & iPhone vs Nokia N95 type stories that I think a bit more of that would be overkill. So summarising thoughts from previous posts and by also adding some new ones, here is the things that I would love to see happening in 2008:

• Good, reliable, fast internet access, both wired and wireless. The wired part is getting better briskly. But for wireless still a lot has to be done… 
• Some compatibility between social networks. What is happening now is crazy and exhausting. Separate accounts, separate contacts, separate everything for each one of them. When for example Yahoo and MSN made their messengers compatible -even with limited inter-functionality- it was a great relief for me.

Samsung 31-inch OLED display to be revealed in CES 2008

As if the LCD alliance news of Hitachi, Canon & Matsushita wasn’t enough, now Samsung comes up with more dynamite news. It announced that it has a fully functioning 31-inch OLED display, larger than the 27-inch OLED that Sony has previously shown. OLED displays are an upcoming technology that has the following advantages over LCDs:

• Extremely thin. The Samsung display is only 4.3 mm thick, an order of magnitude less than current LCDs.
• Low power consumption. With roughly half the consumption of LCDs, OLEDs have a critical advantage in our efforts to limit energy consumption.
• Picture quality. Definition, colours, contrast, all are at pretty high quality.

Samsung’s display is going to be revealed at CES 2008 and will likely be the star of the company’s stand. Now that consumers have developed an insatiable appetite for large panel sizes, it is unlikely that anything smaller than 37 inches will be a success. And here is the catch, OLEDs are an upcoming display star technology, but are for the time being very difficult and expensive to manufacture. Whichever supplier comes up with reasonably priced models will have a serious head start. Samsung is the world’s largest LCD manufacturer so it is no wonder it is working on OLEDs really hard as it wants things to stay the same in future…

Link: Reuters