The best place to see innovations transforming real products right
now is the smart phones market, as the Apple iPhone update battles the
new Palm Pre and various Blackberry models. All these phones are
smaller than they were. All include hundreds or thousands of new
applications which hopefully help you work smarter, although Apple has
cornered the market on new apps right now. All include constant
synchronization via voice, cellular data, and wireless networking
protocol support. This battleground leads the tech industry for
leapfrogging competition as innovations bubble up constantly.
When you buy technology, keep Smaller, Smarter, and Synced in mind.
Smaller desktop computers are more energy efficient than larger ones,
and desktop replacement laptops are more efficient still. Smaller
generally means less power, as we saw with the wave of CRT monitor
replacements by LCD monitors over the last decade.
Smarter, in technology, often means more manageability and control
by administrators rather than users. Automatic features, like backups
and updates, work better because they don't ask the user to remember
something in order to protect the system. We've tried training users to
be smarter, but now the trend is making the devices smarter, a shorter
learning curve and less painful than trying to upgrade most users.
Synchronized means many things, but I include collaboration tools as
a big part of the equation. Devices constantly synchronized to the
network mean users can be synchronized with each other. Coworkers
collaborate more easily, partners are pulled inside the decision loop
sooner, and customers feel more a part of the process. Synchronized
devices allow synchronized coworkers, which will, after management
adjusts to a different working model, greatly improve business
processes.
The new things in technology for this year? Same as the last 20
years: make devices smaller, make then smarter, and synchronize them.
Not hard to say, but it has been hard to do. Luckily, vendors are
really making progress toward making your modern business tools
Smaller, Smarter, and Synched.
James Gaskin for 
: See Article.