...AND CHEAPER...:

The Smartphonification of Stuff (Rebecca Greenfield, 11/18/11, Atlantic)

Here're all the things we used to carry around that we don't have to anymore.

   
Watches. Everyone knows that the popularity and ubiquity of cellphones have relegated watches to fashion pieces and status symbols.
   
Wallets. Paypall, Google and MasterCard all have mobile payments systems. They're easy, fast, safe and will never clutter with old receipts

   
Newspaper/Magazines. Print is dead because the iPhone killed it.
   
Disc Man, iPod, Walkman. Smartphones, just like iPods, hold a lot of digital music. But now with cloud services, like iTunes Match and Google's Music Service, smartphone owners can access huge 20,000 song libraries via the cloud.
   
Keys? Ok, this one isn't a widespread reality yet. But at least one person has rigged Siri to open doors.

...and faster...

New Material Promises Faster Chips, Faster Internet, Faster Everything (Clay Dillow Posted 11.17.2011, Popular Science)

We've constructed a world out of fiber optic cable and silicon, but Arizona State University researchers think their new material can do better. They have synthesized a new kind of single-crystal nanowire from a compound of erbium--a material generally used to dope fiber optic cables to amplify their signals--and they claim it could increase the speed of the Internet, spawn a new generation of computers, and improve photovoltaic solar cells, sensor technologies, and solid-state lighting.

Posted by oj at November 18, 2011 5:57 AM
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