Mind Controlled Self-Driving Cars, and Instant Shipping

Imagine ordering some way cool gizmo off some infomercial or shopping channel you’re watching on television, and having it instantly created from scratch right in your home! No need to wait for overnight shipping, that way cool gizmo appears right in your home.

That’s just one of many possible amazing future paths we are on, thanks to 3D printers, and other cool tech.

3D Printers take blueprint instructions for physical objects you feed into their attached computers, and actually build the thing, by layering the components one on top of the other, until the way cool gizmo you ordered off the tele is complete.

It’s called the additive manufacturing process, where a digital model of a solid object is literally built from the ground-up, via these layers.

This amazing technology is currently being used to create jewellery, footwear  toys, tools, prototypes, automotive, aerospace, medical and dental equipment, and a handful of others.

Recently, a man was arrested in the States for using a 3Dprinter to create handguns – so down the road, expect these printers to have some sort of security chips in ‘em similar to the ones in standard paper printers which prevent you from scanning or printing paper currency.

Another cool tech scenario – you hop in your car, think where you want to go, it plots the best route based on current traffic and weather conditions, and takes you there, all without you having to do a thing!

Self-driving cars are already here – we've all heard about the ones Google uses to capture their street views. According to Google, they have been working on consumer models of these for some time, and are anticipating selling self-driving cars within the next few years – pending government regulations and of course your own nerves!

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are already in most newer cars, along with built-in WiFi, 3G or in newer cars, LTE high speed wireless data , allowing your car’s computer to know where you are, and feed into the traffic and weather information networks.

And there are companies working on transferring yourthoughts directly into electronic impulses which can be read and understood bycomputers. This is still very experimental, but they are making significant progress on this front.

Put all that tech together and having your car know where you want to go, calculate the best route, and then proceed to take you there isn't that far a stretch.

Now, if only technology could do my laundry, clean my home, make me dinner and walk the dog for me!

Social Networking and the Battle for Free WiFi

You know you must be an addict to social networking, when you’ll stop at nothing to find a free WiFi hotspot.

Driving around aimlessly, popping into coffee shops, donut shops, fast food stops, even trucker stops. 

“Do you have any free WiFi?”

“Nope.”

Surprisingly, as our data needs constantly increase on the go, publicly available free wireless networks to plug into in a big city isn’t always easy.

I checked out several coffee, tea and fast food joints the other day, and most didn’t offer free WiFi. 

And then, once I did find a handful that did, their WiFi was SLOW – probably because so many people were on it at the same time.

All of this just to send a tweet, check my Google+ or see what’s trending on the nets?

Must be an addiction!

Though these sorts of things don’t really take up a lot of bandwidth, so using my phone’s 3G connection isn’t a worry.

 

What does take up more bandwidth, is watching streaming video, or participating in a video chat using Skype, a Google Hangout, or any of the other video chat services.

As I always say, content is king, and the king of content is video.

More of us prefer video chatting with each other, as opposed to just chatting on the phone. Why say it when you can show it?

And as more of us move towards digital media for our entertainment needs, we’ll be streaming live videos to our mobile devices more often.

Why wait to get home to catch up on your favorite shows, when you can do it on the road?

Just don’t watch and drive at the same time!

Clearly, the need for higher speed bandwidth is there – good thing for the new 4G or LTE services being offered by most major carriers.

Problem though, although these carriers are offering faster mobile data speeds, they aren’t increasing their bandwidth limitations by much.

So although you can stream movies with fewer dropped frames, you’ll still hit that data limit. Worse, as you can download faster, you’ll probably download more, and go over your data plan’s limit, meaning you’ll pay more in over use charges.

As our world continues to become more mobile, we need better data plans. Or more free WiFi hotspots. Or we need to admit our addictions, and move on.

Now, where can I find a WiFi hotspot?