The mobile tech of 2008 - and beyond...

Whether the buzz about last year’s launches of the iPhone, Windows Vista, and third-party Facebook apps had more to do with mass-marketing campaigns than technological breakthroughs is debatable, but there will likely soon be plenty of mobile-related advances for even the most dyed-in-the-wool geek to get excited about.

Google plans for mainframe server farms with a simple internet connection free of charge may mean the masses could soon tap into apps previously reserved for government spy agencies and dark matter physicists. On a much smaller scale, manufacturers may be using nanowires to make handheld super computers within 10 years or so. And back in the present, Intel's plans for a quad-core laptop processor look set to complement terabyte-capacity 2.5in hard drives, making phenomenally capable portables a reality.

So will we soon hold the power of mainframe super computers in our pockets that will offer voice-activated beam-me-up Scotty commands to our mothership? We poked around to find out what to expect over the rest of 2008 -- and beyond.

Computing in the Clouds

Google and IBM say they will make high-powered parallel server applications available to the masses over the internet.

Google, IBM, and six universities around the world are collaborating on a project that could give average-Joe users access to applications over the Internet that harness the power of thousands of processors running in parallel.

While applications that pool together the resources of hundreds of computers have existed for decades, the application has traditionally been reserved for massively funded physics experiments, spy agency database projects and other expensive en extremis computing tasks.

Now, Google and IBM say Cloud Computing will soon give users access to super computing applications over the Internet from any ordinary PC with links to high-powered machines they have reserved for the masses at their mainframe server farms.

Universities participating in the project started using several hundred Google and IBM servers with well over 1,000 processors running in parallel towards the end of last year. IBM said it hopes it will offer Cloud Computing applications to customers in a few months. Google has not put a timeline on when you will be able to tap into its mainframes for free, but claims the day is just around the corner.

One potential application Google is touting involves the upload of perhaps millions of mobile phone images from around the globe, which the cluster Cloud computers would then process and render into 3D Google Earth images.

The Rise of the Android

Google says its Android operating system could transform mobile interfaces and applications, but it’s no iPhone – yet…

Google’s director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin, stated that Google hopes its open source Android smartphone operating system “will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine today.”

While Android devices have yet to be announced, prototypes are already on show and the first models are due to be launched before the end of the year.

But don’t expect handset manufacturers to start shipping Gphones that will compete directly against Apple’s iPhone anytime just yet. Google’s project is based on an open source initiative and the price points of Android phones are expected to fall in a less-expensive category than the Apple’s handset.

It may also take a long time for Android to take off and Google could likely face the same struggles that Microsoft did when it took the software giant years to get its Windows CE OS off the ground.

And as the world’s largest search engine company closely tracks your Web usage patterns, revealing even more personal data to sign up for an Android mobile package could be cause for concern for some. 

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Turning the Electronic Page

Electronic books are becoming something you actually want to read.

Electronics books used to be more about eye-straining fonts and clunky battery-eating components than something with which you would curl up next to the fireplace on a cold winter night. Now a new generation of ebook reading devices has become available with text quality that is comparable to that of printed paper.

Sony and Amazon so far represent the largest OEMs to adopt E Ink– technology that allows crisp, high-contrast displays that don’t need a battery-sucking backlight. Sony’s Portable Reader and Amazon’s Kindle ebook readers are still not available in Europe (the iRex Iliad is, however), but that could change by the end of this year.

Holland-based Polymervision announced earlier this month that its Readius mobile phone, which has a 5” flexible screen for ebooks, will see launch in the middle of the year.

E Ink’s next development? Improvements to the microcapsule technology that will do away with monochrome electronic print and bring colour and video to ebooks.

HD-DVD Will Not Die (Just Yet)

Warner Bros.’ recent announcement that it was dropping HD-DVD support probably sounded the death knell for the format, but don’t expect Blu-ray to win the battle this year hands down.

The timing could not have been worse for HD-DVD proponents: Warner Bros. announced it would no longer offer DVDs in the format just days before the Consumer Electronics Show. Given that seven major studios now support Blu-ray, it would seem as if HD-DVD’s days were numbered. Yet, HD-DVD, however, is far from dead. DreamWorks Animation, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Pictures will continue to release films on HD-DVD.

At least through 2008, there will still be plenty of HD-DVD laptops available. UK laptop manufacturer Rock, for example, offers HD-DVD drives as standard. Toshiba also remains the standard’s main proponent, and has no intention of yanking it after recently adding a rewritable HD-DVD drive to its Qosmio laptop range.

Thumb Drives on Steroids

A single USB flash drive could back up the hard disks of two high-end laptops.

Arizona State researchers say they have developed a cheap, low-power USB flash drive that offers a terabyte worth of capacity. The programmable metallization cell (PMC) memory technology based on copper nanowire bridges accounts for the dense storage capability and low power, so it’s just a matter of time before the technology can pack in the equivalent of 1,000 1Gb USB flash drives in a single device -- the researchers reckon.

If true, the downside is that it’ll soon be easier to lose an entire lifetime’s of photos, movies and documents when you leave your flash drive on a desk somewhere. Not to worry, says SanDisk, which now offers a 4Gb USB thumb drive that automatically backs up data online when the device is plugged in to your laptop.

Handheld Super Computers

Will we all soon be packing the power of a mainframe in our pockets?

A University of Edinburgh School of Engineering researcher recently published in a scientific paper his claim that the use of nanowires will enable engineers to create a super computer that will fit in the palm of your hand within 10 to 15 years. Handheld super computers would involve assembling nanowires that are 1,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair.

So what will a handheld supercomputer allow? Real-time voice processing for spoken commands, a la Star Trek? Researchers have been less vocal about the real-applications than they have been about the nanoparticle size of tomorrow’s super computers.

While not on a nanoscale, Intel gave a demonstration of a prototype mobile device at the Consumer Electronics Show that will offer real-time text and speech translations within three to five years. Intel also said its upcoming mobile device designs slated for launch as early as next year will feature always-on Internet connectivity wherever you are in a device you can comfortably carry in your back pocket. }

WiMax Unleashed

WiMax proponents say the standard will likely make Wi-Fi connectivity as pervasive as cellular networks.

The rollout of WiMax networks could mean that you will eventually be able to log on to a Wi-Fi Internet network with your laptop whether you are on the bus in Trafalgar Square, picnicking in Hyde Park, or enjoying a pint down at the pub.

Intel is a principle proponent of the standard and will add WiMax capabilities to its upcoming Montevina chipset, which will replace the Centrino platform and show up in laptops during the second half of the year.

Asus, BenQ, and Lenovo showed off WiMax capabilities in laptop builds with an Intel platform earlier this month during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In parallel, Intel will also offer a WiMax chip, codenamed Baxter Peak this year, which Nokia will use for its N Series Internet Tablets.

City-level WiMax coverage is expected to begin in certain areas of the United States this year, while Intel says it is also working with telcos for the deployment of networks in Japan and Russia this year. However, wide-scale deployment in the rest of the world, including Europe, is not slated until 2009.

Online Storage Explosion

Vendors offering automatic backups over the Internet will continue to surge this year, but some caution should be heeded.

Amazon, Microsoft, and EMC are among the rapidly growing number of firms that that have begun to offer online backups. The number of online storage providers could total more than 100 by the end of the year.

The concept is simple: your data is automatically and transparently uploaded as a background task whenever your laptop is connected to the Internet. Pictures, videos, music, documents, or other types of files are transferred and stored for online access in case in your PC is lost or destroyed.

Not all the solutions are created equal, though, and with the multitude of offerings, some dubious alternatives unfortunately exist. Service providers should provide guarantees that your data is encrypted, for example.

Security 2.0

Anti-virus vendors are scrambling to keep up with the explosion of malware.

Many users have remained blissfully ignorant of the potential security risks while typing in credit card info and other sensitive data when making online purchases on established websites. But the general public has begun to wake up to the threats they face, while anti-malware firms are sounding the alarm.

Just this month, TJX Companies, which has retail outlets in the United States and in the UK, disclosed that black hack hackers stole over 47.5 million credit car numbers of customers since 2005. Last November, the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) said it lost detailed personal information, including addresses and national insurance numbers of 25-millon people, which was stored on two CDs that were lost in the mail.

But besides the threat of data loss by inept third-party vendors and government agencies, malware attacks that directly target individual PCs are exploding. Anti-malware vendor F-Secure  {{http://www.f-secure.com}}, said its malware detections skyrocketed from a quarter-million at the beginning of last year to half a million at the end of 2007.

While we are far from a Security 2.0 scenario, anti-malware firms are forced to offer more aggressive security services. F-Secure, for example, offers root kit detection and removal in addition to what it claims is “real-time” protection against virus and spyware. Antimalware vendors this year should begin to offer full suites of data-protection offerings, such as encryption services, instead of plain vanilla virus and spyware protection.

Really Green Computing

Laptop OEMs are beginning to offer more laptop recycling and power savings options.

OEMs have paid lip service to their role in the “green computing” movement for years, but consumers could finally see laptops with noticeable environmental benefits in 2008. Last year, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, the World Wildlife Fund and others announced the formation of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative with the goal of saving $5.5 billion in annual energy costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons per year through the development of what they say will be highly efficient power supplies.

If the OEMs do what they have pledged to do, look out for laptops that will not only indirectly reduce greenhouse emissions by consuming less power, but also offer savings on your electricity bill.

There will also be a shift in how electronics are recycled. After the European Union Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive took effect in the UK last year, suppliers and OEMs will increasingly shoulder more responsibilities for laptop and other electronics device disposals.

Terabyte Laptops

The Asus M70 laptop combines two Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 500Mb drives.

Asus launched the world’s first commercially available terabyte laptop earlier this month, while other OEMs will soon follow Asus’ lead. Asus’ M70 fits two Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 500Mb drives inside the PC. As early as next year, Hitachi could supply laptops with single 1Tb hard drives.

Besides a new read-head that accounted for the capacity boost, the Travelstar 5K500 features Hitachi’s Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology, which the firm said overcomes the instability of mechanical hard drives by detecting possible vibrations to stabilize the drive head before damage occurs. RVS can thus prevent damage multi-media laptops might cause when sound from high-powered speakers creates vibrations,

Solid State Drives as Standard

SSD drives are fast, robust, and quiet –but are likely to be prohibitively expensive in the near term

Solid state drives (SSDs) offer clear advantages compared to traditional mainstream disks with better read and write times, faster data access speeds, and lower power consumption. Since they do away with the mechanical parts of hard drives, SSDs are less-prone to failure and enable laptops to run that much quieter. So for users seeking the best high-end laptops commercially available, SSDs should be on the component list.

Unfortunately, the technology comes at a very steep price, which will impede its adoption this year. Opting for the media in a laptop can add £500 to the sticker price, while the per-gigabyte cost for SSDs can be over 50 times that of traditional drives and. Still, prices are rapidly falling.

The media’s high cost did not prevent Asus from launching its very mobile yet cheap Eee PC (although there is only a very meagre 1.2Gb of free space on the 4Gb SSD drive). The jury also remains out for the 2Gb variant Asus launched earlier this month. High-end gaming OEM Alienware, a Dell subsidiary, and  Toshiba offer SSD laptops as well. Intel’s upcoming Menlow platform will also accommodate SSD drives.

OLED Screens

OLED panels show more promise, but remain extremely pricey.

After LG introduced a PC with an OLED screen some time ago, how long will it be before OEMs even think about replacing LCDs with OLED screens in their laptops? That day is still probably a long way off.

Yet, Sony showed just how promising OLED panels are at the Consumer Electronics Show, when it debuted its XEL-1 TV. Commercially available in the United States, Sony’s 11-inches XEL-1 offers a stunning 1,000,000:1 contrast, which would be a welcome replacement to what LED backlights offer?

OLED also got another dose of good news recently when Corning announced the development of its Jade glass that helps to overcome OLED displays’ polysilicon backplane performance problems and sensitivity to moisture and oxygen.

Yet, pricing remains a major hurdle, preventing the display type’s wide-scale adoption. The XEL-1’s U.S. price of $2,500 for a mere 11-inch display, for example, shows how far OLED prices must drop before they enter the affordable laptop price category anytime soon.  

Multi-Core Laptops

Intel will launch its first quad-core platform for laptops during the second half of the year.

Intel will later this year bring its quad-core CPUs to market for laptops, while there is rampant speculation about when Intel and AMD will pack 16-core CPUs for mobile applications. On the record, Intel only says it will offer the quad-core laptop platform during the second half of the year, while it has not yet disclosed the brand name for the devices. The chip giant will also undoubtedly hope to build on what was probably its most successful ever Core 2 Duo platform, the performance of which has won over the most die-hard AMD fans.

Intel will not comment about future plans or beyond, of course, what it recently disclosed at IDF. However, Intel’s upcoming Nehalem architecture will reportedly host up to eight cores. How many cores Intel will pack in its 32nm, 1.9 billion transistor Westmere platform when it is launched next year also remains unknown.