IT Trends: IT buzzwords in your Christmas stocking
For those of you who have techno savvy friends, it must sometimes feel that you need a translator when they speak about technology.
The buzzwords below will become more widely used in 2016. Use these to impress and even intimidate such friends. By now, we should all know about BYOD, Cloud, 3-D Printing, IOT and of course “Selfie”.
Well, how about talking to them about the Belfie stick. This is actually a selfie stick that allows you to take pictures of your bottom with your mobile phone! My guess is that this will be more popular with women than men – allowing men to be released from the pressure of responding to THAT question – “Does my bottom look big in this?” Moving on – have you heard about the Nixie?
This is a wearable selfie drone that will launch from your wrist to take a selfie of yourself from the air! Mind you the whole selfie phenomenon is seen as narcissistic with people using the internet more to gain attention for themselves, rather than to share information or knowledge.
More seriously, have you heard about the Phablet? A cross between a phone and a tablet. It is now widely used to describe devices with screen sizes of 5 to 6.9 inches. Mind you – it is still not very cool to hold such a large device up to your ear when making a call.
A Yottabyte (YB) is now the latest unit of digital storage and is the equivalent of a terabyte to the power of four. Don’t bother to try and count the number of zeros in this unit. Octo Core Processors will also be with us soon – taking over from quad core. These will increasingly be used in mobile devices and will reflect a boost in processing power and increased power efficiency.
In the television world, 4K resolution (providing four times the resolution of HD) is now being overtaken by Ultra HD or 5K resolution. Mind you, we will still have to wait for content to be filmed and broadcast in this bigger, higher quality format.
Even then, the new technology is now Quantum Dot with an extra layer of nano-crystals that emit different colours which improves colour reproduction and brightness.
If your technology savvy colleagues are less than impressed by this – ask them if they know about the USB type-c form factor which will not only double your data transfer speed but also be able to power up your laptop.
Or how about MU-MIMO which allows Wi-Fi routers to support multiple devices and enable Mesh networks where each item in the network can be used to relay information onwards from another device. This may sound the death knell for cabled networks.
Lendership is a reflection of the growing trend where users prefer to lease a product or service, rather than purchasing it outright. Microsoft Office 365 and their range of cloud services is a classic example of this with 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies using this technology. Apart from this sort of monthly software subscription use, it also manifests in daily gaming memberships and pay as you go services.
Countries like Malawi – with credit cards not easily available – will be unable to gain advantage of the lendership trend easily. Mobile money will become more useful in the region. But Crypto Currency will become more and more visible in these circumstances; which is really a decentralised digital currency like Bitcoin.
This list is endless so I will end with Wearables (basically a computer that you wear) that I have referred to before.
However, the more widespread use of these lead to the concept of the Quantified Self. This in essence means that you use technology to track and measure data of your personal daily life to enable you to better your life.
An example is using your phone to track the amount of steps you take – which allows you to increase your exercise rate and get fitter.
Read this and go out and blind your friends with science this Christmas. Have a great festive season.
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