You might be sitting comfortably in your chair reading this article, but most likely developers, engineers and product designers of mobile technology, are not. As you have certainly witnessed, the mobile world is moving so fast, users don’t even have the time to get acquainted with some products, because new ones emerge and jump on the market replacing them, or multiplying the numbers, making choice a very difficult task indeed. Some people wonder what smartphones and tablets will look like in five years. Well, we’re pretty sure they will incorporate some brilliant ideas. And, besides smartphones and tablets, what else will there be? Here’s a few ideas, you should really hear about:

1. Mind Reading Gadgets

Computer and smartphones will be able to read minds in the not so distant future, according to an IBM scientist who claim that such technology will be main stream in a couple of years. IBM scientists are currently researching how to link people’s brain to their devices, such as a computer or a smartphone. Like, for example, just ringing somebody just by thinking about him/her, or willing to move a cursor on a computer screen. Your brain will become the key to personal identity, with retina scans and face recognition technology used to confirm who people are rather than using passwords. Image that you will be able to withdraw money from the ATM machine just by speaking your name or letting the ATM scan your retina.

IBM calls this concept “people power” and says that an entire home, workplace, even a city, will eventually be able to run off of energy created by someone’s jogging motions, the pedaling of a bicycle, or the movement of water through a faucet. IBM is not the first to work with neuronal networks, in an attempt to achieve mind reading. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have created a circuit of interacting molecules that can recall memories based on incomplete DNA patters, pretty much just like the human brain.

Mind Reading Devices to Move Things only by Thinking

The network consists of four man made artificial neurons made up from 112 distinct DNA strands and it can play a mind-reading game in which it tries to identify a mystery scientist. The researches “trained” the neural network to “know” four scientists, whose identities are each highlighted by specific and unique sets of answers to four yes-or-no questions, like whether the scientist had a beard or not. And if we think about quantum computers, mind reading gadgets are not such a sci-fi scenario.

After thinking of a particular scientist from the four, the human player provides an incomplete subset of answers partially identifying the scientist. The player then shares those clues with the network by dropping DNA strands that correspond to those answers in the test tube. Communicating via fluorescent signals, the network will then be able to identify which scientist the player has in mind. Or it can say it has insufficient information.

2. Wearable Technology

Apple and Google are working on wearable technology that would send data to their smartphones. Apple already has a small group of engineers charged with drumming up wearable technology concepts and even, in some cases, producing some prototypes. The concept of wearable technology, including companion devices, not only isn’t new but is already shipping. The long-delayed InPulse watch just recently began shipping, while Sony Ericsson has been on the market for some time with its LiveView companion. None of them have been directly made by the OS developer, however, and wouldn’t necessarily be as tightly integrated as Apple or Google could make.

This technology will likely start out small – phone watches, monitors that show personal information like heart rate, and wearable cameras. That’s right. And Apple has already started to work on it. For its part, Apple has already subtly tried to encourage the public to wear its technology, offering the most recent iPod Nano as a wearable watch. The problem with the Nano, at least in my mind, is that it was the ugliest pile of garbage I’d ever seen, certainly not something I would actually want to wear on my wrist in public.

How Would You Like to Wear Life Changing Technology?

And then there’s CuteCircuit. CuteCircuit, the London-based company who crafted Perry’s dress from the tiniest full-color LED lights available (measuring only two millimetres in length), are pioneers of wearable technology. Their “Hug shirt”, which enables wearers to send a sensory hug across the world to another person wearing the same creation, was awarded Time Magazine’s best Invention of 2006. By squeezing the top, the hug sensation is transmitted through its heat and vibration sensors, and then sent via a mobile phone’s Bluetooth capacity.

Another fun invention comes from the University of Madrid, where scientists have developed an intelligent shirt that can monitor a patient’s temperature, heart rate, and other vital signs; it can also locate a patient within a two-meter margin of error, like an eagle-eyed GPS, and it can tell nurses or doctors whether the patient is sitting, lying down, or moving about. And it’s all wireless. All in all, the important fact is that despite the fact that some devices like this might be unaesthetic and chunky, one day, wearable technology will become an intrinsic part of our existence, fashionable gadgets that are as home on our bodies as ear rings, make-up, or tattoos, who knows?

Google X Glasses

What would the world look like with Google glasses? Hot in the news today is a report from Nick Bilton of the New York Times that Google is developing wearable computers in the secret Google X Lab that Bilton wrote about last month. That prompted Google specialist Seth Weintraub, now at Fortune and formerly of Computerworld, to call the news “an open secret among some in the Google community.” But what exactly is the idea? Well, the glasses should overlay their information onto transparent lenses, focusing on memory assistance. Of course the device will run Android, but it will not be wholly dependent on Android to function.

Google specialist Seth Weintraub reported that the Google teams are in late prototype stages of wearable glasses that look similar to thick-rimmed glasses that normal people wear. These provide a display with a heads up computer interface: there are a few buttons on the arms of the glasses, but otherwise they could be mistaken for normal glasses. With Google working on a voice-control system similar to Apple’s Siri, such devices could do away with the need for a touchscreen at all.

Google admitted the existence of a secret laboratory called by the media Google X, where scientists have the freedom of working on wild, fantastic ideas. Engineers are free to work on projects such as connected fridges that order groceries when they run low – or even tableware that can connect to social networks.