4 New Technologies to Watch For In 2018

When it comes to new technologies, many experts felt that 2017 was a bit of a letdown. But that doesn’t mean that 2018 won’t be a benchmark year for new technologies. Often times, that great new item in the tech world appear out of the darkness and overwhelm us in an exciting way. This could very well happen once again in the upcoming year.

With that said, let’s check out these 4 new technologies that could make news in 2018:

Computational Photography

There are lots of things going on when it comes to improving digital cameras. It is not that all those high-end sensors and incredibly fine glass lenses are in danger of getting replaced, but new software development are allowing brand new methods that improve small affordable cameras in a big way.

Every day we are seeing Smartphones get thinner and thinner, and amazingly we see that images they take just keep getting better and better. And software is the main reasons for this. Samsung and Apple have employed both software and dual lenses to offer amazing depth of field on their newest phones. In fact, we are seeing more and more professionals using iPhones for preliminary shooting because of their enhanced quality.

Augmented and Mixed Reality

Virtual reality (VR) didn’t catch on in 2017 in the way that many had hoped. But it is far from being dead, as Oculus is looking to get more people into the world of VR via a headset that is standalone and relatively cheap. But there still are a few minor issues like the lack of eye-tracking, and the tendency to cause nausea in a few people.

Mixed reality is a lot more interesting as it intends to incorporate virtual objects along with real world experiences. This will solve many problems of VR and offers new possibilities. 2017 did move the ball down in the field in these kinds of technologies.

Now Apple is looking to include augmented reality on some its new iPhone models and a ARkit for developers. Initially the iPhone’s AR capabilities will not go much beyond the Pokemon Go-style overlays on top of real-world environments, but they will be adding more sensors in the future.

Adobe

Adobe gets a bad rap. They happen to be one of the most exciting tech companies out there but that very few people consider them to be exciting. Actually, Adobe has already altered the world’s technological landscape dramatically. If there was no Photoshop, many of the social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and even Youtube wouldn’t be anywhere as interesting.

In 2017, Adobe tweaked many of its current products and gave us a taste of a few new ones. It unveiled a brand new version of Lightroom that has been embraced by the Tech community, and it killed Flash finally.

Adobe has shown a real commitment to using artificial intelligence when it can really enhance the quality of its products. Subtle changes like empowering Lightroom’s automatic settings using AI really improved a feature that wasn’t very useful into something that is pretty awesome. Photoshop is enhancing its “select subject” tool that will make the tedious masking and lassoing into something that will be obsolete whenever we try to cut main subjects from photos. And there is the new “Cloak” project that will allow for the removal of subjects and elements from videos.

And the most amazing thing will be the “VoCo” tool we saw demonstrated last year. It will be like a Photoshop designer for sound and will be capable of making a person’s voice say most anything. Yes, this is pretty terrifying to think about, but it is also quite amazing.

Smartwatches as Medical Devices

While the Apple Watch could have been the most boring device that Apple ever created, but there is a grand plan for its future. These have paved the way for smartwatches, which aren’t boring in the least. In fact, these little devices could actually save our life someday.

Actually, 2017 was the year where Apple Watch got good. It was the year when FDA first approved a medical device accessory. This was the Kardiabandis which is an add-on that is able to detect a heart rate this is abnormal. Even further, a study from UCSF discovered that Apple’s heart monitor is capable of detecting abnormal heart rates at 97% accuracy when an algorithm known as DeepHeart was used along with this device. The very same research team found that this Apple Watch-DeepHeart combination could also detect sleep apnea at 90% accuracy, and even hypertension at 82% accuracy. What is amazing if that both of these conditions are difficult to detect using traditional methods.

So watch out for 2018, it could very well be a banner year for new technologies.

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