Enter The FrankenZone

The bull’s new horn: If you’re tired of Windows on your PC, still grappling with the new Plex style in Windows XP, get ready to be outwitted again in early 2005. Windows’ successor, codenamed "Longhorn", will not be another upgrade but a new experience for geeks, junkies and the careless user. Longhorn promises a brand-new user interface tentatively called Sideshow. But, the grapevine has it that Longhorn won’t be compatible with your existing software or hardware and that an ‘object database’ will replace the current DOS/Windows filesystem. This means you can’t play around with files or copy them because there may not be any files at all. It may allow users to copy records from one database to another through an intermediary server, at a cost. Microsoft has already said that all its own software has to be rewritten for Longhorn. So will everyone else’s. Thanks a lot.

All in one or one in all?: You have a DVD player, a cassette desk, a TV, a PC and several disks at home. Ditto at the office. Nearly the same in your car. You have to carry your laptop all the time. Why can’t you have one device that replaces all these? With a lot of duplication in technology in gadgets, companies are working on a common server to store files, data as well as music and video in a portable format. You will have one server with all your entertainment and data needs, may be able to attach the server to any system anywhere and listen to music, view video or connect to any TV or display system and, of course, use it as a computer. Apple’s iPod has already shown us how.

Care in the air: After PCs, TVs, handhelds and cellphones, the internet’s Next Big Thing, or nbt, is healthcare. Within three years, the wireless device user-mass will increase by 700 per cent. And healthcare will drive this. The battle over which software to install will give way to a new fight—which medical handheld application to use.Telemedicine will happen not just in the rural areas but also in cities. Through online facilities at remote clinics, physicians will utilise the expertise of specialists sitting several time zones away. A New York doctor will examine a New Delhi patient’s ECG. Ophthalmologists will use remote ophthalmoscopes. Forget those bulky black plates. Radiologists will view x-rays online.

Result? Docs have to get web-savvy. One recent survey shows that 29 per cent of Net users in the US would switch doctors to use a website operated by their physician’s office. Question is, will there be enough bandwidth to provide and receive such services?

Look, Ma, No Wires: Its predecessors 3G and Bluetooth are yet to attain peak potential. But wireless fidelity—802.11 in geekspeak—is the hottest item in tech, "the next big thing since the internet itself", says Paul Otellini, CEO-designate, Intel.

Wi-Fi is a high-speed wireless network that operates just like Ethernet, the technology that links most PCs in offices. But it does all this without wires within a radius of 150-300 feet and can connect any laptop, desktop or handheld to the internet or to any computer.

Intel has already dedicated its next generation microprocessor Centrino to Wi-Fi. Microsoft, Siemens and Sprint are sinking big bucks into it. AT&T Wireless, IBM, Intel, Cingular Wireless and Verizon are working on Project Rainbow, to convert the entire country into a "hotspot". It’s fast, it’s cheap, but will it be secure?

Cell-Tale Signs: With text, pictures, net-access and data, the cellphone’s basic definition was redefined not so long ago. But soon, plain vanilla handsets will morph further. In the next two years, you’ll get feature-filled gadgets which are part Personal Digital Assistants (PDAS), part cameras with colour TFT-LCD touch screens. With your new cellphones, you can watch movies, take pictures and send them over a wireless link. And you can talk, too.

Of what use is all this? In Finland, real estate agents are sending colour pictures and floor plans to prospective buyers’ handsets to enable them to make decisions without actually visiting the site. In Holland, mobile fans are to soon receive, picture by picture, an interactive soap opera. In Germany, mobile companies convert cell owners’ holiday pictures into real (paper) postcards.

Can the days of MMS match-making be far away?

Speak Up—It’ll work: Touch screens are passe. The nbt in the PC interface arena is speech-led devices and applications. Look out for SALT—Speech Application Language Tags—which uses speech to navigate and interact with the Web using telephony and multi-modal devices like PCs, notebooks, cellphones and wireless PDAs. Internet documents are authored with markup languages using tags to define visual objects used in applications. SALT provides tags that define speech objects. When used within these languages, SALT makes it easy to add voice-enabled applications and features to websites. And being platform-independent, users can interact with applications in various ways. Data can be entered using speech along with a keyboard, mouse or a stylus. It can then be communicated to users via synthesized speech in addition to audio, plain text, video, or graphics.

After the PC: It has been labelled "Tech’s mid-life crisis". What after the PC? Bigger, faster, and more feature-laden is not enough. The new mantra is simple and flexible. So gear up for smaller devices, which might not look like today’s PCs but will have all its features and more. PCs you can roll like a newspaper?

Beyond travel: Call it the Dell-ification of automobiles. The days of off-the-shelf standard release models are over as companies progressively look at models that can be customised for buyers according to their demands and needs that keep changing.

The car, feel companies, has ceased to be just a means of transportation. It’s progressively becoming a composite domestic asset used not just to travel but for eating and drinking, listening to music, or as a home out of home.

Customisation was always there but for specific and special clients, not as a norm. It is going to be so now. Honda’s new model ‘Element’ can be customised for looks, utilities and multimedia capacities. Ditto Toyota Scion xB—a ‘dorm room on wheels’. In these cars, backseats fold into beds, or can be folded against walls to create vast storage or living space. One can go wild redesigning the interiors and loads of optional technical gadgets from large video screens to wireless internet, audio systems to speaking dashboards would be on offer. But like all good things, it will come for a price.

Right under the skin: Now, this is scary. They’ve done it with dogs and are now actively considering humans.Researchers are ready to try embedded chips in human beings. Forget the funky handsets, if this succeeds, you will have your sim card under your skin and a phone number for life. But be careful, whatever you do, big brother will be watching.