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2019 Holiday Tech Gift Guide

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With the holiday’s right around the corner, it’s high time that we all need to start thinking about the gifts that we will be getting our friends and family, and with the next decade also coming up, it just feels fitting to get people some technology to add into their collections of smart devices. Tech gifts are often well received because of how much we all incorporate digital devices into our everyday life. It makes navigating throughout the world and it’s everyday stresses a lot more manageable, so this year, get your loved ones something that will help them manage their life a little more easily. 

A standard for tech gift giving is a good speaker system. Music and entertainment is how most of us enjoy unwinding, and more times than not is always playing the backgrounds of our day to day lives, so why not get a quality speaker to enjoy those moments to the best of their ability. One of the most popular brands for speakers on the market today is Sonos. Sonos has a myriad of options for anybody to enjoy. These speakers are bluetooth and battery powered, making them completely portable and easy to manage. If you purchase multiple Sonos speakers, you can connect to them all on the official Sonos app on your mobile device. This means you’ll have complete control over your entire home speaker system, all from your phone. So you can play one song in the living room while guests sit by the fire, and another in the kitchen while you cook your holiday turkey. Sonos speakers are available on the official Sonos website, as well as Amazon. They range in price, and do tend to lean more towards the pricier size, however, these speakers are the epitome of “you get what you pay for” in terms of advanced speaker technology. 

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Amazon also has it’s now iconic line of Alexa-powered Echo systems. There’s a vast range of Echo products, all of which range in prices, so if you want to spend a little less, you can buy an echo dot for your niece, and spend no more than $50, and the more interactive Echo Show, which has a tablet like presence, but will only cost you $80.  What’s great about the Alexa systems is that you can connect them to any smart products that you buy from Amazon, which includes plugs, light-bulbs, doorbell cameras, and more! This way, you’re able to turn off the lights upstairs and set a timer for 30 minutes, all without having to leave the couch. Browse through the many options, which also now include an Echo Glow speaker, perfect for any younger child in the family, and find the next best Smart home device for your loved ones. 

Speaking of smart homes and lighting, Philips has been a powerhouse for home lighting for years, and now, they’re dipping their toe into the Smart Home world with their brand “Philips Hue” the popular light-bulb brand that you control from your phone. Hue light-bulbs are typically much more pricier, due to the advanced technology, but also make a great gift. The newest release from Philips Hue, however, is a vintage style light-bulb that you can control either via app, or voice control, for the price of $25 per bulb. Hue also has starter kits from their original collection that is priced at $200 for a total of four bulbs and base outlet station. These light-bulbs are great for setting the mood for any occasion, whether it be a fun birthday party, or romantic dinner for two. With your hands full you can simply say “lights on blue” and you’re transported to an underwater paradise, right in your living room.

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Apple is no stranger to being one of the world’s top developers for smart technology, and this holiday season they have a whole bunch of products that would be great for any member of the family. They just released their next generation of smart watches and wristbands. As one of the original wearable tech experts, Apple’s smart watches are the perfect gift if you know anyone who’s constantly moving, to the point that even checking their phones becomes busy work. This way, they can just look at their wrist and quickly go through any emails, texts, or reminders that their phone is notifying them for. Additionally, one of the more popular Christmas gifts every year is Apple’s AirPods, and now Apple has released AirPods Pro, with noise cancelling technology, perfect for any commuters you know who dread the sound of buzzing cities and mass public transit. 

Apple also just released their next generation of iPhone, and while you may be thinking of a new phone is a pretty expensive gift, there’s a lot of parents out there who view Christmas as the perfect opportunity to upgrade their family lines. Apple also is now offering a bunch of trade in programs, which means you can get up to $300 off a new iPhone when you trade in your old one! Definitely worth it for anyone who’s constantly wanting to get the next best thing. 

Regardless of the smart gift, there’s plenty of options set at a variety of prices, making tech gift giving one of the easiest and smartest ways to get your holiday shopping done this season. 

Tech at Home

How Technology will Shape Life in the Home

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Already, rapid advancements in technology have fundamentally changed the way most of us spend time in our homes, adding convenience into our daily routines and expanding options for entertainment beyond what was once considered possible. This rapid pace of technological advancement is sure to continue, and while it’s difficult to predict exactly how technology will change our lives at home far into the future, looking at current trends and the research and development being conducted can give a general understanding of the direction technology is taking us.

It’s worth taking a look back several decades into the past to determine which previous predictions about the homes of the future came true and which didn’t. Some concepts, such as video calling and advanced thermostats, have manifested into technologies like Apple’s Facetime and Nest’s Learning Thermostat. Other predictions turned out to be off the mark, such as the idea that homes of the future would be made out of glass or Thomas Edison’s prediction that steel would become the primary material for building furniture. Most of the predictions that came true involved how technology would impact the way we engage with information and conduct our daily routines; as such, the best predictions are the ones that look to how technology can work in these domains. For instance, Phillip’s Hue system of smart light bulbs can be programmed to automatically adjust to our schedules, and Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home devices allow us to interact with our personal computers by using natural language. While the rate of technological progress has produced these impressive devices, there is plenty of room for improvement, and continued investment and innovation by these companies is sure to produce even more advanced generations of the same fundamental concepts.

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One of the most promising domains of technological development can be found in the field of artificial intelligence. Machine learning systems which take advantage of neural network technology have already produced incredible results, as speech synthesis systems can sound totally indistinguishable from a genuine human voice and can even mimic the speaking styles of real individuals with great verisimilitude. This technology would not only allow for natural-sounding communication between humans and AI, but assistants could even be programmed to mimic the tone of voice of different emotions, enabling a personal assistant which always sounds happy to speak with you to create a more pleasant experience. In the future, deep learning technology could be used to make these assistants smarter, as they would be able to better parse and interpret the complex information expressed in natural speech to accomplish specific and unique tasks. For instance, in the future you may be able to ask a computer assistant to take notes, send emails, and set reminders without having to worry about how you phrase your requests and with confidence that the computer will understand you correctly. We will continue to carry these assistants with us on our phones, but they will also be integrated in the home in the form of connected smart speakers placed in different rooms.

Another field worth paying attention to involves the rising interconnectivity of our devices. Though compatibility varies across manufacturers, already consumers are able to synchronize their activity between their tablets, laptops, smartphones, and desktop consumers, and it’s even possible to wirelessly stream content from a phone to a TV. As our devices get better, their capabilities begin to overlap, causing some specialized devices to become obsolete. Tablets such as the iPad have incorporated much of the functionality of laptops, making ownership of the latter device unnecessary, and improvements in smartphone cameras have all but killed the compact camera industry.

As virtual reality headsets and computer graphics become more realistic, the allure of vacationing in a distant location will become overshadowed by the difficulties of transportation and the cost of travel and accommodations

This trend is sure to continue, and as devices become more versatile, we’ll find that our smartphones, which will have folding screens and seamless wireless compatibility with a host of input and display options, will become our primary computing devices. We will still have displays around our houses, and in fact even more of them as we add smart mirrors and wallpapers to our televisions and desktop monitors, but these displays will function not as discrete computing entities but instead will connect to our personal smartphones. As such, all of our computing needs will be handled by a single portable computing device, which will be deeply integrated with the cloud and which we will interact with in different ways by using wirelessly connected devices, such as keyboards, monitors, large tablets with styluses, our voices, and our television sets with remote controls. In this way, our computers will seem to follow us wherever we go, as sitting down in front of a monitor in a public place will grant exactly the same experience as sitting in front of a monitor at home.

As our devices become more interconnected and artificial intelligence streamlines our relationship with technology, more opportunities to fundamentally transform our lives at home will continue to open up. A new generation of young professionals will increasingly view the commute to work in the office as unnecessary and burdensome, as computing and communications technology will replicate nearly all of the functionality of the office environment. Instead, young people will opt to work from their home offices, using high-quality video calls and augmented and virtual reality systems to replicate the experience of participating in conferences and meetings. Home offices will be customized to suit the individual’s professional needs to the same degree that office buildings can provide, and though professional attire will remain an expectation, the flexibility of the home environment will ensure a more efficient collaborative experience. As a result, the boundaries between the home environment and the work environment will be blurred, and while this is sure to enable a great degree of convenience for professionals, it may increase levels of stress among the professional population, as they will be expected to be available throughout the day whenever they’re in their houses.

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Technology is also likely to transform the way we think about leisure. As virtual reality headsets and computer graphics become more realistic, the allure of vacationing in a distant location will become overshadowed by the difficulties of transportation and the cost of travel and accommodations, and the alternative of staying at home during vacation time will become more appealing. As consumer devices will be able to replicate the look and feel of visiting exotic destinations, even fictional ones, the natural urge to travel and explore different places will be satisfied by simulations of these experiences. Developers will have the freedom to craft entire vacation experiences, which will be able to be enjoyed either for a few hours at the end of the day or for days at a time, and consumers will be able to download and share these experiences digitally without having to leave home at all.

Of course, no one can be totally accurate in predicting the future of technology in the home, but by looking at the general principles by which technology has already shaped our home lives it’s easy to imagine how it will continue to do so with time. Human nature, of course, will always stay the same fundamentally, and future generations will still have the same needs of experiencing novelty, finding purpose in life and work, and interacting socially, but the ways we go about fulfilling these needs are sure to radically change.

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