Hardware: Self-healing Circuit Boards

Phys.org has a great article about an awesome Cal-Tech breakthrough:  Self-healing circuit boards. Capacitors, resistors, and other electronics will be able to recover from power spikes or brown-outs, getting wet, over heated, or any other type of injury capable of ruining your device or system.  All we need is artificial intelligence (Watson anyone), and a self-sustaining power source and these entities will be our Frankenstein creatures!  What can possibly go wrong?  (/end tangent)

Can you imagine the crossover abilities of incorporating this technology into the biological 3D printer advancements?  Creating self-healing human body parts via nanobots.  Wow, exciting times lie ahead for both humans and their electronic companions.

A quote from the Phys.org article:
"It was incredible the first time the system kicked in and healed itself. It felt like we were witnessing the next step in the evolution of integrated circuits," says Ali Hajimiri, the Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. "We had literally just blasted half the amplifier and vaporized many of its components, such as transistors, and it was able to recover to nearly its ideal performance."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-caltech-self-healing-electronic-chips.html#jCp

Interfaces: New Advances

On May 13th, 2013, Leap-Motion begins selling their new computer interface which will boost Windows 8's market share.  There's no surprise Microsoft envisioned a touch-based interface when designing Metro.  Where Microsoft went wrong is not taking advantage of their XBOX360 Kinect product.  They missed an opportunity to lead the market on gestural input designs.  Instead, developers hacked the product and created their own solutions.  Microsoft finally created an SDK but after the horse had bolted.  Microsoft should have bundled a Kinect-like device with Windows 8 and capture this new interface market.

Leap-Motion's fledgling company developed a simple, robust, and cheap device capable of accurately registering hand and finger movements.  I predict this device will expand and become a de facto interface integrated into the next generation of computers, phones, and other devices which would benefit from hands-free movement-based interactions.  Watch these two videos to get an understanding on how simple yet accurate the controller is and you'll agree how instrumental it'll be in future devices.  I'd love to see it embedded into Google-Glass.