IEEE's Technology Winners & Losers of 2006

eldavojohn writes "As far as technologies go, there are clear winners and clear losers. This month's IEEE Spectrum issue contains an interesting list of winners and losers from 2006. Among the winners are a new radio technology, IP phone networks & memory technologies along with ethanol from sugarcane. Among the losers are tongue vision, LEDs in clothes, a flying car and ethanol from corn."

Comments

Battery Life

[emmp]

From the article:

A cellphone based on software-defined radio would be lighter, smaller, cheaper, and more power efficient.

Would it really be more power efficient? I can't imagine having software cycling through wireless frequencies would be more efficient than a "hardcoded" hardware frequency, am I missing something here?

Re:Ethanol from corn???

[WindBourne]

They do it for the taste. Trying to make production levels is easy, but way too expensive. In fact, cane and corn is too expensive and is a batch process.

A far cheaper approach will be ethanol from algae. The algae approach will allow for more of a continuous stream and can use waste water and non productive land. Interestingly, it could turn America and even Europe back to a large energy exporter, rather than major importers.