TECH SPECIAL...............Gadgets that will soon R.I.P.

Gadgets that will soon R.I.P.   We will soon open cars with our smartphones, store data on Cloud and command computers with our voices. Given below are some of gadgets that  will be obsolete in a while One day, the reporter's face will pop out of this newspaper to read this story to you. By the time that day comes, the following gadgets will be resting in peace. You know what's the most magical thing about technology? It is its fixation to replace old with new, obsolete with promising and smart with genius. This is the reason why, every decade, a set of tech things that eased our lives in a million ways make way for something newer, better and brighter. For  example, the fixed line gave way to the pager and mobile, cassettes to compact discs and digital content, wires to infrared and  Bluetooth, yellow bulbs to CFL and LEDs. Here are a few other products that will soon  age and fade. TRADITIONAL CAR KEYS: Steel car keys are already dead. They have been replaced  by smart keys that you don't even need to take out of your pocket to start or turn off the  engine. These come loaded with chips and can't be duplicated by local key makers, which means the car thieves have bigger challenges to deal with than half a decade ago. However, this is not where the evolution of car keys has stopped; by the time you retire, or maybe a lot sooner than that, car keys will be completely out of business. They will  be replaced by smartphone apps that will grant you complete control over your car ignition, temperature control and stuff like that. Tesla, BMW, General Motors and Volvo already offer such apps, and this fad will roll down to cars for the masses soon.  You will still have to make sure that you don't lose your smartphone. COMPACT CAMERAS: Thanks to the war of megapixels amongst the mobile phone manufacturers, and our never-ending craze for selfies, the sale of compact cameras has drastically dropped. You hardly find anyone using a point-and-shoot camera these days.  However, DSLR will be with us for a very long time because of the growing interest in amateur photography and professional use. Says Manish Sharma, president, CEAMA and managing director Panasonic India and South Asia, “Due to the growing popularity of smartphones, the sales of compact cameras declined by 30 per cent till October 2014.  Also, heavy discounts have led to consumers preferring high-end smartphones and tablets over cameras. However, the Digital SLR segment is witnessing exciting times. “ Just in case you lost track, Kodak, whose little yellow film boxes defined your growing  up years, quit the camera-making business a few years ago after ruling the world of  photography for more than a century! In fact, a Singapore-based label which is doing exceedingly well in DSLR is struggling to sell its compact cam eras, and its sales in  this segment is dropping every quarter. HARD DRIVES:  With every thing moving to Cloud based storage and the increase  in the sale SSD (solid state drives), the sale of hard drives has already taken a hit. Cloud-based storage allows all data to be stored online, and can be accessed from anywhere, anytime. On the other hand, SSDs, smaller versions of hard drives, are very expensive and incredibly fast and robust.“Technological progress is making things smaller, faster, smarter and web based. With everything going digital, Cloud computing  will become big soon, and we will manage our data using a Cloud-based app,“ explains  Chris Chang, managing director, ADATA Technology India. MEDIA PLAYERS:  Who plays DVDs and CDs on dedicated media players these days?  Stoneage men? Aren't we already using Chrome Cast and streaming movies online on our tabs and phones? With Apple TV and iTunes, the fate of DVDs and Bluerays has more or less been sealed. KEYBOARD: This story has been typed using a keyboard, but in times to come, as intelligent voice functions like Siri and Ok Google evolve, and the computer starts reacting to gestures and motions, the keyboard will eventually die the death of a typewriter, and instead of typing this story, we will voice them onto the designer's computer. Designers, obviously, will not be allowed to sleep. LOL. kumar saurav2 TL30AUG15