Technology

A radio without any knobs. A bathroom where a clear display wirelessly streams vital statistics on your health. And a user interface that takes brain waves and translates them into commands for a computer.

These are some of the products in development by Cambridge Consultants, a product design and development company. It showed off some of its latest inventions at a daylong event last week in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Check out these sweet ideas, many of which are set to hit retail shelves in the next few weeks.

Let's face it: Technology seems made to stop working. Screens crack, circuits short, and power supplies abruptly conk out. It's all part of the complex and confounding ecosystem of electronics.

The worst, though, is when something really is built to break--and in the most extreme way. I'm talking fiery explosions, flying components, and acid-leaking compartments, all courtesy of bugs built right into ill-fated devices.

In 1995 I was part of a press party that was flown out to Microsoft, where a rueful executive told us, "I'm in charge of the product that Bill Gates said would never happen." It was the launch of Microsoft's first web browser, Internet Explorer. Gates, the richest and most powerful chief executive in the world – and a highly technologically literate one at that – had been an "internet denier" in terms of its transformative nature.

It's a tall order: Over the next few decades, the world will need to wean itself from dependence on fossil fuels and drastically reduce greenhouse gases. Current technology will take us only so far; major breakthroughs are required.

What might those breakthroughs be? Here's a look at five technologies that, if successful, could radically change the world energy picture.

The next cure for a major disease is as likely to be discovered on a computer as on a laboratory bench—and scientists are enlisting ordinary citizens to volunteer to help crunch the data.

Advances in computer science have enabled medical researchers to test how proteins fold, genes interact and pandemics spread in complex digital simulations of natural environments. As these simulations become more intensive and widely used, however, computers at academic institutions and other research facilities can't keep up with the demand for medical processing power.

ANYONE OLD ENOUGH to remember the birth of the first commercially available and affordable home computers will have fond memories of gathering around the living room TV set for a spot of computery fun.

Phoenix is showing off a few interesting things at IDF, but the real standout is their new Instant Boot BIOS, a highly optimized UEFI implementation that can start loading an OS in just under a second.

Combined with Windows 7's optimized startup procedure, that means you're looking at incredibly short boot times -- we saw a retrofitted Dell Adamo hit the Windows desktop in 20 seconds, while a Lenovo T400s with a fast SSD got there in under 10. It's pretty slick stuff, and it should be out soon.

Three-dimensional images are expected jump out of movie theaters and into living rooms by next year. Sony and Panasonic say they will release home 3-D television systems in 2010; Mitsubishi and JVC are reported to be working on similar products.

"TV finally becomes real" in three dimensions, said Robert Perry, an executive vice president at Panasonic. "You're in it. It's the next frontier."

In 2002, Volkswagen designed a concept car that could go 100 kilometers on 1 liter of fuel, equivalent to about 235 mpg. This year, Volkswagen shows off the second generation of the 1 liter concept, the L1, with the intention of production by 2013. Using an extremely light and aerodynamic body and a diesel-electric parallel hybrid power train, the new L1 falls short of its fuel efficiency goal, requiring 1.38 liters of diesel to cover 100 kilometers, or 170 mpg. Still, not bad.

New breakthrough may one day make hydrogen fuel cells more viable for transportation

Fuel cells are being researched heavily for use as a method of powering vehicles. Hydrogen is an ideal fuel for transportation because burning it produces no harmful byproducts that are released into the atmosphere.