Near Field Communication (NFC)

This technology allows mobile devices to exchange data between itself and other devices. This will evolve, in my opinion, to our smart-phones (or brand new super-phones, to be mentioned in another post) to act as our wallets. We could use this technology to pay at restaurants, trains, online goods and even replace our travel cards. This idea could also evolve to become a ticket system, where you buy a plane or theatre ticket and use our mobiles to check in or gain access.

This technology requires a special chip inside a device. Most new Android phones and a new iPhone will have this functionality built into them. I think this is the way forward, especially with the junk nowadays in our pockets, and will eventually be accepted as payment everywhere. Barclays Bank and Visa are already there, so get with it!

How game orientated has the world become?

To answer this question, very. We are now approaching CES, where all the new gadget trends for 2011 will be shown. 3D gaming, tablet computers and many other things. There will be many more devices for playing games on, such as Nintendo's 3DS, and many more games to go with them. However, there is one game, with such a simple concept, that was only designed for iOS, which hit it BIG. I am obviously talking about Angry Birds.

It has now managed to get itself onto the PS3 and PSP gaming devices, with all 63 levels; however, rarely do games like Angry Birds make it all the way to the merchandising stage. On one of my recent visits to the Apple Store, I noticed these:

Not only that, Angry Birds have also got stuffed animals and kitchen utensils!