Doomed technologies

Techies sit around picking winning technologies like drinkers pick horses, it�s just a thing. I�m B.C. with my Top 5 picks of technologies I don�t feel great about. If you do your gambling with the grocery money, don�t bet on these. #5 Blu-ray. Oh, I hear you, Blu-ray is already a good sized hit. But as it tries to equal the impact of its parent, DVD, its getting taken out at the knees by online streaming to the TV even faster than I would have guessed a year ago. I think Blu-ray falls somewhere north of Laserdisc, but around paragraph in a history of home video. #4 e-book Readers. Amazon won�t stop telling us the Kindle is their #1 bestselling, most wished, most gifted product � what they won�t tell us is how many they sell. Estimates are 1.5 � 3 million since Nov 2007, and that�s for the MOST popular e-reader by far. Apple sells that many iPads in a couple months. A tablet is a perfect reader. But we�re also not a nation of bookworms, either. For must of us, a tablet will be good enough, especially since our real love is for video and the web. This one is niche for life. #3 3D TV. I�m nervous about this one, even though the newest technology on the list. Early word from retailers is that it�s proving to be a tough sell. Blame it on the glasses and the fact that they are proprietary to your brand of TV. Also the mess of standards and most of the stuff we watch isn�t made better by 3D, giving it the stink of a carnival trick. In 2011 I need to see glasses standardization, display standardization � frame sequencing or polarization � and TONS of content that is meaningfully presented in 3D before I�m convinced. Then I�ll move off this endangered species list. #2 Wireless HDMI. This one has bubbled up a bit in in various mostly proprietary forms, but never taken root. I�m just not sure consumers care. Yes, cabling your home system theatre the first time is a pain, but then you�re done. For years. And yes that wire snaking up the wall to the TV is ugly, but so is your living room. And you�re gonna need a power cord anyway. We�re not a nation of interior designer buffs, so a technology to eliminate a snarly mess of cables may never find much love. Before we get to #1, here are 5 technologies that emerged as sure bets in 2011: Connected TV Smartphones Tablets Facebook #1 Wi-Fi in cars. Wow, seemed such a great idea a year or so ago. But now we have so many 3G smartphones, 3G tablets and even 3G notebooks & 3G mi-fi�s and usb dongles, the idea of a 3G powered wi-fi hotspot specific to your car to connect devices that increasingly have their own 3G connection just never gets our of the garage. Thanks for watching, and we�ll check in late 2011 and see how these guys fared.