5 “zombie” technologies that rose from the dead

October 31, 2014 · 1 minute read · via Punchkick

The Freaky Five: the Friday Five title card with Friday crossed out for Freaky in a horror-movie scrawl

Bluetooth marketing

An iPhone 5 and a white Estimote beacon beside colourful beacons and the immediate, near and far rings of iBeacon ranging — Image: iJunkie

In the early days of mobile marketing, leveraging smartphones’ built-in Bluetooth antennae to broadcast marketing messages was all the rage. Today, new proximity-based Bluetooth technologies like iBeacon have picked up the torch from Bluetooth marketing, offering retailers an outlet to talk directly to consumers’ smartphones.

Bluetooth earpieces

Motorola’s 2014 lineup in tiles: Moto 360 on a wrist, Moto G, Moto X with a leather back, and the Moto Hint earpiece — Image: Motorola

Although Bluetooth earpieces from previous years earned a sour reputation, the popularity of ear-mounted audio input in the 2013 film Her brought the conversation around earpieces back to the forefront of people’s minds. Motorola released the Moto Hint, a minute Bluetooth earpiece that leverages Android’s built-in voice control features.

Email

Inbox by Gmail bundling purchases into one card, with tracking for each package — Image: Google

Email has earned a bad rap in recent years, as instant messaging has supplanted its usefulness for many team environments. But new ways to think about email from Dropbox’s Mailbox app and Gmail’s new Inbox have brought the conversation around email back to life, as companies reconsider how to manage and approach the age-old ubiquitous messaging platform.

“Smart” assistants

An iPhone 6 Plus beside a Nokia Lumia 830 running Cortana, whose screen reads “Hello, Siri”, from a Microsoft ad comparing the assistants — Image: Microsoft

In the months before Windows 95, Microsoft invested in a new user-interface approach called Microsoft Bob. Bob was intended to humanize computation with friendly speech bubbles and an application manager designed after a user’s living room. Bob was short-lived, and so was Microsoft Office’s spiritual successor Clippy, but new virtual assistants like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana have brought “friendly” and “human” interfaces into the new millennium.

Hoverboards

Marty McFly rides his pink hoverboard across a pond in the Hill Valley of 2015 — *Back to the Future Part II* (1989). Image: Universal Pictures

Marty McFly hovered into our hearts in Back to the Future Part II’s rendition of the year 2015, but the public’s interest in the feasibility of hovering skateboards has waned in the decades since. But a new company called Hendo has built a working hoverboard based on technologies intended to save buildings from natural disasters. Now, DeLorean aficionados need only pony up $10,000 to ride around like their time-hopping hero.