The Top Five Most Innovative Tech Projects Of 2014 So Far

Source: Forbes.com
URL: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2014/06/26/budget-driverless-cars-and-glow-in-the-dark-trees-the-top-five-most-innovative-tech-projects-of-2014-so-far/

I always find it interesting to see what writers believe is going to be the "Next Big Thing".  The further back you look, the more entertaining they tend to be.  This article is from July 2014 and covers what the author believes to be the most innovative technical projects from 2014.

The first item is the SCIO Molecular scanner which is supposed to be able to scan and tell you the molecular makeup of anything from your phone.  Looks like very interesting technology and they raised over 2.7 million dollars, and are taking pre-orders.  I remember hearing about this when it was first introduced last year but haven't really heard much buzz since them.

The second is a budget driverless car which is supposed to be an add-on you can purchase that will assist with driving your car.  I have heard of other projects still in this field but not specifically about this one.  They do still have a website and it says that they have taken all the pre-orders possible so maybe they'll deliver, but there isn't a whole lot of information on their site.

The third is Glow in the Dark trees.  I'm not sure of the actual point of this but it is described as“splicing DNA from luminescent marine bacteria to the chloroplast genome of a common houseplant, so the stem and leaves emit a faint light similar to that produced by fireflies and jellyfish.”  Again they do have a website and you can pre-order them, but again, I'm still not sure what the point of them would be.

The fourth innovation is called Anki Drive which is a game where you can control small cars on a board with your phone, each car has some sort of weapon that can be used on another car.  I'm not exactly sure where the innovation is with this, but it looks cool.  This product is the first one actually available for sale now on this list, for $150.00 you can get a starter track and two cars.

The final innovation is called PocketScan and is a small hand-held scanner that is supposed to be able to scan and OCR the document or if it is a picture make it editable.  They point out that you could do the actual scanning from your phone, but not the editing and OCR'ing.  The kickstarter page for this product is only around 500k and they do not seem to be very close to production.

So I'd say none of these products have produced any big waves in the 10 months that this article was written.  This is why I like looking at these older articles, what people thought would be huge, and other products completely ignored until they hit the market.