Americans can't live without high-speed Internet, or e-mail

Adults agree that the expansion of high-speed Internet has had the greatest technological impact on society over the past decade. A Zogby International interactive survey polled 1,950 adults from December 8 to December 10, 2010 to ask them what technology they found to have made the biggest difference in their lives.
High-speed Internet came in first place at 24 percent, followed close behind by Facebook at 22 percent, and Google settled for third place with 10 percent. Men and those over 55 said high-speed Internet has had the greatest impact on society while women and adults under the age of 55 found Facebook had the most impact. Of the technologies most said they cannot live without, high-speed Internet came in first at 28 percent, e-mail was second at 18 percent, while Facebook only grabbed 3 percent among all adults. 15 percent of young adults (aged 18-24), however, said they cannot live without Facebook.
24 percent of Americans believe the greatest technological advancement for the next year will be in home entertainment while only 16 percent believe it will be in general computing. In the next decade (by the year 2020), the following will take place:

• 43 percent of Americans believe we will see regular use of stem cells and cloning techniques to create human organs for transplant
• 40 percent of Americans believe we will see computer chips implanted in people to monitor their health
• 40 percent of Americans believe we will see robots capable of performing manual labor jobs
• 36 percent of Americans believe we will see virtual reality incorporated into home entertainment

Zogby International said slight weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion, gender, and education to more accurately reflect the overall US population. The data was given a margin of error of +/- 2.3 percentage points.

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Elliptic Labs brings Minority Report interface to the iPad

If you liked the Minority Report interface demonstrated on Microsoft's Kinect motion controller, you'll like this one for Apple's iPad. Norwegian company Elliptic Labs is going to demo its touchless user interface for iPads at CES 2011. For now, we'll have to make do with the video embedded below.
"The idea is that you use touchless gestures to operate primary functions of a docked tablet in situations like when you have wet or greasy hands in the kitchen," Elliptic Labs CEO Stian Aldrin told Mobile Magazine. "In general tablets are made for being handheld. When it is docked you are often walking or standing further away, and then using a finger on the screen involves a change of modality. Rather than bending down, leaning forward or picking it up you can use larger movements a little bit further away to do things like volume up or next song without changing modality."
The technology emits an ultrasound field around the device that detects your hand movements and takes them into account. The iPad has a small screen, so standing back and using it without touching it seems a little pointless. Aldrin does, however, mention one use case that makes soem sense: when you're cooking and you're using the iPad to look at a recipe. Can you think of any others? 

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Skype to release video-calling for mobile devices?

Skype, the company known for providing voice and video calling services over the Internet, might be getting ready to release video calling for mobile devices that have a front-facing camera. Skype has been hinting for a while now that it will be making video-related announcements at CES 2011 and that it's participating in a panel called "Video Calling Gets Ready for Primetime." In other words, the details will become official next month.
Skype recently posted a help document on its website detailing how to make video calls using Skype for iPhone, according to Engadget. Unfortunately, there did not appear to be a corresponding document for Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Phone, webOS, or other mobile operating systems, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Skype is limiting the launch to the iPhone. Remember, most tablets that are currently available or that are launching early next year, also have front-facing cameras.
Skype already has video conferencing built into its PC and Mac applications that users can access via their webcams. Bringing video calling to Skype's mobile app, one that is available on multiple platforms, would be revolutionary. Skype already has a huge user base and it could grow that number very quickly if this leak is right on the money.

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