The economy may be tanking, but innovation is alive and well.
When it came to products, incremental improvements were the name of the game this year. Phones got faster (iPhone 3G anyone?), notebooks turned into netbooks and pocket cameras went from recording standard-definition video to HD.
But the world’s corporate and academic R&D labs were busy laying the foundations of some amazing future technologies in 2008. They produced concepts such as silicon chips you can swallow for personalized medicine from the inside out and a fourth fundamental element in electronic circuitry. And engineers cranked out a few less groundbreaking — but no less important — inventions, like a space-age swimsuit to help Michael Phelps slice through the water faster than a river otter on a jet ski.
Here’s our countdown of what rocked our world in 2008 — and what will change yours in 2009 and beyond.
10. Flexible Displays
Flexible displays are likely to be a reality by 2010 or 2011.
Courtesy Phillip Spears
A sliver of the future can soon be tucked into your back pocket. For years, researchers have worked on thin, paperlike displays that can be folded, rolled or sewn into the sleeve of your hoodie. Flexible displays could change the way we interact with the info-universe, creating new kinds of cellphones, portable computers, e-newspapers and electronic books.
This year, the research moved from the realm of science fiction to plausible reality. With help from the U.S. Army, Arizona State University’s Flexible Display Center has created a prototype for soldiers, and hopes to have the devices in field trials in the next three years. Startups like Plastic Logic and E-Ink have been developing similar technologies.
Meanwhile, Hewlett Packard announced a manufacturing breakthrough that allows the thin-film transistor arrays to be fabricated on flexible plastic materials, enabling manufacturers to "print" displays on big, newsprintlike rolls. Samsung showed off a mobile phone prototype with a flexible display that folds like a book.
Outlook: A Minority Report-style digital newspaper that you can roll up in your pocket isn’t happening before 2010 at the earliest. But to quote science fiction novelist William Gibson: "The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet."
9. Edible Chips
Grandma’s pillbox with the days of the week neatly marked is set to go high tech. Tiny edible chips will replace the organizer, tracking when patients take their pills (or don’t) and monitoring the effects of the drugs they’re taking. Proteus, a Redwood City, California, company, has created tiny chips out of silicon grains that, once swallowed, activate in the stomach. The chips send a signal to an external patch that monitors vital parameters such as heart rate, temperature, state of wakefulness or body angle.
The data is then sent to an online repository or a cellphone for the physician and the patient to track. Proteus says its chips can keep score of how patients are responding to the medication. That may be just the beginning, as the chips could improve drug delivery and even insert other kinds of health monitors inside the body. Now doctors may have a better answer to a common patient complaint — they will know exactly how it feels.
Outlook: If proven in clinical trials, edible chips could let physicians look into a patient’s system in a way that could change how medicine is prescribed and how we take the drugs.
8. Speedo LZR
Michael Phelps. 2008 Olympics. Enough said. Phelps and others were able to log faster times because of Speedo’s LZR swimsuit. It blends new materials and a dose of NASA rocket science to boost the speeds of elite swimmers — legally.
Viscous drag on a swimmer can be as much as 25 percent of the total retarding force. But Speedo’s suit, with its ultrasonically bonded seams instead of stitches, low-drag panels and a mix of polyurethane layers, can cut resistance and help swimmers move through the water faster. It also has a rigid, girdle-style structure that helps position the swimmer’s body in an optimal position. Did it have anything to do with Michael Phelps’ amazing eight Olympic gold medals? Probably not, as nearly every swimmer at the Games was wearing a Speedo suit.
Outlook: We’re hoping at least some of the technologies in the LZR will trickle down to the consumer level so we can slice through the water at the Y.
By Priya Ganapati 
12.26.08 – From www.wired.com
So you have been wondering where all your precious time have been frittering away to, what with your daily fights in the depths of Stormscale, or battling raging murlocs. 
Mariel Wong 