Frost & Sullivan's hi-tech top 10

Frost & Sullivan has compiled a short list of top 10 emerging technology platforms well poised to profoundly impact manifold sectors across the globe while offering potential high ROI for investors, states Reuters.

The winners of Frost & Sullivan's global assessment were selected based on extensive research and selective methodology. The winning technologies are: nanomaterials, flexible electronics, advanced batteries and energy storage, smart materials, green IT, CIGS solar, 3D integration, autonomous systems, white biotech and lasers.

"Thanks to substantial advances in nanotech-enabled products, the markets for nanomaterials including nanotubes and nanocomposites will flourish in the coming decade," states Ankit Shukla, industry manager for Frost & Sullivan Technical Insights Group.

CNET Asia has compiled some of the latest technology trends that promise to affect people's lives, one of which is a billion-year, ultra-dense memory chip.

UC Berkeley researchers developed a nanoscale electromechanical memory device that can pack a trillion bits of data into one square inch of medium and retain that data for a billion years.

It writes/reads data based on the position of an iron nanoparticle in a carbon nanotube.

In the next decade, two familiar online phenomena could converge in an emerging technological arena to strike a fatal blow to American civil society, writes The Atlantic.

The emerging technology, called 'augmented reality,' (AR) enables users to see location-specific data superimposed over their surroundings. Long a staple of science fiction, it's trickling into the real world through the iPhone and similar ultra-smart mobile phones.

With AR applications such as Layar, the smartphone displays what its camera sees, with information about nearby buildings and shops, travel directions, even notes and 'tags' left by other users in that location.