The year in technology and innovation

4K televisions

We take a look at the technical and innovative breakthroughs of 2013.

Giant TVs are great, until they get so big that resolution suffers. Enter ultrahigh definition – or 4K – TVs, which quadruple the resolution of standard HD sets. 

Offerings from Sony, Sharp and LG have delighted buyers with photograph-quality picture, but a lack of 4K-ready content and high prices have kept many at bay.

Wrist-worn technology

“Smartwatch” was one of the major buzzwords of 2013, part of the evolving “wearable tech” craze.

 Intended as a sort of middleman between you and your smartphone, the race to produce a smartwatch has roped in heavyweights like Apple and Google, who, despite months of rabid speculation, have yet to debut their respective devices. 

Instead, the two most viable smartwatch options you can slap on your wrist right now come from Samsung and the crowdfunded Pebble.

Google Glass

The next step in the wearable-tech revolution, or an invasive piece of spywear? Not yet widely available – only 8,000 were sold last spring to contest winners – Google Glass responds to voice controls to display information before your eyes, including email, maps, and even video chats.

You're also able to snap photos and take video, which hasn't sat well with privacy advocates. Nevertheless, Google Glass represents a potential game-changer in the personal computing field.

Self-healing microchips

Remarkably complicated and fragile, traditional microchips can be rendered useless if even one of their thousand circuits shorts out. 

But researchers at the California Institute of Technology have taken the first steps toward a new kind of chip that can fix itself when confronted with such injury. If one information pathway is damaged, these “self-healing” chips can recalibrate, and find another to transmit its data.