Get ready for these game-changing technologies

Promises, promises. When a new mobile phone appears on the market or a new wireless standard emerges, the pundits and prognosticators chime in about all the game-changing possibilities.

WiMax will change the world! Apple’s iPhone is the second coming of portable gadgets!

Yet, in the daily grind of computing, we just need to get our jobs done. We’ll believe the promise of a new technology if it really does solve a nagging problem.

Consider this the companion piece to my earlier article, “10 broken technology ideas — and how to fix them”: Six promising technologies and how they can actually deliver on the promise.

1. Light-as-air laptops

I mentioned in the broken-technology writeup how ultramobile PCs and mobile internet devices aren’t nearly as useful as a good smartphone.

Stepping up a bit in size to notebook PCs, we’ve come a long way from models like the massive Toshiba Protege from a few years ago — the one with a 17-in. display. (It was touted as a “desktop replacement,” which even sounds heavy.)

And even the popular Dell Latitude models from not so long ago were heavy enough — at about five or six pounds — that they weren’t exceptionally mobile.

But smaller, more recent offerings such as the ultraportable Asus EEE aren’t getting it right either. Sure, it’s light, but it’s not packed with many of the features we’ve come to expect on our portable computers.

But the new MacBook Air and the ThinkPad X300 really are game-changing, even though many reviews of the MacBook Air haven’t been all that positive.

A 3-pound laptop with a big screen is really the ultimate goal, and both Apple and Lenovo achieved it. (I also like the Sony Vaio SZ, even though it weighs 4 lb. and the “profile” measures 1 in.) So, what’s so promising? As laptops get lighter, you’ll be more likely to grab one and go — at home, at work, and anywhere.

Soon, more light-as-a-feather laptops packed with features will finally get it completely right, which means they won’t stay on the desktop for very long — and the desktop PC might not exist for long, either.

2. Mobile broadband in laptops

I had an interesting conversation with a Verizon spokesperson about three years ago. The marketing rep told me that I had it wrong: Mobile broadband was not intended as a Wi-Fi competitor. Oh no, it’s merely another option for the mobile user.

Yet, as WWAN (wireless wide-area network) capability is more widely available as a standard on notebooks, the connection speed approaches or exceeds 2Mbps, and the data signal becomes ubiquitous even in rural areas, WWAN will encroach into and possibly take over the 802.11 market. That’s a good thing, especially if you have tried to connect to a hot spot in a crowded airport, from a parking lot in a shopping mall, or in a small town where they think a hot spot is a popular hangout.

WWAN is also gaining because WiMax is just not happening as fast as everyone thought it would. Case in point: The Lenovo X300 I mentioned earlier comes with Wi-Fi (of course) and WWAN (thankfully) but also has the chip set for WiMax, even though there is no actual service available. One is a lessening reality, one is a promise, and one is a letdown.

3. Wireless USB

In-Stat estimates that 21 million wireless USB (also known as ultrawideband) devices will ship this year. Now that’s promising! The reason: We’re all getting strangled by too many USB wires — such as for digital cameras, printers, fax machines, scanners, and external drives. I’m looking at eight cables at my desk right now.

There are just too many USB devices out there. There are USB toy rocket launchers, coffee-cup warmers, and even one for doing pottery. WUSB completely eliminates this entanglement. The only catch is that most recent products from Belkin and IO Gear require that you install a driver, so it’s more complicated than just plugging in a wire.

Fortunately, as the wireless protocol becomes more common — guess what? It’s built into that Lenovo X300 I’ve mentioned for the third time now — you won’t have to install drivers.

4. PC home theaters

Here’s the biggest promise of the past 10 years, one that has failed again and again as consumers have become confused by the connections and lack of interoperability among consumer electronics gear and computers. Besides, no one has invented a keyboard and mouse you can actually use comfortably on a sofa.

But the time is coming — maybe this year, or next — when a PC finally establishes a permanent place in the living room. It will only happen when a home-theater PC starts looking like it belongs there. The round, glossy, stylish Sony Vaio VGX-TP25E/B is a step in the right direction. I like where Denon is going with the AVR-5308CI — it’s not actually a home-theater PC, but it accepts wireless media streams and looks like a receiver.

Also, the Onkyo APX-2 is a big step forward. It’s a PC aimed at audiophiles that uses Pure Audio technology to bypass Windows Vista’s poor audio handling. The APX-2 is for audio only and — alas — Japan only, but it points to a promising home-entertainment trend.

5. Robotic appliances

Today, the leading robotics company — iRobot, based near Boston and one of the best companies to come out of MIT in the past 20 years — has sold about 2.5 million robots to date. Its popular Roomba vacuum cleaner is a miracle of engineering when you consider it can clean under your bed or behind a corner hutch with ease.

Yet, 2.5 million robotic appliances equals about 1 percent of the U.S. population. But iRobot is on a rampage lately, introducing pool- and gutter-cleaning robots that work just as well as the Roomba. And, yes, robots were supposed to be doing all of our housework by now, so this promise has a long legacy of underdelivering.

The real reason robots will finally transform from cute pets (like the Pleo robot dinosaur) to useful aids has to do with a groundswell of dedicated amateurs who finally have the tools they need, such as Microsoft Robotic Studio, to make their own creations. There’s no telling what a couple of guys in a garage can come up with — just remember Apple and Hewlett-Packard.

6. GPS on a cell phone

The BlackBerry 8820 and Nokia N95 are two incredibly popular smart phones that just happen to have built-in Global Positioning System receivers. This makes them game-changing in ways that the iPhone is not, even though the iPhone trumps them for music, movies, Web, and many other functions.

GPS on a cell phone works quite well — I used the 8820 in Boston recently and never even looked at a map. GPS doesn’t drain the battery as much as Wi-Fi. The voice prompts work just as well as an in-car navigation system, and the maps look clear and bright on the screen (brighter and clearer than some dedicated GPS handhelds).

But here’s the killer feature: When GPS is built into the device you use all day anyway, you start relying on it even more. I use one to go for walks (it can measure speed and distance) and even find my way to meetings in a large building (for example, by heading northwest to a corner office). I previously wrote about some other uses for GPS.

If you have some promising ideas of your own in mind or disagree with my choices, please weigh in below in the article comments section — we’d love to hear what you think (as this blog post points out).

John Brandon is a freelance writer and book author who worked as an IT manager for 10 years.