Touch and tell

Divyanshu Dutta Roy

There’s been a breakthrough. It’s been just one month into the new year and we already know what this year’s annoying, pretentious and hipster Silicon Valley phrase of the year is. Yes, move over ‘Cloud computing’ because the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) is here, promising web-savvy toasters and teapots that make the same tea and the same bread, but also help you tweet about it.

Besides superfluous nomenclature, this year is also being hailed (once again) as the year of 4K — the Ultra-High Definition video standard with four times the resolution of HD. What with the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 being offered in 4K, some might even take the dive and buy one of those overpriced set top boxes, but make no mistake mainstream 4K is still far off.

Look, it’s fantastic that they are trying to hook my microwave, fridge and washing machine to the internet. I don’t know why or what purpose that will serve but I like it. As do I like being able to count the Virat Kohli’s nose hairs. But what I’d really like even more is to see the $99 Kindle Paperwhite (Not Rs 10,999) and 73 colour options on Philips On-the-ear headphones.

And so in that spirit here are some gadgets that you buy today or order online that are out there and might be on your mind and on the shelves. Dig in!