7 Pieces of Everyday Technology That Need to Change This Year
[content field=”callout1″ format=”true” class=”calloutwide”]What’s one everyday technology you use all the time that you wish a startup would totally rethink in 2015? Members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) share their thoughts.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. The Printer
As all other areas of consumer technology have raced ahead, one piece of equipment seems forever frozen in the year 1995. Printers are every bit as unreliable, expensive and inefficient as they were 20 years ago. The company that reinvents the printer and turns it into the powerhouse product it’s capable of being could become the next Apple.
– Brian Honigman, BrianHonigman.com
2. Alarm Clocks
I wake up to the same sounding alarm clock with either music or an obnoxious beeping. I would like someone to combine multiple creative avenues to wake me up pleasantly. Currently the market seems fragmented between sound, movement, light, etc.
3. Batteries
t’s time we create a better battery that runs longer, is easier to charge and is really small. It should use something that is readily available — such as body heat — to charge it.
4. Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi originated as a low bandwidth, short range, radio-based solution to provide network/Internet access. However, it has morphed into aneveryday technology that competes against itself for range. It needs to be disrupted.
– Lane Campbell, Syntress SCDT
5. Email
We spend so much time on email everyday and it’s still a terrible experience. Gmail’s folders — primary, updates, social and promotions — are helpful, and a few of the features in Google’s new inbox app are useful, but email still has a long way to go. In five years, email should be very different than it is today.
6. Payments
This is already starting to happen, but I think payments are going to be huge in 2015. Snapcash is incredibly interesting and simple, but it’s just the start. Companies that can truly figure out mobile payment systems are going to explode.
– Blake Miller, Think Big Partners
7. Integrated Email
We spend too much time digging through email and using it as a collaboration tool. Email is disassociated from the other content, commitments and communications in most projects. We need a new, integrated way to collaborate that combines contacts, calendars, content, commitments and communications into one workspace while integrating the stand-alone productivity tools that we already use.