Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s a flash drive that holds 256GB worth of data. That’s a ton – a ton – of data you can store on a device the size of a Tootsie Roll®.

The Story: Kingston Digital, Inc. has unveiled the DataTraveler® 310, the first 256GB USB Flash drive available in the United States. This isn’t the first 256GB USB flash drive ever, in fact, it’s not even the first 256GB drive from Kingston, but it is the first one available here.

“We saw an opportunity to push the capacity …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s a revolutionary lighting technology that is more energy efficient than the common incandescent light bulb and does not contain mercury, making it environmentally safer than the compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb.

The Story: At its core, this breakthrough technology possesses an advanced nanofiber structure that provides exceptional lighting management.
RTI International’s lighting technology – which was funded in part by the Department of Energy’s Solid-State Lighting program – centers around advancements in the nanoscale properties of materials to create high-performance, nanofiber-based reflectors and photoluminescent nanofibers (PLN). When …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s a new website that enables you to identify every cell or landline caller who doesn’t want to be identified. Especially those annoying anonymous callers.

The Story: Finding out who keeps calling is a real hassle unless there is a way to stop them, and now there is. Thanks to recent developments in internet technology performing a reverse phone lookup to find out who owns a telephone number is finally something an annoyed victim of prank calls can take advantage of. People with cluttered address books containing mysterious phone …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s a small-device battery charger that generates power simply by pulling on a cord. The next thing you know, you’re environmentally recharging your device comparable to an AC outlet.

The Story: You’ve heard of “Plug-and-Play.” This is what you do when that device needs energy before you plug-and-play. It’s called “Pull, Charge and Play.” Las Vegas-based manufacturer Easy Energy and Williamsburg, VA distributor and marketing firm Fame LLC have unveiled the YoGen Handheld charger for portable electronics.
A 100 percent green, fully-sustainable product that can create sufficient levels of charge to …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s a technology developed at Oxford University that could offer a replacement to checks, allowing people a secure way to pay in practically any situation.

The Story: The announcement on December 16th by the board of the UK Payments Council has heightened the need for secure replacement payment systems that checks are to be phased out by 2018.
New security technology developed at Oxford University by Professor Bill Roscoe and his team that allows people to make payments via mobile phones, offers a solution. The technology is designed to work in almost all …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s an accessory for your bike that enables you to turn braking into electric power to motor your bike when you need an extra burst of speed, or you just feel like letting the motor do the work for you.

The Story: MIT researchers have debuted the Copenhagen Wheel at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen — a revolutionary new bicycle wheel that not only boosts power, but can keep track of friends, fitness, smog and traffic. Though it looks like an ordinary bicycle wheel with an oversized …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It allows you to use your iPhone for yet another crazy amazing thing: speaking your piece and watching those words quickly get converted into text.

The Story: Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) announced the availability of its Dragon Dictation App in Apple’s famous App Store. Now, iPhone users can speak their emails and/or text messages instead of typing them, dramatically extending the way users stay connected to friends and family. Dragon Dictation also works with the iPhone clipboard, allowing users to speak naturally and easily paste it into their …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s the first 1080p peer-to-peer full high-definition online video distribution platform.

The Story: We’re at the point in the evolution of technology where this nut was surely going to get cracked. But the problem in allowing full HD content being shared from peer-to-peer was with compression technology. Dyyno cracked the code.
Now, the Dyyno platform lets webcasters with any size organization manage the entire lifecycle of their content — whether video or any other rich media — from content capture through eventual monetization, at an affordable price.
Dyyno’s rich media and management …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s a battery-operated camera that’s essentially hand-held X-Ray vision. It uses microwave imaging to enable the user to “see” through solid objects.

The Story: Walleye™ Technologies, creator of the Walleye Imaging System that is capable of “seeing” into and through solid objects uses invisible wavelengths, called millimeter waves, to see into and through objects and generate high-quality digital images. This breakthrough technology enables the development of imaging systems that are far smaller and lighter than today’s large stationary machines, without sacrificing image quality.
“Walleye’s imaging technology is revolutionary in …

Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s an artificial robotic hand with built-in sensors that can actually enable the user to “feel” objects and sensations.

The Story: Motorized prosthetic hands are not brand new, though they’re still breakthrough. However, the next step in this evolution is focused on creating a hand that gives the user unprecedented sensory feedback, according to researchers of the SmartHand Project, a collaboration between researchers from across Europe.
Fredrik Sebelius, of Lund University, in Sweden, says the SmartHand actually addresses this notion of the “phantom hand.” Sebelius says: ”If you push the skin on …