In its 2012 1st quarter sales figures, Apple sold 37.04 million iPhone’s across the planet accounting for 53% of all of its revenue.

More people across the planet now take home new iPhone’s every day (402,000 units per day), than take home human babies (300,000 human births per day).

The figure needs to be seasonally adjusted as it includes Christmas sales, but nevertheless the numbers are huge and the implications for consumer preferences for their tech and connectivity needs even bigger.

In this weeks FutureTech segment Jason Jordan of Perth’s 6PR and I chat about what this means; what technological road we’re going down and where to from here for mobile technology.

Listen now:

and listen live each week at around 5:05 p.m. (AWST).

With Christmas and New Year travels just a few weeks away, radio 6PR’s Jason Jordan and I chatted our way through some of the best road warrior technologies, toys, apps and advice.

Every trip should start with making sure your mobile roaming is switched off and don’t be tempted to turn it on, or you’ll spend more on calls and data whilst you’re away than you will on the whole trip.

If you’re looking for mobile and internet juice on the road try an international SIM card like travelSIM or OneSim Cards which you can use in over 100 countries, at not quite local rates, but still cheap enough. If who’re in one place for a while consider buying a local SIM card when you land, or preorder one on line before you leave.

If you can find some cheap or free WIFI (and you usually can in hotel lobby’s and chain fast food restaurants) then consider some free talk,text and video calling apps like Skype, What’s App, Viber, RebTel, HeyTell, Messenger, all great for keeping in touch on a budget of $0.

To help you keep track of your travel itineraries with travel apps like trip tracker, trip advisor, and on the ground figure out where to go and what to see by downloading a travel guides from DK eyewitness, Lonely Planet, Go Explore or one of the many others – some are free, some are paid, some require local WiFi to work, some are preloaded and can be used without WiFi.

Need a local language translator, not a problem try an on-line app like iTranslate, trip cards or Google translate, which will also attempt to translate signs for you.

And make sure you always travel with a virtual copy of all your important documents by using a free account on Dropbox, it’s also a great way to send home your photos whilst you’re still on the road.

These are just some of the things we talked through, but for the full list and explanations listen to our chat now:

or each Sunday at 5.05 (WST)

Need a 20 piece dinner set in a hurry?

No problem!

Turn on your 3D printer at home, choose from a catalogue of available styles, personalize the colour and pattern and press start and within the hour you’re ready to set the table and start eating.

or how about printing your own body parts with the latest kid on the 3D printing block:

and if all this makes you hungry why not print up a snack on your Cornucopia Digital Gastronomy printer:

These coming soon to a hospital, kitchen, school, factory, office and home printers were the topic for this weeks chat between 6PR’s radio Perth’s Jason Jordan and myself, .

Listen now:

and listen each week at 5.05 p.m. (WST).

It’s amazing, but true that 64% of all the world’s mobile phone users are found in developing nations and of those 80% are in rural areas, this provides a ready technology platform on which innovation and social equity can be built.

In this weeks segment, Adalaine Ng of radio ABC Australia and I take a meander through the use of how mobile phones are closing the gap between the technological have and have-nots.

Listen now:

Whilst this is going on the United States this week trialled its newest hypersonic weapon that travels at five (5) times the speed of sound and makes it possible to launch a missile from anywhere on our planet and for it to arrive anywhere else on the planet within one (1 hour). This technology, used for military purposes leaves me cold, but used for commercial travel allowing us to travel from Melbourne Australia to London England in one (1) hour excites me.

This is where I always quote the great sage Maxwell Smart (Control’s Agent 86) when he said if only he had used his genius for niceness and not evilness.

These stories and the invention of the worlds lightest material being unveiled, made of tiny hollow metallic tubes arranged into a micro-lattice, that weighs in at 100 times lighter than Styrofoam, made up this weeks discussion between Perth 6PR’s Jason Jordan and myself as we look at what’s happening now, that may shape tomorrow.

Listen now:

or listen live each Sunday at 5.10 p.m. (WST).

In line with the rest of the planet and on the back of the internet, retail is going through its awkward teenager like years full of pimples, self doubt and uncertainty about tomorrow and what may be ahead.

Like a typical prepubescent the 10 years prior to the economic downturn many retailers were full of self importance, saw themselves as invincible and the centre of attention.

Come the economic downturn, consumers had less to spend and became very determined to spend it wisely.

The days of spending excess are in hiatus. Retailers have to work hard now to prove their worthiness to us and many couldn’t and can’t.

Mixed into this backdrop is the evolution of online shopping; the growing number of online shopping business models, sites and opportunities and hey presto we have a new retail environment growing out of the virtual ground.

These two factors, what’s in it for the consumer and what retail might evolve into are the topic for this weeks discussion between ABC Radio Australia’s Adelaine Ng and myself as we explore the evolution and revolution of retail.

Listen now:

The world of philanthropy and charity is unfortunately a thriving business. There is still great inequality in the world that needs to be remedied. There are still disasters, famines, floods and just sheer injustices that leads many on our planet to not have enough resources to get through their day nor feel certain about tomorrow.

Like all other businesses, charities are now using online as an additional tool to get their message out and get donations and resources in.

This week 6PR Perth’s Jason Jordan and I take a look at online philanthropy, new models of giving that encourage us to group shop online with profits going to the charity; play games which earn $$ for charities; become connected directly with the plight, cause and remedies and also take a look at a new group of social entrepreneurs – a tertiary qualified practitioner whose sole focus is on building not for profit businesses.

Have a listen now:

and listen each week at 4:40 p.m. (WST)

Jason Jordan of Perth radio’s 6PR and I chatted this week about turning your smartphones camera into a set of binoculars and pairing it with an app that let’s you find physical locations and people and then be guided on screen right to them.

These kinds of augmented reality apps together with the ability for our mobile technology to know exactly where we are on the planet (aka Geo-Aware) are also showing up in our cars as heads up displays, are being used by surgeons to guide them skillfully through the human body and by the armed forces to walk them confidently through hostile foreign terrains.

Listen to this week’s segment now to see how augmented and virtual reality apps using geoaware smartness are all a part of your mobile future.

and listen live each week at 4.40 p.m. (WST)

The flying car also got a mention, this is the perennial favourite, but the reality is far more boring; it’s been around for decades but authorities won’t allow it into the airspace.

We also had a great chat about the future of the brain and the work being done to discover how it works and how we may be able to “fix” it when it’s broken. (audio not available)

The resounding comment back then was it’s a fad; it will never catch on; it’s too expensive and really nothing you have to say and nothing I have to ask you is so important that it can’t wait till you get to a land line.

Fast forward to today and we have an Australian population of 22.3 million and 24 million connected handsets.

We already know that today’s mobile phone is far more powerful than the computer that launched us to the moon in the 60′s, but the innovation, purpose and new frontiers are all still ahead of us.

Jason Jordan of Perth’s 6PR and I in our weekly segment had a look over the near horizon of mobiles and chatted about NFC and QR code technologies.

NFC – Near Field Communication – has been on the cards for a while, but is now just about to hit. It is the ability for our mobile devices to set up gateways between ourselves and others and share information and payments, the best way to comes to terms with it, is it to take a quick look at this video.

NFC will be hard wired into new mobile phones within the next 6 months and with some certainty will be a feature of the next iPhone released.

Banks and credit card providers are also pushing hard on bringing this to reality as everyone has a financial stake and incentive in shifting forever the paradigm of technology expense and ownership onto the consumer.

And consumers, once they get used to it, will find it a boon as they use one device for their keys, wallets and communication – the Swiss army knife equivalent of managing most of our day to day affairs in one little handy carry in your pocket device.

QR codes are the other short term new mobile phone toy. It looks like a bar codes on steroids. To activate it download a free QR code reader from your app store (I recommend I-nigma).

This app turns your smartphone’s camera into a QR code reader and allows you to take a picture of the code and for the smartphone to automatically call up the web address and show you its contents – think of it as the mobile phone equivalent of getting a URL in an email, when you click on it it automatically takes you to whatver the sender wanted you to see.

For a really interesting example take a look at how Tesco in South Korea uses it to sell groceries to travellers waiting to catch their trains:

For more on this topic, listen in to this weeks segment:

and listen live each Sunday at 4.40 p.m. (WST)