15 Technologies You'll Need to Know in 2006

Popular Mechanics has posted a list of 15 "need to know" tech concepts for this year. Highlights include:

• Drive monitoring systems for motor vehicles that make sure you're paying attention to the road, and automatically apply the brakes if necessary.
• Body area networks (BANs) that wirelessly connect pacemakers, hearing aids and other personal devices to a base station monitored by a doctor, who could make adjustments and be alerted to malfunctions.
• NAND flash memory, which can store as much as 16GB of data.
• Nanoparticle batteries that can be fully charged within a couple of minutes, and last just as long as conventional batteries.
• Coal gasification that converts plentiful, relatively inexpensive coal into clean-burning natural gas.

Source: Tomorrow's Trends