With a new year upon us, now seems like a fine time to explore what the world's white-blazered boffins have in store for us in the coming months.

Leave a light on
Prosaically named organic light-emitting diode technology, or OLED for short, is poised to brighten up the lives of many a mobile gadget user.

In brief, OLED is destined to depose traditional colour LCDs in the arena of portable electronics; screens based on this technology can provide higher resolutions while consuming less power.

The techniques and principles behind OLED have been understood for many years but it's only recently, with intense development efforts by the likes of Kodak and Sanyo, that commercially viable results have been realised.

In contrast to typical LCD-based TFT monitors - and not dissimilar to the hind quarters of a firefly - the organic materials that make up OLED screens are self-luminous, meaning no backlight is needed to illuminate displayed information.

The upshot of this is an ability to manufacture much thinner displays, in turn leading to more compact portable gadgets and gizmos.

Best of all, the lack of backlighting is no detriment to clarity; OLED displays perform as well as their LCD counterparts in terms of brightness and offer wider viewing angles and better resolutions at the same screen size.

While the technology still has some way to go in terms of market penetration, a few OLED-exhibiting offerings are already available. Kodak's EasyShare LS633 digital camera, for instance, benefits from a 2.2in OLED screen with an exceptionally-wide viewing angle of 165°.

Please speak IP
There's something radically different about the new VoIP-based system from US company Vocera.

Rather than requiring callers to remember and dial a telephone number or office extension, wearers of a Vocera Badge - a thumb-sized, clip-on device that incorporates a microphone and speaker - can simply say out loud the name of the colleague they wish to speak to. Within moments, the Vocera software pinpoints the fellow Badge-wearer's location within the building and opens hands-free communication between the two.

The Vocera system is typical of where modern VoIP systems are headed - exploiting existing wireless network technology in order to route calls, free of charge, to wherever someone might roam.

Rise of the Machinima
Bored of all that Hollywood has to offer? Then create and direct your own special effects-laden blockbusters-to-be using nothing more complicated than a computer game.

This is the promise made by proponents of an innovative method of movie-making, dubbed Machinima ('machine' and 'cinema', which gives you a good idea of the preferred pronunciation).

Machinima-makers exploit the complex computer code that drives modern video games, using it instead to generate virtual film sets that can in turn be used to stage computer-generated movie productions. Think a low-budget Toy Story and you won't be far wrong.

One of the Machinima movement's leading lights, Hugh Hancock of Edinburgh-based Strange Company, told us more.

"Few of us can afford to build a film set that resembles Mars but, with Machinima, anyone can do just that - and the only cost is your time and effort ... All you need to get started is the Machinima Production Kit, though you should prepare to scale a steep learning curve."

So, slip on your climbing shoes and scramble up to the heady heights of Machinima, where you can obtain the Machinima Production Kit (MPK) free of charge. If your modem melts at the mention of a 96MB download, you can order the MPK on CD for about £3.

The 64-bit question
In the unending war to achieve warp-speed processing power, the next salvo is bits. Lots of bits.

Existing processors designed for desktop computers, like Intel's Pentium 4 and AMD's Athlon, rely on 32-bit data 'paths' in order to conduct their number-crunching wizardry. In simple terms, this means sums that need calculating are served up to the processor as a series of binary-digit chunks consisting of 32 ones and zeroes at a time.

However, this is proving something of a bottleneck, since many external devices are capable of supplying much larger quantities of data at any one time. In response, the chip manufacturers have developed processors that are able to accept 64-bit chunks of binary information.

The upshot is far more efficient calculations that hopefully result in faster everyday operations for computer uses. In addition, 64-bit processors are able to make use of much more memory than the 4GB that 32-bit models can deal with. How much more memory, exactly? Well, about four billion times more.

The dampener comes in the shape of existing desktop software, which continues to serve up the data in 32-bit chunks and has no truck with massive memory complements.

Think digital ink
Electronic ink - or e-ink, to use the inevitable term - began life as a novel experiment but matured rapidly, attracting the attention of multinational manufacturers.

Sheets of e-ink paper, which in their nude state have the look and feel of laminated paper, contain a matrix of millions of microscopic capsules. In each capsule there are an even number of particles coloured black or white, with the different colours carrying either negative or positive charge.

By applying the appropriate charge, particles of either colour can be made to float to the surface side. All this happens in moments and, viewed without the aid of a microscope, e-ink sheets display clearly readable text or graphics that can change in the blink of an eye.

To some the effect is ghostly, but not to display specialist Philips, which predicts that the technology's effect will be eye-catching to consumers. Philips has teamed up with e-ink's creator, Massachusetts-based E-ink, in an effort to produce the first commercial products based on the technology.

By the end of 2004, Philips claims, it will be manufacturing e-ink-based displays offering brightness levels six times better than that of LCD screens, with much higher contrast ratios, allowing text to be read in dim conditions or direct sunlight.

Pep talk
Development scientists have been beavering for years to create lightweight fuel cells capable of extracting hydrogen from methanol in order to make electricity that in turn powers portable equipment such as laptops and mobile phones. It looks like they have at last succeeded.

Over the next year, expect to hear an awful lot about direct-methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). These power-generating devices, which promise up to three times the working life of traditional batteries, feed off easily replenished methanol, a big convenience improvement over traditional rechargeable batteries which demand regular intimacy with a mains-electricity socket.

Toshiba is just one of many big-name notebook manufacturers to embrace the technology. While keeping its precise strategy secret for now, the company has announced two DMFC-based products aimed at mobile phone and notebook owners.