Five Reader Picks for Tech's Next Big Thing

A little more than a month ago I wrote a column on MSN Money about finding "the next big thing" in technology. The next big thing, I argued, would be a disruptive technology that changes the existing game and sends rivals to the scrap heap.

I picked seven "next big things":

• The "Cell" microprocessor
• The home-entertainment gateway
• The home-entertainment hub
• Internet telephony over mobile phones
• Electronic networked health care records
• Mapping everywhere
• Batteries

And I suggested that readers send me their own picks for the next big thing. If I got enough, I'd put them together into a follow-up column.

A Deluge of Entries

Well, of course, the shrinking violets they are, Jubak's Journal readers buried me with heated nominations that often began "How could you leave out ... " Here are the best of the bunch from that reader mail -- five more, to be exact.

I have not vetted any of these ideas, and readers should certainly not regard them as picks in any way. I see this effort as brainstorming. ...