The company is called Leap Motion, and if you want to get an idea of how much everyone in San Francisco is buzzing about them, consider this: A few weeks ago I was visiting a different hot new startup in San Francisco, and in the middle of their demo the executives said, “By the way, have you heard about Leap Motion?” Then they interrupted their own demo to show me a video showing what Leap Motion’s software does.

That mindblowing video has been viewed more than 7 million times since Leap Motion put it on YouTube last May. Basically the engineers at Leap Motion have invented the 3D user interface of the future. You don’t use a keyboard and mouse; you don’t even use a touch screen. You just move your fingers in the air, and, as if by magic, with zero latency and pinpoint accuracy, stuff happens on your screen. Think of Microsoft’s Kinect controller, but way better. Leap Motion claims its device is 200 times more accurate than anything on the market and can track your finger movements down to 1/100th of a millimeter.

The first version of the product will be delivered in a little plastic hockey puck that you connect to your laptop or desktop computer. This little device will start shipping early in 2013 at an incredible price — only $69.99 gives you a new toy that isn’t quite like the user interface from Minority Report, but it’s not that far off, either.

Welcome To The Future

Wired called this "the best gesture-control system we've ever tested." The Verge called it "the next big thing in computing."

Leap Motion has already received preorders worth tens of millions of dollars, says Andy Miller, the company’s president and COO.

Miller, by the way, is a former top executive at Apple, and his team is packed with Apple veterans. Leap Motion was founded in 2010 by Michael Buckwald, a serial entrepreneur who serves as CEO, and David Holz, a former NASA engineer who previously was working at NASA. Holz’s official title is CTO but he lists himself on LinkedIn as a “mad scientist.” One of their first investors was Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape.

Now do you see why everyone in San Francisco is so excited about these guys?

By this time next year we might be reading stories not just about how Leap Motion was one of the hot products of 2013, but about how this product changed everything.
Beyond Computers

Because Leap Motion has big plans. Laptops and desktops are just the start. “The consumer is side a way of getting it out there, but the bigger business might be licensing deals,” Miller says. “We have been contacted by thousands of businesses that want to use this.”

He reels off potential applications that range from robotic surgery to fighter jets, from semiconductor clean rooms to fast-food restaurant kitchens. “We’ve talked about seatback screens on planes,” he says. “Climate control systems. Set-top boxes and TVs and remote controls. Tablets. MRIs.”

McDonald’s and Jack in the Box like the idea of putting Leap Motion controllers in their kitchens so that workers can manipulate screens without having to touch them.

Others want to use Leap Motion in c asino's, nightclubs and DJ booths to let people control huge video boards.

“This is a big thing that really could change the way we interact with devices,” Miller says.

Leap Motion won’t have a booth at CES, but will be present at the show. Miller won’t offer any more info as the deals have not yet been announced.
Better Yet, There's An SDK

Leap Motion has created a software developers kit so that others can write apps for the device. So far the company has received more than 40,000 applications from developers. Leap Motion will send 10,000 free units to developers so they can start writing apps.

Those developers will dream up ways to use Leap Motion that the company itself might never have imagined, just as happened when Apple threw open the iPhone to outside developers and spawned a huge new industry of apps-makers.

One guy has already figured out how to use a Leap Motion controller to drive a quadcopter:

Keyboards? Mice? Disc drives? It may be time to pull the plugs, experts say.

After decades of monopolizing the home computing experience, the desktop PC could be on the way out. Technology experts say the rise of "second screen" devices such as smartphones and tablets represents a fundamental shift toward a "post-PC" or "PC plus" era.

In an entry to his blog Tech Broiler, ZDNet Senior Technology Editor Jason Perlow predicted that, within a decade, less than 10 percent of the current PC-using population will still require a desktop computer.

For the foreseeable future, experts say, some functions will continue to require a traditional computer, but for basic tasks, users increasingly are picking up other devices.

A purely post-PC world has not arrived, but here are five signs it is on the way.

1 THE CLOUD

Many experts say one of the most definitive signs of post-PC's arrival is the increase in the number of cloud computing services.

Using a website or a program installed on a computer, a cloud offloads the labor of running an application from the user's computer to a server to which they connect, usually via the Internet. The benefits of cloud services include reduced demand on the user's own computer hardware, automatically updated content and the ability to access files across multiple devices -- PC, smartphone, tablet -- anywhere there is an online connection.

Via a cloud, users can manage event calendars between devices, continue streaming a film on a smart TV that they started on their tablet or upload and share pictures between a smart phone and a PC.

Popular clouds include multimedia streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and OnLive, online file hosts such as Google Drive and Dropbox and web-based email providers such as Gmail and Hotmail. Google and Microsoft each have launched cloud-based productivity software suites built on subscription models: Microsoft 365 and Google Apps, respectively.

When he returned from sick leave to introduce Apple's iCloud service at the 2011 Worldwide Developers Conference, late CEO Steve Jobs suggested cloud computing was the next leap forward.

"We think this solution is our next big insight, which is that we're going to demote the PC or Mac to being just another device," Jobs said. "[We] will move the hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud."

Some companies are building hardware entirely around a cloud-based experience. In 2011, Acer and Samsung began manufacturing Chromebooks, notebook computers based on Google's cloud-based operating system: Chrome. Because they access applications online rather than off a hard drive, Chromebooks feature small hard drives, slower processors and require an Internet connection for full functionality but also are correspondingly cheaper than traditional laptops.

2 PC SALES SLUMP

This year has been especially tough for PC manufacturers. In an Oct. 10 story citing market researchers International Data Corp. and Gartner Inc., The Associated Press reports that third-quarter global PC sales fell by about 8.5 percent.

For the same period, Dell reported a 47 percent slump, and Hewlett-Packard's $8.9 billion loss was the worst in the company's 73-year history. In its October report, International Data Corp. also predicts PC shipments in 2012 likely will represent the first annual decline since 2001.

Most industry analysts blame the sluggish sales, in part, on the rising popularity of tablets and smartphones. During the third quarter, worldwide tablet and smart phone sales rose by 43 and 47 percent, respectively, from 2011, according to estimates by research firms Strategy Analytics and Gartner.

That growth is expected to accelerate. In a February forecast of the mobile market, Transparency Market Research predicted that, by 2015, annual smartphone sales would more than double 2011 numbers to reach 1 billion units. The same report suggests tablet sales in 2015 would more than triple to reach 282 million units.

In an Aug. 24 story on Wired.com, author Marcus Wohlsen says the steady decline of PC sales since 2007 is not a slump, which indicates a potential for bouncing back, but a sign of traditional PCs' obsolescence.

"The PC market may not have that well of potential waiting to be reborn," Wohlsen writes. "Does anyone expect some near-future radical innovation to come along and rescue the traditional PC from increasing irrelevance?"

3 CONVERGENCE

With the approach of the post-PC era, the line between a desktop PC and other devices is becoming increasingly blurry.

Traditionally, the computing experience was tied to a single location in the home -- wherever the computer was. In the post-PC era, however, a similar experience can be had on multiple devices, from an Internet-connected TV in the family room to a smartphone in a pocket.

"'Post-PC' means that you don't have to sit in one spot," says Dan Thompson, manager of product development at Claris Networks, an information technology support provider with offices in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville.

"Now, the PC lives many places," he continues. "It doesn't stay in one place anymore."

Hardware and software designers are seeking ways to welcome the PC into the living room.

Earlier this year, Dell subsidiary Alienware introduced the X51, a small-case gaming PC with a video game console-like shape designed to help it fit seamlessly into entertainment centers. Similarly, the "Big Picture" function added earlier this month to the cloud-based service Steam lets PC gamers access their content via a console-like interface navigated by a game controller instead of a mouse and keyboard.

TVs similarly are borrowing from the PCs. Internet-connected smart TVs and set-top boxes such as Roku, Apple TV and Boxee Box provide access to services also offered on computers, such as social networking, web browsing and multimedia streaming services.

According to a Sept. 26 survey by market researcher The NPD Group, about 10 percent of American homes have Internet-connected TVs. The same report says that, for the first time ever, the TV has overtaken the PC as the most popular device for watching online video content at home.

Post-PC convergence also includes interaction between companion devices. The Apple TV allows users to stream the display of an iPhone or iPad onto an HDTV, a feature Google reportedly is seeking to replicate in its devices. Microsoft is pursuing a similar function with SmartGlass, which allows a smartphone or tablet to interact with the Xbox 360 game console by navigating menus and accessing supplementary information about movies, TV shows and games.

4 NO MORE DISCS

After decades of delivering content to computer users via floppy discs, CDs, DVDs and other physical media, many companies now are starting to rely exclusively on digital channels. As a result, manufacturers are beginning to remove physical drives from their latest computers.

Apple drew fire from critics around the world in 2008 when its new MacBook Air ultra-slim notebook debuted without a built-in DVD or CD drive. Since then, the company has continued the trend by also removing disc drives from the latest editions of the iMac and MacBook.

Similar to the removal of the then-outmoded floppy drive from the original iMac in 1998, Apple saw the writing on the wall, and other companies since have followed suit.

Many of Intel's Ultrabook-branded laptops, similar to the MacBook Air and Google's Chromebook, are too slim to accommodate a disc drive. According to August reports in the Japanese-language newspaper Asahi Shumbun, Sony plans in March to shutter Optiarc Inc., its division for making PC optical drives.

In October, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller explained the decision to move away from physical discs in an interview with Time Magazine, saying: "These old technologies are holding us back. They're anchors on where we want to go. ... We try to find better solutions."

5 JUST A TOUCH

For decades, the only means of navigating a computer was a keyboard and a pointer device such as a mouse or touchpad. With the shift to a post-PC era, however, users now have 10 more options at their disposal: their fingers.

With the release of OS X Lion, the eighth version of its operating system, Apple borrowed many design elements from the iOS system used in its mobile devices, including new multitouch gestures, the Mac App Store and an iPad-like desktop and file organization system.

On Oct. 26, however, Microsoft took touch integration on PCs to a new level with the release of Windows 8.

The newest version of the world's most popular operating system is a dramatic departure from previous versions, due in large part to being designed from the ground up for simultaneous use on traditional desktops and touchscreen tablets, such as Microsoft's new line of Surface devices.

Although Windows 8 still can be navigated using a mouse and keyboard, the announcement of a shift to a touch-based interface led hardware manufacturers to install touch screens in many of the recently released Windows 8-equipped desktop PCs and notebooks. Some of the latter feature removable or reversible screens that essentially turn them into hybrid tablet-a-likes.

In a Nov. 1 article on CNET, Mike Feibus, a principal analyst of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based TechKnowledge Strategies, says Microsoft's melding of tablet-like interfaces with traditional PCs is a game changer for post-PC computing.

"Touch is as big an addition as the mouse was more than 20 years ago," Feibus says. "For many tasks, it's a better way to interact with the PC. Everything is different from here on out."

It's one thing for the rest of the world to have way cooler trains than us. America has chosen car culture, for better or worse. But now comes word that the Netherlands is building way awesomer highways, while ours are stuck in the 20th Century. The Netherlands! If this isn't a wake-up call for the United States to invest more in infrastructure, I don't know what is. (OK, maybe this.)

Wired UK reported in October that the Dutch design firm Studio Roosegaarde and infrastructure management group Heijmans have come up with a "smart highway" concept that will replace standard road markings with photoluminescent powder that charges in the daylight and glows through the night. When the temperature drops below freezing, the road will automatically light up with snowflake indicators to warn drivers of possible ice, sort of like the Coors beer cans that turn blue when they're extra cold.

Whether any of that will actually make drivers safer remains to be seen. (Personally, I'd rather see these guys collaborate with Coors on a special paint that makes cars glow in the dark when their drivers are full of alcohol.) The Netherlands is wisely starting small, with a pilot project in the province of Brabant scheduled to begin later this year. But those are only the first two stages of the grand Dutch plan to put our highways to shame. The next steps include windmills that light up as cars pass by, and "induction lanes" that would charge electric cars while they drive.

The video below offers a rough illustration of what this might look like. Even if it turns out not to work as seamlessly as the video suggests, the innovative spirit behind the concept is admirable—and sorely missing from U.S. infrastructure planning. The design firm behind the project says it would like to bring the concept to the United States eventually, but Americans shouldn't hold their breath. Current levels of infrastructure spending are barely sufficient to maintain our "D" grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers and our 23rd-place global ranking from the World Economic Forum.