The great thing about technology is that there’s always something flashy and new just round the corner. It’s even more poignant as the year draws to a close. The buzz on the Internet is that two possibly game-changing products might be announced in January (maybe, much to the chagrin of the companies releasing new gizmos at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas come Jan 8). First up is a smartphone from Google dubbed the Nexus One: via Mashable It runs the Android operating system and the sleek hardware is supposedly made by HTC. Just take a look at the specs here. But what might make the Nexus One really compelling and change the landscape of the mobile phone industry is that it might be sold by Google, so you won’t need to go through a telco to get one, or you could just slot in your SIM card on the device to use your existing mobile phone line and data plan. Google could also take it a step further. What if, instead of SMS, you could send an unlimited number of messages via Google Talk? And, by using its VoIP service, Google Voice, you could have unlimited talktime? Sure, both services are very much dependent on your data plan. But with data plans becoming cheaper by the year, this could possibly free you of being reliant on your telco. Consumers could win big on this one because no longer would they be tied to a telco just because of the phones it has on its palette (cue the iPhone in its early days). Telcos will have to work harder at making their services reliable, fast and attractive to retain and gain subscribers. By side-stepping the telcos, Google can put its Android phones in the hands of more users and grow its mobile search and other online services further. Putting more smartphones in the hands of people would also open up the market for mobile applications and services. We’ll be pretty happy if the Nexus One does come out because we’ve yet to see an Android phone on our shores that has really wowed us. Next up are rumours of the Apple tablet yet again, with the company expected to make a product announcement at its own event in late January. Apple has built quite an empire with just the iTunes App store and the iPhone alone, so it’ll be interesting to see what this new device will bring to the table, if it does exist. What’s interesting is that some see the tablet as one of the possible solutions to the ailing newspaper industry in the United States, where many newspapers and magazines have closed shop during the downturn. Newspapers and magazines on the iTunes store? Well, Apple's digital marketplace has proven that it could be an effective distribution system for content, thanks to the multitude of applications, music, movies and TV shows that it currently sells. What could a digital magazine on a tablet look like? Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo. And here’s another equally impressive demo: Content producers are betting that the digital versions of their content, souped up with high-definition, multimedia content, might revive the interest of the masses in terms of eyeballs and paid subscriptions. These two devices provide just an inkling of the big changes that might come in 2010. How exciting.