What does 2013 have in store for us?  I know some people are looking forward to seeing the latest fashion craze, dance craze or any craze at all, but for technology enthusiasts, what are we to look forward to this year?  In TrendHunterTV’s Top 20 Trends in 2013, there are a lot of interesting trends that will stand out to techies.

Disclaimer: We’ll only be discussing the techie trends so don’t be pissed if I jump some numbers in the countdown, you can still check out the rest of the countdown here.

Vending 3.0

Vending machines can now be activated by facial recognition, mobile apps and some machines even let users swap items with other consumers.  I’m sure vending machine manufacturers can come up with more ingenious ideas to make these machines more fun and interesting.

Shoptimization

Interactive retail, or hooking up your phone with an app of your favorite retail stores, could give you discounts, perks and points to fuel your hunger for more of their stuff.  You get points by just checking into the store and if you accumulate enough points, you can redeem them for purchases.  It’s a useful marketing technique for merchants that builds loyal customers while performing a great deal of market research all the while.

Wearable Multitasking

Watches that can do more than just tell time are expected to get more popular this year, keeping people in constant contact with their Facebook friends, reminding them of appointments and playing their favorite tunes.  Now, some are developing watches that can even pay for your stuff when you go shopping.  Yup, soon you will be able to wear a watch that functions as a watch, a smartphone, and has an NFC chip or something of that sort to help you pay for stuff just by tapping your watch to a terminal.

Physically Virtual

Digital assets are being incorporated more and more to our physical or real lives.  Shops now have virtual changing rooms so you can make do with trying on clothes without having to remove even a single piece of clothing, while others let you scan a QR code to bring up a 3D map of a mall.  Even choosing the color of your next car could be as easy as flicking through a screen.

Manufactured Addiction

Brands are keeping people addicted to shopping by giving them flash deals, apps that give rewards, or allow you to perform certain actions on your mobile devices to unlock more great deals.  This gets shoppers hooked because they are made to think that the deals are offered to a limited number of people for a short amount of time, and they have to act fast or they will miss out all together.

So there you go, according to TrendHunterTV, we’ll see a boom in non-traditional vending machines, mobile apps for shopping, multitasking watches, virtual stuff being incorporated in our daily lives, and our addiction to flash deals will go into overdrive.  So, are you still looking forward for the rest of 2013, or do you wish you have a time machine at your disposal?