The end of 2005 is near, and now that most of the big technology products are out for the holidays, (except for the Xbox 360), it’s time to look back at the technology that has emerged in 2005.

1. Podcasting and Blogs

   The two most important advances in technology this year were the new ways of communicating information. Now, I know blogs and podcasting have been around for a few years now, but it was not until this year that they began to become popular. I’ll start off talking about blogs.

   Blogs have really begun to explode in popularity, a new blog is created every second according to Technorati. Many people look at blogs as being for amateurs and not a “reliable” news source. Did you know that a blogger was the one who broke the Monica Lewinsky case? The professional blogs that are out there, many times do a better job of reporting information than the mainstream media, because they are rarely influenced by corporations or any other outside influence for that matter.

   Secondly, there is podcasting. Podcasting began to become popular this year with Apple’s release of iTunes 4. iTunes 4 allowed the “less geeky” people to access the podcasting content more efficiently. And because more people were able to access the content, more podcasts became available.

2. Google Maps and Google Earth

   This year Google unveiled their Google Maps service, which is a mapping service that allows you to see both the roads and satellite views of the United States, and other countries.

3. digg.com

   With the mixture of blogs and the mainstream media, and all the other links out there on the WWW, it can get really confusing. That’s where digg comes in, digg allows users to submit links with a title and a brief summary. When other users see these links, and if they like it, they’ll “digg” the story. If a story gets enough diggs, it will reach the homepage at digg.com, and everyone will be able to see it. Right now digg has 50-60 thousand users, and it is gaining popularity rapidly. Just recently digg got over 2 million dollars in venture capital from the founders of eBay and Netscape.

4. Mac OS X: Tiger

   Mac OS X has been considered by most, to be the most stable operating system out there. The release of Mac OS X: Tiger brought great new features that changed the way people used their computer. The most important new feature was Spotlight, which searched inside the document and in the title of the document in mere seconds. Other features included Dashboard, which allowed quick access to small bits of information. If you think I’m being biased read this.

5. The iPod nano/iPod (5th generation)

   The iPod had a terrific holiday season last year, and it will have another strong one this year. In the past few weeks Apple unveiled first, an iPod nano, probably the most beautiful MP3 player in the world, with up to 4 gigabytes of storage. Apple topped themselves with the new iPod (5th generation) that plays video content. The iPod is priced at $300 – $400 and the iPod nano is priced at $200 – $250.

Related posts:

Good Technology VODcasts
Are DIGGers Biased Against Blogs?
Google and Dell Partnership Making Bad User Experience
iPods No Longer Support Firewire
Apple Class Action Law Suit Settlement Reached

Hope you like that post!

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