Our world evolves around Technology, a fact we cannot deny.
2016 has been quite an eventful and intriguing season in the tech world.
From Apple's daring decision to do away with the conventional 3.5mm jack port to the explosive Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Everyone felt the impact in some very unexpected ways.
Here are the Top Ten Stories that made waves this year.
1. Virtual Reality (VR)
Unless you've just woken up from a 3 year coma, you probably must have heard a lot of hype about the virtual reality and the Oculus Rift.
Virtual Reality radically redefines digital entertainment. Immerse yourself in games or go inside your favorite movies. Time travel, space travel, or hang out with friends in VR.
After it's emergence, We were expecting this year to be a quantum leap for VR Technology. Sony PlayStation, HTC Vive and Facebook's Oculus Rift VR all made their official debuts, but it turns out that the content doesn't yet have the impact of the hardware.
Nevertheless, we expect to see new developments that will make VR a prospective candidate of a Revolutionized Technology.
2. Explosive Samsung Galaxy Note 7
Apparently, this was the most widely spread news of the year. Samsung has always played a second fiddle to Apple. In a bid to come out of that zone, they decided to release a device that will match up the iphone 7 and probably march upon it to take up the pole position.
Note 7 had a fresh breath of design (beautiful curved design), High resolution screen, the best camera, a memory-card slot, water resistance, a headphone jack, huge battery — quite amazing features.
Few weeks after launch, the Note 7 started exploding mysteriously. Samsung had to issue a global recall with safety battery replacements but the backup call could not salvage the situation. Eventually, Samsung was forced to permanently discontinue the phone.
What a horrific nightmare for Samsung.
3. The 3.5mm Jack Port Removal
Nobody saw this coming from Apple!
The conventional 3.5mm jack has been a standard feature used in devices worldwide. Over the years, Apple has always proven to be the fore-runner of many innovative ideas.
But am just short of words to describe this, whether I should call it innovative or removal of a long standing feature just beats my mind.
Perhaps, Apple's vision into the future where audio will be wireless inspired them to make this daring step. To Apple, "the future is now" and in one way or the other, someone had to make it a reality.
They always take the lead, while others follow. Will other manufacturers queue in the line? Only time will tell.
4. Facebook Fake Stories
Are you surprised? Well, this will only come as a surprise to those who seldom use Facebook.
News of Hillary Clinton conducting Satanic rituals swept across Facebook — No, it wasn't true.
But the wide spread of fake news emerged as a serious problem during and after the US election.
Majority of Americans were glued to their smartphones, engaging in different social media activities to get up to date analysis and news.
These fake news were orchestrated by trolls who had mastered the skill of making tons of cash by capitalizing on the fears of some Americans who had lost faith on the mainstream media.
5. Facebook Global Dominance
In 2016, Facebook enlarged it's empire across the globe and ultimately became a global force to reckon with, Climbing to seemingly surprising heights.
Emerging as a vital source of information during the US election, the spread of political propaganda and misinformation thrived immensely.
In a bid to bring Facebook-controlled internet to remote parts of the world, Facebook's Solar-powered Aquila drone flew for the first time.
Virtual Reality is fast becoming the new phase of technology, Facebook didn't waste much time to show it's vision for Virtual Reality by debuting it's Oculus rift.
Facebook launched its all new live video feature to allow users broadcast their live through their smartphone cameras in a refreshingly innovative way.
When we thought we've seen it all, Facebook introduced artificial intelligence technology that can describe photographs to the blind.
What a year of great dominance for Facebook.
6. The Copy Cats
Everyone wanted to stay relevant and influential in the social media domain. The only way of maintaining the status quo, was to copy similar features from their rivals in a redefined manner.
Facebook Introduced a LinkedIn-Like feature where prospective job seekers can easily meet up with recruiters across the platform.
Instagram and Facebook debuted live videos where users could share their live just like Snapchat,
Facebook also introduced chat rooms to it's messenger which is similar to yahoo chat. Whatsapp was not left out, they added a feature that lets users stream videos before downloading just as you'd do on YouTube.
Twitter also was caught copying a Feature from Snapchat, It's QR code. The QR codes will allow you to follow other users by scanning QR codes linked to their profiles.
7. Autopilot Cars
Have you seen the movie - iRobot? If you have, then you'll know what am talking about.
Just like we see in Sci-Fi movies, where sophisticated cars move at a great speed with nobody behind the steering wheel. That era is shortly coming upon us.
Some automobile manufacturers are already venturing into driverless cars.
Tesla - an American Auto maker in Silicon Valley, announced to put an enhanced self-driving autopilot in all of it's new models.
In Pittsburg, Uber was the first company to put driverless cars on the road.
Other manufacturers like Audi, debuted its first test of self driving automobiles.
8. Hackers On The Horizon
In 2016, The activities and immersive knowledge of hackers increased in a seamless manner, giving us worrisome thoughts about security breaches.
Google announced the launch of its Pixel devices with an acclaimed top notch security, but that claim was ridiculed in just 60 seconds by group of Chinese white hackers at the PwnFest hacking competition that took place in Seoul.
Yahoo threw away it's users trust through the window after it was discovered that the company didn't publicly disclose the amount of hacks it encountered since 2014.
Many other DDoS attacks have been recorded, like the one on Dyn which took place on October 21, 2016.
These and many more attacks leaves us doubtful of how security will be in the near future.
9. Twitter 4 Sale
Over the year, twitter have been dodging the big question. But it was publicly known after the board of directors met in San Francisco to discuss whether it can still operate as a stand alone company. After much deliberations, the board of directors thought it wise to sell the company.
Jack Dorsey, Two time CEO and co-founder has been able to add only 10 million users to the platform since he took over the post in Oct, 2015.
Relatively, Advertisers have withdrawn their interest and some top executives have left. Hundreds of employees were laid off their duty - a last resort to make the company profitable.
Top companies like Disney, Google and Salesforce have apparently shown interest, but are monitoring the situation with keen prudence.
10. #RIP Vine
Famous for it's six-second video, Vine was popularly known for transforming creative teens into celebrities overnight.
In October, Vine announced that it will permanently shutdown the app for good, many users reacted to the news with stunned disbelieve. Although Vine had lost many users over the years.
With it's parent company (Twitter) experiencing twist of fortune and an impending sale, it's obvious Twitter could not shoulder the burden because of the low income generated from Vine.
Everyone from the app's founders to its biggest stars, used the #RIPVine hashtag to bid a final respect to a once influential app.
Nice one..... Very intuitive
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