SamSal News Blog

Often, even a great new technology needs a partner to really change the world. Here are 10 marriages of technologies that have shaken the digital world over the last 25 years

It's typically when two 'or more technologies converge that the real changes start to happen, For this look at the most disruptive high-tech events of the last quarter century, we divided developments into pairs that have formed an effective one-two punch.

1: Mobile Phones + Wireless Internet Access
Mobile phones have changed the way we communicate, blurring the lines separating work, play, and the commute between the two. Wireless e- mail, messaging and Web access will change communications even more.
Data, not voice, is driving this disruption. The biggest news from Apple's recent announcement of its iPhone software development kit was the addition of an Exchange mail applet that lets business users access their work e-mail from their Apple handsets. "New internet-friendly mobile phones such as the iPhone and Google phone will lower the entry barrier for mobile internet services, improve mobile internet experiences, and introduce new business models," says Kurt scherf, vice president and principal analyst for Parks Associates. “we’ll being to see mass-market adoption and form factors diversity to include embedded portable devices such as portable media players and game consoles."
Mobile internet-capable phones are poised to become a major advertising platform, as well.

Disruption:
The ability to be reachable 24/7 is morphing into the ability to surf the Net from any location. And it is forcing monopolistic wireless companies to open up their networks to new devices and services.

2: The Web + The Graphical Browser

Before 1993, however, the internet as we think of it today was a loose collection of protocols, networks, and tools built by university geeks. The introduction of the World Wide Web in 1991 gave people a way to connect information online, but it was still just another (albeit critical) piece in the puzzle.
The graphical browser, invented in 1993 by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, gave the Web wings, ultimately turning it into a delivery vehicle for just about everything. According to a recent poll by We Media and Zogby interactive nearly half of Americans now get their news from the internet. the writing is on wall - or rather, the web.

Disruption:
Media firms, publishing companies, and advertisers now think Web first, and broadcast or print second.

3: Broadband + Wireless Networks
Remember 199B? The sluggishness of users' connections was matched only by the leisurely pace at which telecom and cable companies went about creating broadband infrastructure Fast-forward ten years. Some 55
percent of households in the United States now boast a broadband connection, according to Parks Associates, allowing for rich. media, video, and audio to dominate the internet. A broadband connection really became economically feasible when users could spread the cost of one connection across multiple home computers through Wi-Fi. Later this year, a raft of products using the superfast final 802.11 n spec will make Wi-Fi viable for sharing video and audio around the home as well. ABI Research predicts that nearly 250 million Wi-Fi- enabled devices will be shipped annually by 2011.

Disruption:
Broadband has created an explosion of video and music websites and VolP services, while Wi-Fi is bringing the Net to everyday household appliances such as stereos, TVs, and home control systems. Together, they're making the connected home a reality.


4: Cloud Computing + Always-On Devices

A cloud is brewing on the Net horizon, bringing a storm of new applications.
The profusion of cheap storage, software that can run a single massive application across thousands of low cost servers, and near-ubiquitous have created a virtual supercomputer accessible from your pocket. ever used Google Docs, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! Mail, or Zoho Writer, you've experienced cloud computing.
The revolution in Net-based computing will, in turn, change the way devices are designed, as well as what users do with them, says Jonathan Yarmis, vice president of advanced, emerging, and disruptive technologies for AMR Research. When machines across the Net do most of the heavy lifting, we can use devices that are smaller, cheaper, and more portable without sacrificing computing power. Early examples of such devices include Apple's iPhone and Amazon's Kindle.

Disruption:
For enterprises, cloud computing provides the benefits of a data centre without the cost and hassle of maintaining one. For consumers, it offers the promise of cheaper, simpler devices that let them access their data and their applications from anywhere.

5: Cheap Storage + Portable Memory

When IBM Invented the RAMAC hard drive in 1956 it stored five megabytes of data and cost 50,000 dollars. In 2005, Toshiba introduce the first 1.8-inch 40GB drive using perpendicular magnetic recording which stacks magnetic charges on the disk's surface vertically instead of horizentally . Since then, density rates for hard-drive platters have increased 40 per cent annually. Last October, Western Digital introduced a perpendicular drive capable of storing 520GB per-sQuare-inch, enabling multiplatter hard drives three terabytes in As densities have risen, the costs have dropped between 30 and 40 cents per gigabyte - cheap enough that companies such as Google and Yahoo can give storage away, enabling a host of cloud-computing services. At the same time, improvements in flash memory allow people to carry vast amounts of music and video on iPods and phones, gradually turning wireless telecoms into broadband entertainment providers. Meanwhile, a promising new nanotechnology called programmable metallisation cell (PMC) could produce drives that are a thousand times more efficient than flash at a tenth of the cost.

Disruption:
Where would we be today without cheap, capacious, portable storage? No iPods. No YouTube. No Gmail. No cloud computing.


6: Blogs + Google Ads

Not long ago, IT you wanted to be a publisher, you had to either be born into a rich family or become an HTML geek. Now, thanks to simple tools such as Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress, anyone can be a publisher or Producer, no technical expertise (or talent) required. The problem? At first, blogging wouldn't pay your bandwidth bills, let alone the rent. Enter Google AdSense: Introduced in 2002, this program makes adding pay- per-click ads to any site a snap. Google's search engine, meanwhile, offers a self- perpetuating marketing vehicle; the more sites that link to your blog, the higher it rises in Google search results, leading to more traffic, more clicks, more links, and so on. Overall, in 2007 Google shared more than five billion dollars in ad revenues with its partner sites, including traditional Web publishers and blogs.

Disruption:
blogs give everyone a public voice, while Google gives bloggers a way to fund and market themselves and the economy of the 21 st century is born.


7: MP3 + Napster

The audio engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits weren't really trying to bring down an entire industry when they invented the MPEG-1 Layer 3 codec, better known as MP3. They were simply building on decades of research in audio compression, which started in the 1970s as an effort to deliver high-quality music over the phone. But MP3 files' small size -roughly one- tenth the size of similar-quality .wav files distributed on CDs -was tailor-made for the broadband explosion of the late 1990s. The emergence of Winamp in 1997 made ripping CD tunes into MP3s easy, and the first portable players allowed music fans to listen to them without a computer. In 1999, Napster arrived, giving users an easy way to find new MP3s and share them Even if Napster didn't kill the record industry, it changed the business irrevocably. If not for Napster, BitTorrent might not exist.

Disruption:
The idea that media should be portable is disruptive. The notion that it should be free -and that some artists can even thrive despite a lack of sales revenue -is even more so.

8: Open Source Software + Web Tools

Wherever open source goes, massive innovation and spectacular growth soon follow. Think of the open architecture of the IBM PC and the open protocols of the internet. Even Microsoft appears to have succumbed to the irresistible lure of open source (or so the company would like people to think). Linux and other open-source operating systems have allowed manufacturers to build simpler, cheaper machines, such as the One Laptop Per Child project's XO Machine and Asus's Eee PC. Such thin systems will playa key role in enabling cloud computing (see item number 4 on our list). Desktop software offerings, such as the Open Office suite and Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird, are free (and often superior) alternatives to Microsoft's products. And Sun's Java has enabled the development of rich applications for both the Web and handheld devices.
When open source meets Web- development tools, though, the true disruption begins. Tools such as Apache, JBoss, MySOL, and Ruby on Rails have made it less expensive to develop new products and services and to deliver them across the internet. That means startups can afford to take longer to develop and refine their products, without the pressure and risks of filing an IPO. Meanwhile, the revolution in tools like Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and "semantic markup" has
driven a whole new way to build websites.

Disruption:
The Net is seeing a new boom in Web 2.0 companies that are more stable and more interesting than their dot-com-era predecessors. And with phones using Google's Linux-based Android operating system, open source could disrupt the wireless marke as well

9: Youtube + Digital Cameras And Camcorders

When the candid I video of former US Senator George Allen calling someone a macaca (a monkey) appeared on YouTube, it not only cost him a Senate seat and altered the balance of power in the United States Congress, but it also demonstrated how far viral video had come. The Web is now the first stop for many political candidates and companies trying to spread the word about themselves or their products, and YouTube accounts for more than 60 per cent of all video-site traffic, according to Hitwise.com. YouTube wouldn't have reached such heights without cheap digital cameras.

Disruption:
Digital video has made mini-Hitchcocks of everyone. Youtube and its many cousins give the masses a place to many cousins give the masses a place to put their masterworks. Journalism, politics, and entertainment will never be the same.

10: DVRs + Entertainment On Demand
The late 1990s introduced couch potatoes to TiVo and ReplayTV digital video recorders. Time- shifting programs and fast-forwarding through commercials became as easy as pressing a couple of buttons. Suddenly, people were no longer shackled to the arbitrary schedules of TV programmers and the obnoxius pandering of advertisers


Disruption:
The whatever/wherever/whenever model of media consumption is turning both Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry on their heads, and forcing advertisers to rethink ways to capture our attention.