Itex News
IT Innovations that rocked the world - Part one
The mark of a successful technology innovation is appreciating that we couldn’t function easily without it in our lives.
Researchers, who are already busy developing tomorrow’s innovations, give us their picks of the most ground-breaking developments from the last 20 years.
Here are two of the top-five innovations picked by the researchers. More to follow in part two!
1. The smartphone
Have you ever panicked after leaving for work and realising your smartphone is still on the kitchen table? It’s a common occurrence these days given our dependency on smartphones. They’re our conduit to the Web, friends and colleagues, music and games, and even dinner reservations.
“The smartphone, more than any other technology in the last 10 years, has transformed how we live our lives,” according to Ryan Ko, a researcher for IT giant HP. “Allowing us to be always on and connected, smartphones have changed forever how we live and work.”
As Ko points out, smartphones are also changing the course of software development. “Now, anyone can develop an app for a smartphone, whereas in the past, software applications were developed by a relatively few number of companies.”
Non-developers can now create mobile apps
Organisations are capitalising on this trend by developing component-based software development tools for mobile devices. Ko describes these tools as “Lego Block-like components that allow non-technical users to build mobile applications.”
Looking to the future, Ko sees smartphones enabling more powerful applications by outsourcing processing to the cloud. “By outsourcing workloads to the cloud, smartphones will be able to host more compute-intensive applications and even save battery power.”
2. Flash memory
The unsung hero to the sexier smartphone, flash memory has undoubtedly altered everyday life—both personal and business. Flash memory is used by a wide range of electronic devices, from mobile phones to digital cameras and thumb drives, to video games and medical instruments.
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip, which means it can store information when not powered. While developed by Toshiba in 1980, flash memory was not introduced in a widely-used format until 1995 and saw a major increase in adoption due to integration with a USB interface (commercially available since 2000). More recently, flash memory has become a replacement for hard disks.
Flash memory enables our digital world
Without flash memory you couldn’t click your digital camera as nonchalantly as you do, or download that huge PowerPoint presentation to a thumb drive before racing out of the office.
Flash memory makes it almost effortless to store and transfer large amounts of information, and for that reason, it has played a critical role in enabling the digital lifestyle. Flash memory has been used primarily for consumer devices, mostly because its cost per byte is high. However, as it becomes more affordable flash memory may well be used for enterprise storage within the next few years.
Watch out for part two!