Internet-Related New Technologies in 2005
Apple’s iTune service that was introduced in 2003 to download music legally has beaten most of the Competition that is coming from big companies like Yahoo, Real Networks, Napster, and Microsoft. It is already leading the others by a hefty share of 80 percent of the total legal music download where there is a huge growth in legal downloads, from 134 million in 2004 to 332 million in 2005, almost 148 percent increase. At the same time, there is a seven percent decline in CD album sales for the year 2004 from 650 million to 602 million, an emerging trend where people are preferring to download their music from the Internet. In addition to that effective October 2005 the iTunes service had started to download video too after the introduction of the fifth generation iPods with there video capability.
Also Apple’s iPods are enabled to download podcasts, a new phenomenon that has become popular in 2005, a term coined in 2004 when RSS syndication became popular, and it is an audio or video version of a Web feed that could be subscribed for and can be listened to on the go. The term podcasting itself has got recognition this year even if there are still disputes about choosing a different and more representative term for the service that enables users to listen to podcasts using MP3 players.
One other interesting achievement for Apple Computer that came up in 2005 was its cheapest computer ever, the Mac Mini that sells for $500 only, although it requires a monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard, which will not be a problem for those who want to upgrade an older version of an Apple computer. If there is any other offer that beats this one for he year 2005, it is the $100 laptops for third world countries that was announced around the end of the year.
The other few similar technologies that were introduced in 2005 that were important and are dependant on the Internet were iPod cell phones that were introduced by a joint effort of Motorola and Apple that are able to download instant music. However, Sprint had better capitalized by the introduction by announcing an instant music downloading service capable of downloading thousands of songs by phone.
Among the major technological introductions by Google for the year 2005 are the hosting and searching of video clips known as Google Video. According to Google, which claims that its mission is to organize the world’s information, this is also another of the company’s efforts where searchers can search for videos that the company is keeping in its archive. By simply clicking on the result it is possible to see still images from the video, and if there is a transcript going with it, a short snippets will accompany the still images, whereas some of them are capable of playing the video version. If one needs searching a TV program from the major Networks, by simply clicking on a side panel it is possible to find out when the show will be on broadcast. The number of entities that are contributing to this program is slowly on the rise and it already includes all the major networks.
Even if it is not new, Google has introduced a chat program among its users even if companies like AOL, MSN, and Yahoo have similar instant messaging and chat services. The difference with Google’s introduction of Google Talk is there is not going to be a barrier as anyone can contact anyone on the Internet unlike the other companies where their program is not available outside of their own networks. Yet, one shortfall that besieged the service from the beginning is the users cannot make phone calls to regular phone lines like the other Voip services. Other than that what is required is earphones and speakers or a headphone set with latest version of Windows to chat with anyone who is equipped likewise.
What Skype and Ebay introduced could go as a marvel for 2005 too, since they have made it possible for buyers and sellers to have a telephone chat on a click of a button. Google AdWords has a beta version of a similar service known as click-to-call, which does not cost the caller any money unless they are using cell phone. There are also similar programs known as pay-per-call that could cost the advertising business that will display its phone number on the ad, not the caller from $2 – $20 per call, and some business that have a larger business turnover prefer it. It might be the way to go for big businesses in the near future, because they could be accomplish more quickly on the phone in real time instead of using email.
Google Earth, in fact, is a 2005 introduction that combines what Google calls fly to, local search, and direction and had started out by availing a detailed satellite imagery of North America, the UK, and about 38 major cities around the world. It makes finding a location very easy as the local search can take any business name or particular address and it can be zoomed right into it. The same is possible for driving directions from one point to the other or to make it directly to any kind of business or service or any location in any of the major cities around the world as well as anywhere in North America and the UK.
The book digitizing service is still in its infancy and had faced some stiff opposition from those who are copyright holders. The purpose of the service is to digitize all available books so that they can be accessed online, either to read, especially those that are out of copyright books, or books that the copyright holders allow to be available on line to download or to read. For those books whose copyright has not expired yet, they are planning to avail a small excerpt of the material so that visitors would go where they can buy them or where they can read them after paying a service fee, and they have already started digitizing books from a few libraries.
These were the major technological introductions for the year 2005 that are directly related to the Internet and there are many other developments and advancements that were started in earlier years that were still in progress in 2005, that do not belong solely to the year 2005. At the same time there were other technological developments in other fields that are not easy to enumerate and summarize for a short presentation and to mention a few, a lot of capabilities had been added to cell phones including viewing TV, WiFi service is going to be offered in a large scale and the project is already underway in many cities, and the list goes on.
