Creative Cloud logo
Adobe Creative Cloud is announced as a subscription and cloud-based model of distribution for its major software products. Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and others, could be subscribed to either as a complete package or individually to suit user needs. This model also allowed Adobe to begin releasing continuous updates to their products, shortening the development cycle and the time need to incorporate new features.
Tunis protest, January 14, 2011
Starting in late 2010 and continuing through 2011, protests in North Africa and the Middle East lead to regime change, and in some cases, free elections for the first time in history. Many of these protests were organized or promoted on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and commentary appearing on popular blogs helped get the news out to the rest of the world while official, government-run media outlets were often silent.
Built by IBM using their Blue Gene/Q supercomputer architecture, the Sequoia system is the world's fastest supercomputer in 2012. Despite using 98,304 PowerPC chips, Sequoia's relatively low power usage made it unusually efficient. Scientific and defense applications included studies of human electrophysiology, nuclear weapon simulation, human genome mapping, and global climate change.
Nest Learning Thermostat
The Nest Learning Thermostat is an early product made for the emerging “Internet of Things,” which envisages a world in which common everyday devices have network connectivity and can exchange information or be controlled. The Nest allowed for remote access to a user’s home’s thermostat by using a smartphone or tablet and could also send monthly power consumption reports to help save on energy bills. The Nest would remember what temperature users preferred by ‘training’ itself to monitor daily use patterns for a few days then adopting that pattern as its new way of controlling home temperature.
Steve Jobs at introduction of the iPad in 2010
Few individuals are as closely tied to the image of their company as co-founder Steve Jobs is to Apple. His vision imbued products during both his tenures at the company. His passing on October 11th, 2011, was met with widespread sadness. Many individuals left flowers and other tributes at Apple stores around the world, and social networks were filled with remembrances from friends and admirers. As many noted at the time, Jobs had transformed six different industries: music, animated movies, personal computers, telephones, tablet computing and digital publishing.
Siri interface
Siri is introduced as a built-in feature with the Apple iPhone 4S smartphone in October. A voice-activated personal assistant, Siri could “understand” natural language requests and also adjust the information it retrieved from the web by learning user tendencies and preferences. Siri could perform a wide number of functions – from recommending local restaurants (using the web and the iPhone’s built-in GPS navigation system), providing walking or driving directions, giving weather forecasts, showing current sports scores, and even answering seemingly meaningless questions like, “Who is your favorite NCAA college football team?” Although the program’s “voice” was female by default, it could be changed to a man’s voice.
