On the 23rd of October, 2001, Apple Inc. started its line of portable media players with the release of the iPod. With its tagline of “1,000 songs in your pocket”, this device came with a 2-inch 160x128 pixel screen, included a state-of-the-art 5 GB hard drive, used a scroll wheel for user interface, and had a battery life of 10 hours. Initially, t…

On 18th October 1958, physicist William Higinbotham developed what is considered the world’s first video game - an invention that would later lead to a $180 billion industry. Called “Tennis for Two'', this was an electronic tennis game with controllers connected to an analogue computer. An oscilloscope served as the screen which could display diffe…

With more mobile connections than humans in the world today, it is difficult to imagine a time without cell phones. However, it was nearly 4 decades ago, on 13th October, 1983 when the first commercial cell phone was launched by Ameritech, which is now a part of AT&T. While the world of cellular connections has reached 5G technology today, it start…

When Instagram was launched on the 6th of October, 2010, many disregarded it as just another photo-sharing application that would sooner rather than later fizzle out. However, its co-founder Kevin Systrom believed that the visual medium held an untapped market and foresaw immense technological growth in this domain. This proved true when within its…

With the introduction of IBM 701, the company’s first electronic computer, the tech giant entered the computer business. The development of this machine for commercial purposes was viewed as a radical move by many considering IBM was the largest supplier of punched card equipment and supplies worldwide at that time. However, 701 proved highly succe…

When IBM’s Deep Blue defeated the then best chess player in the world on the 11th of May, 1997, the surprise was widespread. Developed by IEEE senior members Murray Campbell and Feng-hsiung Hsu, Deep Blue was a chess-playing supercomputer by IBM which competed against the best chess player in the world and became the first machine to defeat a reign…

12 years after winning the game show Jeopardy with its software Watson, IBM unveils Watsonx, a new product suite aimed at helping companies develop and deploy artificial intelligence more efficiently. Based on the Red Hat Openshift platform, the solution comprises three main offerings: Watsonx.ai, Watsonx.data, and Watsonx.governance. Watsonx.ai pr…

The introduction of IBM 704 on the 7th of May, 1954, marked a significant milestone in the history of computers as it was the first mass-produced computer in the world that featured indexing and floating-point arithmetic hardware. This was essentially a high-speed, electronic calculator which was controlled by an internally stored programme. A larg…

With the launch of the iTunes Music Store by Apple on the 28th of April, 2003, the music world was forever altered. A software-based online digital media store operated by Apple, this was Steve Job’s attempt at creating a digital marketplace for music. It allowed users to burn an unlimited number of CDs and put music on an unlimited number of iPods…

When Zoom was launched on the 21st of April, 2011, it entered a very competitive video conferencing market. Today, it stands as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the remote work boom due to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. With astonishing statistics such as 300 million daily meetings and 3.3 trillion annual meetings, it is no wonder that Zoo…

The development of Java, a high-level, object-oriented programming language, began on the 8th of April, 1991. An American technology company named Sun Microsystems started this project, with a team retreating to an unrevealed location to work on the development. It was initially called “Oak” and was later renamed to “Java”, as it is now popularly k…

When Gmail was launched on the 1st of April, 2004, many considered it to be a huge joke by Google. Today, this free email service boasts a user-base of 1.8 billion users worldwide. Written in Java, C++, and JavaScript, Gmail is available in 105 languages. Gmail came with vast storage, a fresh new interface, and instant search, among other existing …

As the U.S. Census Bureau signed the contract for the first commercially produced digital computer in the U.S., it marked the beginning of a new era in technology. Short for “Universal Automatic Computer”, UNIVAC was dedicated a few months later and was able to perform classification for an average citizen, classifying them into categories of sex, …

With the first-ever tweet made by Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, on the 21st of March, 2006, the immensely popular social media platform was launched. Interestingly, this tweet was sold for $2.9 million early in 2021 with its buyer Malaysian-based Sina Estavi likening it to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The tweet, which said “just set…

When Hulu launched for the general public on the 12th of March, 2008, it offered access to all within the United States. Previously, a beta version of this video streaming platform had also been privately launched. Although Hulu offered only a selection of content (television shows, films, and news) free of cost, users could now watch content on th…

Founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang, graduate students at Stanford University, Yahoo! was incorporated on the 2nd of March, 1995. Initially, the site was called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” but as it grew in popularity, it was renamed Yahoo!, an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. Back then, it was only mean…

On the 22nd of February, 1999, the First Internet Bank of Indiana (First IB) opened its virtual doors to the public. This was the first state-chartered FDIC-insured institution to operate only through the internet. Marketed as the first “extended value online bank”, it provided a full range of real-time internet banking products as well as personal…

The introduction of the IBM Portable Personal Computer 5155 - a product whose roaring success surprised many, including IBM itself - on the 16th of February, 1984 popularised personal computers for everyday use. Weighing about 30 pounds, this computer had the following specifications: built-in ROM Basic, 256K memory standard, 9-inch 25x80 monochrom…

The revolutionary launch of Google Maps on the 8th of February, 2005, transformed the way we use maps for directions and navigate the world with our smartphones. Initially, it was launched for desktop as a solution for people to get from one point to another. Today, it’s a gateway to exploration - whether you are travelling by car, bike, public tra…

Facebook was founded on the 4th of February, 2004, as “The facebook” by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz, following the high popularity of Facemash. In 2003, these four Harvard students created Facemash, an online service to judge and rate how attractive their fellow students were. The pictures received 22,000 vo…

The introduction of Macintosh by Apple on the 22nd of January, 1984, revolutionised the computing industry by making computers easy to use for any and everyone, not just experts. The Macintosh, or Mac as it is now known, is a series of several lines of personal computers, developed by Apple. The original Macintosh was the first commercially success…

On the 15th of January, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia, a free and collaborative online encyclopedia. Written and edited by the internet community, it is the largest of its type of websites and is available in over 300 languages besides English. With more than 6.3 million articles and 42 million users, it is ranked among the …

There are very few technological events in recent history that can rival the introduction of the iPhone by Apple on the 9th of January, 2007. Dubbing it the “reinvention of the phone”, the company claimed that it was a revolutionary product that was five years ahead of any other mobile phone. Starting at $499, this first-generation iPhone offered a…

When Bitcoin was created by its mysterious pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto on the 3rd of January, 2009, the world was introduced to a completely new form of currency - cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a form of binary data which acts as a payment medium. Since then, thousands of cryptocurrencies have been launched taking the current total …

The creation of the Domain Name System (DNS) on the 1st of January, 1985 transformed the way the internet was browsed. Essentially the phonebook of the internet, the DNS allowed users to access information using domain names instead of IP addresses. Each machine or device connected to the internet has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address that is…

When the world’s first ever web server (http://info.cern.ch/) went live at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) on the 24th of December, 1990, it marked the creation of one of the four essentials of the World Wide Web: HTML, web protocol, web browser, and web server. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, set up a NeX…

Larry Wall released the general-purpose programming language Perl on the 18th of December, 1987. It was meant to offer text manipulation, web development, network programming, system administration, and Graphics User Interface (GUI) development, among other tasks. With its tagline, “easy things should be easy and hard things should be possible”, Pe…

Google marked the release of its web browser on the 11th of December, 2008, when it launched the first stable public version of Chrome. Although the tech giant had previously released 3 versions for testing, they were beta versions. With the release of version 1, Chrome entered a market where users were growing frustrated with Internet Explorer and…

Now more than ever, digital technology has become a staple in our professional and private life. The revolution can’t be ignored as it is changing the way people travel, work, interact & organize their daily activities. And it does it at high speed. With some of the enthusiasm brought by this digital age, this podcast is about celebrating impactful…