2000-2009: A Round-up
2nd Jan 2010 11:35amWell now as we're in the "10's" now, I'd like to do a round-up on a decade that I can throughly remember. This past decade (The Noughties) has been a mainly technological age for us all, plus also has had some very disasterous outcomes too. So lets start with the beginning of the decade and the celebrations of the new Millenium.
Technology
With the roll-out of broadband to pretty much anyone and everyone during the turn of the Millenium, the internet started to become the main hub for different types of media (i.e; music, movies, tv programs), mainly this was an illegal activity in many countries, however was easily achieved via free Peer-to-Peer programs such as KaZaA and Limewire. To stop activities like this and causing many companies to lose millions, if not billions of revenue, services such as iTunes, Napster and Spotify were created, along with online MP3 downloading websites such as 7Digital. Social networking was also one of the main things that became a huge hit during the mid-millenium when the sudden - yet popular - rise of MySpace came along - with everyone allowed to have their own customisable profiles and ability to add people as friends and leave comments on each others pages. MySpace mainly sparked it off with the whole social networking thing and as its popularity grew and grew, more sites began to pop-up like Bebo, Facebook and Twitter - all of which follow similar roles and are also accessible via a normal internet connection or through WAP supplied by your mobile phone operator. MySpace has proven a hit with many singers, as if it wasn't for MySpace then we wouldn't have Lily Allen or Arctic Monkeys.
Along with the trend of everything evolving, in the noughties we said goodbye to our 3 and a half inch floppys *cough* ... floppy discs!! And said hello to the USB pen, so instead of only having 1.44MB of space available (plus also the huge risk of data loss on them) we were now allowed to have something a lot smaller offering a lot more space (64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, etc...) for a nice low price... plus they're roughly the same size as a lighter and reliable. Computers and laptops are starting to equal out as laptops are coming down in price and going up in specifications meaning more people are opting for the more portable option. Not only was computer based products evolving in this technological age, but so was our televisions with the introduction of play-pause-record TV and onDemand services where we could catch up with programs that we'd missed and we even had interactive services that had upgraded our original Teletext service - damn I remember those old days of having to wait ages for the page to search.
Stereo appliances have also changed too so it was a goodbye to the old casette players and most Stereo Hi-Fi's were made with just a CD player and radio built in, then came the ability to play MP3 files from a CD on them, then along came DAB Radio as the analog signals start getting cut off for TV and Radio and now some systems even have harddrives in them so you can use them a multimedia centres. Talking of multimedia centres, we cannot forget that we had the Playstation 2 released just at the turn of the millenium with its brilliant (at the time) graphics and powerful (also at the time) specifications and also the XBox, Playstation 3, XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS/DS Lite and a million and one new gaming franchises.
Certain websites were also gaining huge popularity in the noughties clocking up millions of views each day, including Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, eBay, WikiPedia, YouTube, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, GenesReunited and Twitter. Along with internet technology updating all the time, many people found it easier to also make things online to share with the world - so became a generation of homebrew cartoons (flash based), games, tutorials, guides. The internet during the past 9 years has turned into a huge information tank - which thankfully is easy to filter through thanks to the help of Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.
As the decade plodded on, we had also seen the introduction of cost-efficient solar panels, ultra-flat screen televisions and monitors, touch-screen displays, digital cameras, mobile phones gaining cameras and other features all crammed in, digital switchover, blu-ray DVDs, high-definition TV, hybrid vehicles, GPS based instruments (i.e; TomTom), VOIP and affordable corrective eye surgery.
Who knows what technological advances we'll have in the next 10 years!
Disasters
Along with all the wonderful advances we've had this past decade, there has also been a lot of tragedy too.
9/11 (September 11th 2001) was a day that no-one worldwide will ever forget, I personally can still remember that day ... I remember sitting on my computer when my Uncle phoned my Dad and told him to put the news on, so we both went into the living room and stuck glued to the TV watching just one tower burning - then the second plane hit, right in-front of our eyes. It was a very sad day for America, with 2,991 lives gone in the space of just over an hour and a half. All this resulted in the War on Terrorism.
NASA's Columbia Space Shuttle disintergrated over Texas on February 1st, 2003 during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere killing all 7 crew members. The summer of 2003 witnessed the deadliest heatwave in human history causing 37,451 deaths over the summer months in Europe.
2004 - Madrid Train Bombings - claiming 191 lives. A quarter of a million people are killed after a Tsunami hit the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004. 7th and 21st July 2005 saw London attacked by terrorists killing around 56 people and also claiming the life of Jean Charles de Menezes. 2008 - Mumbai attacks claiming 175 lives.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina almost wiped New Orleans off the map when it came ashore, broke the levees and caused $81.2 billion dollars worth of damage and killing an estimated 1,836 people and flooding pretty much the whole city.
2009 also saw the return of H1N1 Virus, commonly known as Swine Flu and so far it is still spreading around the world with a death-toll so far of 12,970 (of which 772 of them were in the past 8 days).
Events
The noughties has seen many events happen including the Euro becoming the main currency in 12 of the 15 European Union States, the outbreak of SARS, the capturing of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. NASA's Spirit Rover lands on Mars in 2004. The United States of America get their first black (well half-cast) President, Barack Obama in 2008/2009 creating mass-celebration around the nation.
Deaths
2001 - George Harrison
2005 - Pope John Paul II
2006 - Saddam Hussein (Executed)
2009 - Michael Jackson
Future
Hmmm... now thinking towards what the next 10 years has in-store might be slightly mind-bending but I think we're going to accomplish a lot more this next decade and I'm also going to say that by January 1st, 2020, we'll have found a cure to one of the big killers (i.e; Cancer, HIV/AIDS, etc...) *fingers crossed*
1 Comment(s) -:- PermalinkTags: 2000, 2009, millenium, noughties, technology, kazaa, limewire, itunes, napster, spotify, 7digital, myspace, bebo, facebook, twitter, lily allen, arctic monkeys, usb pens, teletext, dab radio, playstation, xbox, wii, nintendo ds, september 11th, terrorism,
An Update
17th May 2009 16:37pmI suppose it's time I did an update. Well where to start first... hmm... well I ended up getting a letter from the doctors the other day stating that the nurse practioner that had seen me before about my chest has been "trying to contact me" ... like bollocks has she. Anyways, she wants me to go for a "reversibility testing" thing... not sure what it is - though I have done a good oldé Google search on it and I think it's something to do with breath tests or something like that to see if my lungs are fine, but low-and-behold the usual "you smoke, blah blah" nonsense will dribble from her gob. Also I think she may have like put me on the wrong thing... as a the letter mentions about inhalers... oh well, that's going to be on Tuesday 26th May anyways... but I've (luckily) got another appointment there tomorrow afternoon to see (not my doctor - as he isn't available this week nor next week, as he'll probably be swanning off and living the high life relaxing on a beach somewhere, drowning his sorry life away) ... *cough* ... anywhos... oh yeah, so I've got that appointment tomorrow so I'll see what that bloke says. I think it's the doctor who diagnosed me with epididymitus when I was just turning 16 (and that flared back up just before I was 18) ... it's one hell of a painful thing.
Right, so that's my health out the way... next... oh turd! ... I've just got an email from GoDaddy saying Sound Upload is expiring tomorrow ... oh balls, talk about awkward timing. Suppose I better skank some money from my mother to cover it. Erm... what else is there... erm... oh I've been searching around online to start writing stuff up about all the Open Source / Free Alternatives to "Paid Software" that's lying around on the net. I've mentioned before on here about Spotify [Story: 569], which I'm hoping you've gave a go... though they still haven't got any of The Beatles stuff on there yet. I might even make my playlist and post the link so if you're using Spotify, it'll show all my songs that I've got listed.
Now going back last year, when Britain's Got The Pop Factor... and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice was on... well obviously I had to buy the CD, because Geraldine McQueen is like a legend. Well I only noticed earlier when I was looking on WikiPedia about Michelle Mc-massive-anus-Manus that her first album is the same as The Winners Song cover... then it all fell into place, that Peter Ka... I mean, Geraldine McQueen based herself on her. God, I'm so slow!
Been playing my Goonzu Game after redownloading the game client again... half a gig download from a foreign server, with no option to shove it on a download accelerator... I've never seen something as slow since dial-up was around at the turn of the millenium... 2kbps. Though it came down, patched it up too (had to do that manually - grrr!) and also now there's also three servers on there... though I just stick to the Zeus server. Lost my Warehouses and my horse died, so I've now got a horse that has legs that run really fast, yet it only moves slowly... it's so funny... I can't actually ride it as I always end up giggling too much to play properly.
Right... I think that's a big enough update for the moment. Anything else, I will update. (Especially will be updating tomorrow, when I find out what this other doctor says...)
TTFN.
0 Comment(s) -:- PermalinkTags: pectus excavatum, chest, doctor, nurse, google, inhaler, epididymitus, godaddy, sound upload, domain name, software, open source, spotify, geraldine mcqueen, peter kay, michelle mcmanus, goonzu, zeus, louhan
Spotify - Free Music (and Legal!)
31st Mar 2009 22:14pm
Now we all know Napster... all those bad times it went through then it's transformation to legality, well there is a slightly new-ish piece of software released, which I only came across last night and I think it's brilliant!
Think of a Free Napster for life, with no buffering (so instant playing), playlists, custom made radio stations and artist listings that will even make the biggest music fan weak at the knees! Well this piece of software has it!
The software is called Spotify and is free to download for the United Kingdom (I'm unsure about any other countries just yet) and with the free version, you can search thousands upon thousands of tracks and play them instantly. When you click an artist / band it gives you a list of all their albums, along with the songs on that album and also all single releases (with the extra bonus mix tracks on it) and also a list of all the compilation albums that any of their songs have appeared on. The searching is pretty much instant and to play a song, you just double click it! Simple!! You can also make playlists too and also you can also right click a song and add it to your queue.
So you may be thinking "wow! this piece of software sounds amazing... but what's the catch?" ... well there isn't really a catch. The software is Adware, so it's funded by adverts. Every now and then a banner advert will appear at the bottom of the software and also on the right-hand side too - which isn't bad or intrusive (also there are no popups in it either!). Also every 5-15 songs you listen to a small commercial will play - which cannot be skipped and also if you turn the volume of the advert down so far, it pauses the advert... and it also pauses when you turn your volume down on your volume settings in your system tray, however it's only for about 30 seconds and isn't really that bad considering you're getting a free piece of music software!
So go on, give it a go! I've been using it all day today and think it's amazing! (Oh there are only a few tracks that cannot be played - due to a few rights restrictions in this country - however everything that I've listened to works!)
Just go on the Spotify website and click "Free Download" and install and you're then on your way to free LEGAL music 24 hours a day! (Oh and one final thing... you cannot save the tracks to your computer - so it's only a streaming based piece of music software)
1 Comment(s) -:- PermalinkTags: spotify, streaming, music, free music, napster, playlists
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