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The technology industry is huge and, while the big names dominated in 2015, here’s a round-up of some of the most interesting alternative tech stories of the year that didn’t involve Apple, someone being hacked, or drones.
Though the first of this modern generation of wearables arrived back in 2013, this was without doubt the year they came to real prominence. This was in part down to the long-awaited arrival of the Apple Watch – “legitimising” the wearables market in the eyes of some Apple-obsessed consumers. But the sheer number of wearables, for a range of price tags, has seen them properly start to appear in the wild for the first time.
Bet you’ve seen at least one person on the Tube wearing one.
Huawei entered the fray, Motorola launched the second 360, Sony launched the Smartwatch 3, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Gear 2, Pebble extended their own line of watches, while Tag Heuer became the first traditional watchmaker to join in.
That’s a lot of smartwatches, and that’s before we get to the fitness trackers and movement monitors popularised by FitBit, Garmin and Misfit. If you get through the Christmas period without seeing a wearable given as a gift, you’ll have done very well.
2015 has been a turbulent year for one of the world’s biggest social networks. Twitter has seen it all this year – criticism for their own CEO on the way they handle abuse, the same CEO then leaving, constant negative comparisons to Facebook, share price drops and a painstaking quest to raise user numbers.
Still they sit around a billion behind Facebook.
The whirlwind began with Dick Costolo in his role as CEO sending a memo to staff that admitted the site “sucks” at dealing with internet trolls and abuse. Cue a massive overhaul of the reporting system before, ultimately, the departure of Costolo.
In stepped former co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. A man who has already been ousted once by the firm. He would go on to admit in a conference call on financial results that the social media site was too confusing for new users to understand.
To try to boost user numbers, the site did away with coloured wallpapers on timelines, introduced Twitter videos and replaced the star-based Favourite button with a heart-shaped Like option.
The latter actually brought some good news as use jumped up well over 10%, suggesting that Twitter might finally be on the right path going into 2016.
The crying tears of laughter emoji was named word of the year, despite the minor obstacle that it’s not actually a word. The same emoji has also now been used more than a billion times on Twitter, and the world went crazy at the news that the most recent update included a burrito icon.
To many they are now a second language, and you’ve probably even had a text message from your mum that included one.
They’ve reached the older generation, that’s how big they’ve gotten.
In an age when a polished presentation from a company CEO isn’t just the norm, it’s completely expected, the BlackBerry chief stood alone this year.
Sadly, it was for the wrong reasons. When the company’s chief John Chen stepped in front of news cameras to give a first hands-on with the Priv, which launched this year, it got very painful very quickly.
In Chen’s defence the device he was handed no doubt moments before he went on air should have been better prepared, but Chen’s awkward delivery didn’t help.
You can’t really imagine Satya Nadella or Tim Cook getting in the same situation.
In response to the growing power of gamers who stream and post their gameplay online, YouTube launched a dedicated gaming site this year.
With channels for thousands of games, the site also has live-streaming functionality and has already featured at several high profile game launches and e-sports tournaments.
Amazon-owned Twitch already boasts millions of active users and stream posts. YouTube thinks it can get a share of that too.
In mildly confusing news, Google announced it was creating a new overall parent company – Alphabet – with the rest of the search engine giant being reshuffled and better organised.
It also meant some of the projects that were birthed in Google’s Project X Labs – including Google Glass and the autonomous car project – have become independent businesses under the Alphabet umbrella.
A homemade robot called hitchBOT who wanted to see the world had successfully hitch-hiked across Canada in 2014. Now he wanted to conquer America, relying solely on the kindness of strangers to make it across the country.
Canada's hitchhiking robot lasts just two weeks in US before getting decapitated. http://t.co/802FBRUMho #smh pic.twitter.com/0bJexW3igk
— Lauren O'Neil (@laurenonizzle) August 2, 2015
Sadly he only lasted two weeks this time, before being decapitated in Philadelphia.
