Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ten Gadgets That Defined the Decade

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-the-lists-begin dept.

Corpuscavernosa writes "As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts and show them off in chronological order. It's arguable that if this wasn't the decade of gadgets, it was certainly a decade shaped by gadgets — one which saw the birth of a new kind of connectedness. In just ten years time, gadgets have touched almost every aspect of our daily lives, and personal technology has come into its own in a way never before seen. It's a decade that's been marked the ubiquity of the internet, the downfall of the desktop, and the series finale of Friends, but we've boiled it down to the ten devices we've loved the most and worked the hardest over the past ten years. We even had some of our friends in the tech community chime in with their picks on what they thought was the gadget or tech of the decade."

4 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. The list by xaosflux · · Score: 5, Informative

    Canon Digital ELPH (2000)
    Apple PowerBook G4 (Titanium) (2001)
    Microsoft Windows XP (2001) / Apple Mac OS X (2000)
    Apple iPod (2001)
    TiVo Series2 (2002)
    Motorola RAZR V3 (2003)
    PalmOne Treo 600 / 650 (2003 / 2004)
    Microsoft Xbox 360 (2005)
    Apple iPhone (2007)
    ASUS Eee PC 900 (2008)

  2. Re:XP and OS X? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wrong. The term "widget" has existed for far longer than any real computer technology.

  3. Re:The decade isn't over yet! by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 4, Informative

    Dammit, people. The decade runs through 2010. 2001-2010. Next year is the end of the decade. Not this year.

    2001-2010 is a decade. So is 2003-2013. Or 1998-2007. However, the decade generally means a set of years such that floor(year/10) is constant for all years in the set. Or, as the New Oxford American Dictionary says in one of its definitions, "a period of ten years beginning with a year ending in 0".

    Yes, I know, you are going to say something about there being no year 0. That has no relevance whatsoever to how we choose today to group our years into a disjoint set of decades.

  4. Re:XP and OS X? by trickyD1ck · · Score: 4, Informative

    here you go: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/widget

    Or, as Wikipedia has it: "An indefinite name for a gadget or mechanical contrivance, esp. a small manufactured item"