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Digital Innovation Days
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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 innovations on their day of birth. We’ll find out how some brillant minds set the path with new ways to solve old business problems, create...
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 Mozilla Firefox was gaining momentum. By 2013, Chrome was dominating the web browser industry, clearly surpassing Internet Explorer and Firefox.Th...
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”, Perl was designed to make computer programming easier and faster.With the advent of the web, Perl also gained momentum. In fact, it became the domina...
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 NeXT computer at CERN as the first ever server. However, this web server was more of a small intranet for information sharing among CERN physicists ra...
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 used to find and interact with a particular device. These IP addresses can be in the IPv4 format (such as 192.168.1.1) or the newer, alphanumeric I...
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 votes from 450 students. However, since this was in violation of the university rules, Facemash was shut down after just two days. Zuckerberg, howeve...
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 transport, boat, wheelchair, or on foot.Google Maps makes use of a combination of data sources such as aggregate location data, real-time users feedba...
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 monochrome amber screen which could display graphics, DOS, and Intel 8088 4.77MHz CPU. The keyboard could be detached or folded and snapped shut in the case...
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 personalised interactive services. Today, it offers services in all 50 states where customers can have checking and savings (both regular and money market)...
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 meant to be a useful guide to navigate the world wide web, and not a business. Today, Yahoo! provides users with information, online utilities, and acc...
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 the internet without paying satellite television or cable providers. It took this website only a year to become the fourth-largest video site in the ...
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 setting up my twttr”, laid the foundation to what has now become a company with a market capitalisation of around $50 billion. Today, Twitter boasts r...
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, age, marital status, birthplace, residence, education, and employment, etc. At the time of its creation, it was the fastest business machine built ...
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 features. Initially, Gmail was an invite-only service and until 2007, users could sign up only through invites.From the very start, Google strived ...
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 known. Today, Java is the number one programming language for developers and billions of devices run on this programming language.Java was marketed ...
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 Zoom is among the leading video conferencing giants in the world with a market cap of $78.92 billion.Funnily enough, Zoom was indirectly founded out o...
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. Customers could find, download, and purchase music for just 99 cents per song, without any subscription fees. With over 70 million songs today an...
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 large-scale machine in its size, the 704 had extensive usage. To achieve high-speed computational power and versatility, this machine used stored progr...
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 provides access to prepackaged AI models and datasets, allowing users to train generative AI models and neural networks without starting from scratch....
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 reigning chess champion. This machine consisted of 2-meter tall towers, had more than 500 processors, and included 216 accelerator chips. This su...






















