Top Ten Tech Advances in the 00's

Preface
I'm a little behind the times, so pardon the advances that don't technically fit in the last decade.

1. Deep Blue
On the eleventh of May in 1997, Deep Blue beat the world champion Gerry Kasparov at a game of chess.  Deep Blue was a computer designed and built by IBM with the intention of playing chess.  The match lasted six games and included one win by Kasparov, three draws, and two wins by Deep Blue.

Deep Blue - the chess computer built by IBM

2. Napster
The beginning of decentralized file sharing, Napster was created in 1999.  The number of unique users on Napster peaked in February 2001, but by that point the company was deep into legal battles that eventually caused its demise.

3. Wikipedia
Although it may not be the most academically sound source available, Wikipedia is one of my more turned-to sources for quick and approximate information.  I'll admit that it was one of my sources for creating this article.  Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001 and now holds over 14 million articles.

4. iPod
Steve Jobs has been named by Fortune magazine as the CEO of the decade.  There is no doubt in my mind that part of that title comes from the success of the iPod (launched on October 23, 2001).  The iPod has changed the way people view portable music devices.

5. Facebook
That ever-present procrastination technique, Facebook was launched for college students on February 4, 2004.  Since then, Facebook has grown to more than 350 million users.  Interestingly enough, 62 million of those users have signed up to play Farmville.

6. Firefox
According to some sources, Firefox controlled approximately 47% of the internet browser market as of November 2009, five years after its initial release on November 9, 2004.  Firefox has experienced widespread success as computer users try to find a web browser that better suits their needs.

7. YouTube
YouTube was launched in February of 2005 and has grown to such an extent that it has replaced some people's entire music library.  Recently U2 broadcast their entire concert in the Rose Bowl in California live on YouTube, the first time a global broadcast of a concert had taken place on the site.

8. Multi-core Processors
I'm not entirely sure where in the timeline to place this advance, but the fact is, multi-core processors have changed the computer landscape.  Whether or not you agree about whether the advance has really made a significant change to your computer's speed, you have to admit that a computer doing two (or more) things simultaneously is cool.  Well, perhaps cooler once you understand concurrency at an operating systems level, but that's another article for another day.

9. Jaguar
Jaguar is where multi-core processors really get to thrive.  I'm not talking about the luxury car, but about the fastest computer in the world currently (according to www.top500.org).  Installed in 2009, this supercomputer can crank out up to 2.3x10^15 floating point operations per second (or 2.3 petaflop/s)on its 224162 cores.  That's fast.

10. Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider has finally become the world's highest energy particle collider on December 8, 2009 after a long build and troubleshooting process.  The collision reached energy levels of 2.36 TeV and was recorded by ATLAS, part of the CERN installation, but is expected to function at energy levels up to 7TeV.

...Technical Fouls

HD-DVD
The HD-DVD/Blu-ray fight was the second large video format war that Sony has been involved in (kudos to the first person to comment online and name the other format war).  Although being backed by Microsoft and Intel, the HD-DVD format ended up losing enough support that Sony's Blu-ray format won this war.

Youtube
By the middle of this past year, Google was still trying to make YouTube a profitable business venture.  This isn't really surprising, especially considering bandwidth costs were estimated to be $1 million US per day in March 2008.

Windows Vista
The operating system we all know and love - Windows Vista.  After development had been completed on November 8, 2006, the estimated cost to Microsoft is $6 billion.  And we all know how well it works.  'nuff said.