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MY TOP 5 PICKS
Nest Thermostat
Who would have guessed there would be a market for an attractively designed thermostat? Well, Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod, and former Apple engineer Matt Rogers did. The pair founded smart thermostat company Nest in 2010, a surprising pivot after designing one of the most popular gadgets in history. Nest's thermostat lets you preprogram a temperature schedule. It learns your habits over time and, based on motion sensing and devices that are connected to your Wi-Fi, can tell whether someone is home and adjust accordingly. This all lowers the amount of energy your home uses when you're not home, saving customers money and the planet from unnecessary carbon emissions. It's perhaps no surprise then that Google paid $3.2 billion for Nest in 2014.
iPad
Mocked by many at the time of its 2010 launch for its name and for its awkward size somewhere between a big phone and a small computer, the iPad has sold 400 million units to date, and spawned competitors from the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Google. Today, tablets have become essential devices for business. Just look at how they've made the food service industry more efficient by replacing cash registers and help track inventory. More than one million iPad-native apps now live in the App Store, touching every industry from real estate and medicine to education.
The Self-Driving Car
Google and Apple secretly started testing fully autonomous cars in the first half of this decade. Most of the major car manufacturers, plus ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft, have since followed suit, and today, passengers can hail driverless cabs being beta tested in cities like Phoenix and Pittsburgh. Thanks to machine vision and some super-sophisticated artificial intelligence, the technology promises to make the roads a whole lot safer, resulting in 90 percent fewer deaths, according to the most optimistic estimates. At least one industry is not looking favorably on this innovation hitting the roads, more broadly: the nation's nearly four million truck and taxi drivers.
Contributed by
These are my top inventions of the past decade. It’s really incredible how much difference 10 years can make. Some of these inventions are utterly mind-blowing. Well, if you disagree, feel free to make your own list. LOL.
Lota Anadu
PAGE 21 INSIDE ACCESS | AUGUST 2020 2ND EDITION