Gadgetory

friends followers subscribers were gathered together once again in this dark corner of the studio with some fake flowers to say goodbye to the gadgets and technology that we lost this year sometimes tech just gets outdated and phased out over time and sometimes it is just a hot mess failure that should have never been launched in the first place in either case here's our memorial to the tech that died in 2018 let's start with yahoo messenger which met its end in july at the hands of its new owner Verizon don't forget Verizon not only acquired Yahoo but it also bought AOL a few years ago that means Verizon killed both Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger so Verizon basically killed my online childhood but in Verizon's quest to be a new hip media company it made this new video app called go 90 which totally failed and shut down in July Verizon reportedly poured 1.2 billion dollars to make go 90 a destination for the snapchat generation a place to find original web series and sports and network shows but it was overhyped with a dumb name go 90 has gone to the app graveyard remember path well I thought it was dead long ago but surprise it officially perished October 1st this social network started in 2010 and it got a lot of buzz for taking on Facebook with a different approach users could only have 50 friends at a time so is more private at one point it was adding 1 million users every week and it was worth half a billion dollars it made stickers popular in chat and as you would expect Facebook copied all the things that made it unique sending path down a dead end it was a rough year for social media even Nintendo had to own up to failure when it shut down miitomo it was Nintendo's first smartphone app with a social twist where your Mii characters could interact with other Me's and there was this little game thing that earned prizes and there really wasn't much substance to it but it was cute it had a big launch in 2016 with more than 10 million people signing up in the first month but when the charm faded miitomo how to be put in the meat tomb oh there's no morning the next one on the list Klout it was a service that ranked you for how much influence you had on social media but the ranking system was completely meaningless not to mention tacky too bad it took ten years for the service to finally admit it didn't have enough clout to keep it going but here's one that will break your heart curry the home robot has gone kaput you may remember this little fella from CES 2017 made by Mayfield robotics a division of Bosch it was supposed to be this little smart assistant like an Amazon echo speaker with a cute face and it wiggled around your floor and it promised to be a security camera that map's your house and you could tell your dog get off the couch when you weren't home but is an Amazon echo on wheels worth $700 no and no it is not also in the smart home category target couldn't make fetch happen it halted a line of products that would have automatically ordered refills for you the program was called fetch there was a smart soap dispenser and a smart toilet paper roll holder springy thing Target conducted a limited beta test of these Bluetooth connected household goods as a way to challenge Amazon but target announced in August that the program was no more some deaths don't get much attention because the world just moves on with new technology demands Apple stopped making airport routers in the iPhone 10 the iPhone se and the iPhone 6s Amazon stopped offering customers free storage to hold all their music mp3s GoPro said it's getting out of the drone business and stop making karma and snapchat is still around but it stopped offering a way to send money to friends with snapcash but the biggest death of the year was one of the biggest frauds in tech history Baroness the blood testing biotech company claimed it invented a way to do these comprehensive blood tests with just a single drop of blood folks said this would change the world and thier nose was once valued at nine billion dollars with the CEO Elizabeth Holmes being called the next Steve Jobs but after a Wall Street Journal report investigations began to reveal how the tech was flawed and it didn't do it was promised the company didn't just make false claims about the tech but also its financial performance the CEO agreed to settle fraud charges with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the company has been dissolved good riddance and if you're wondering what's next on the chopping block well some deaths have already been announced for next year very soon we're going to have to say goodbye to google plus at geo cities Sony is gonna stop making the PS Vita and the iconic Volkswagen Beetle is also being ended next year I'm Bridget Carey and until next time good luck surviving 2019