The year 2023 has been a year of sadness for the tech enthusiast community. From the end of Skyblog to the end of E3 – a look back at the great deaths of the digital world.
Skyblog
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The Skyblog blog site was launched in 2002 by the French radio station Skyrock.
Photo: Courtesy
On August 21, French blogging site Skyblog's servers were shut down to comply with new European data laws.
The news sent shockwaves, particularly among people who grew up in the 2000s and had to say goodbye to an entire part of their lives.
The data of the several million blogs was not deleted: they were kept and anonymized by the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) and the French National Library (BNF) for research purposes.
Omegle
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A tombstone was visible on the Omegle site during dismantling.
Photo: Omegle
Live video chat platform Omegle announced in early November, 14 years after its launch, that it was ceasing operations.
The platform, which counts millions of daily users, experienced tremendous momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic as it enabled many people to break isolation. It has also been used extensively for content creation, from costumes (cosplay) to live musical performances.
However, he has been accused of facilitating sexual exploitation as Omegle has been mentioned in more than 50 cases against pedophiles in the last two years alone, the BBC reported in November.
Lightning port
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Only Apple devices have a Lightning port.
Photo: frankieleon / Flick / Creative Commons
European regulations forcing electronic device manufacturers to introduce the universal USB-C port by December 2024 have defeated the Lightning port, of which the Apple giant is the only user.
The ultimate symbol of this new rule was the launch in September of the new iPhone 15, equipped with the USB-C port.
However, Apple hasn't completely abandoned the Lightning port. The American company has put a USB-C to Lightning adapter on sale for $40. Current Mac computers, iPad tablets and AirPods Pro wireless headphones from the same brand are all already equipped with the universal connection.
Last July, Elon Musk caused a surprise when he renamed the social network Twitter to X, thus disappearing an entire vocabulary surrounding the microblogging site.
The words tweet, chirp, twittosphere, twitteur or even retweeter will gradually disappear from use, according to a lexicographer who even predicts that the words “aged” or “old” could appear alongside these words. Words in dictionaries.
X users now post easily on the social network.
Cortana
Microsoft has put an end to its intelligent personal assistant Cortana in 2023. The tool, comparable to Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, made it possible to program reminders, open applications and ask questions – all using voice commands.
While it launched in 2015 at the same time as the Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft began phasing it out in 2020 with the closure of the Cortana application for iOS and Android devices.
We can assume that the death sentence of this voice assistant is due to the giant's advances in the field of artificial intelligence, in particular its Copilot tool, whose assistance functions make Cortana obsolete.
THE 3
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E3 was once the largest video game trade fair in the world.
Photo: The Canadian Press / Casey Rodgers
After four difficult years, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), once one of the largest video game conventions in the world, finally announced its closure in December.
Launched in 1995, the show brought together tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles in its prime and aimed to meet artisans and artisans from video game studios around the world, often unveiling the first images of their work there.
The end of this event marks a wind of change in the marketing of the video game industry. Large companies are increasingly choosing to spread their news themselves: Nintendo regularly hosts Nintendo Directs, Sony, State of Play and Microsoft, Xbox Games Showcase.
Google Glasses
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Google Glass was introduced in 2013.
Photo: iStock / Jonathna
Many thought they were dead and buried for a long time, but Google's augmented reality glasses, Google Glass, had not yet spoken their last word.
They have been available from some companies since 2015, when the device stopped being sold to the public. The latest model, the Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, was announced in 2019 at a price of 1000 US dollars (1375 Canadian dollars) and allowed, for example, participation in virtual meetings using the Meet tool.
They officially signed their death warrant on September 15 when Google stopped distributing software updates for the device.
Apollo
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The Apollo application has been using Reddit's API since January 2015.
Photo: Apollo
The third-party application Apollo, adopted by a large number of Reddit forum followers for nine years, was shut down on June 30 due to decisions that divided the platform's users for months.
In particular, the site has dramatically increased prices to take advantage of its application programming interface (API), which allows third-party software to use Reddit's code to create a similar replacement service or product.
With these pricing changes, Apollo would have been forced to pay about $20 million (C$26.8 million) annually in fees. She failed to convince the platform to reverse course, much to the dismay of her followers, who preferred her interface to that of the Reddit application.
Personalities who disappeared in 2023
The year 2023 was also full of human sadness for technology enthusiasts.
Daniel Langlois
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Daniel Langlois works on the animated film “Tony de Peltrie” in 1984.
Photo: Daniel Langlois Foundation
Starting with Daniel Langlois, a pioneer of special effects, who was found dead with his partner in a burned-out car in Dominica in early December.
A pioneer of computer animation, he founded the company Softimage, whose services were used to produce 3D animations for Hollywood mega-productions such as Jurassic Park and Titanic. His successes enabled him to sell his company to Microsoft in 1994 for $200 million (C$267.8 million).
Karl Tremblay
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The Triple Boris studio, co-founded by Karl Tremblay, is founded in Varennes.
Photo: Cowboys Fringants Facebook page
The singer of the Cowboys Fringants, Karl Tremblay, who died of cancer on November 15th, left an indelible mark on the French-speaking artistic scene, but also on the video game industry. He co-founded the independent video game studio Triple Boris in 2014.
The singer's passion for video games also led him to participate in the specialist show M. Net, which aired on MusiquePlus from 1998 to 2014.
Several studios plan to pay homage to him in games still in development.
John Warnock
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John Warnock co-founded Adobe in the 1980s.
Photo: Adobe
Adobe co-founder and inventor of Illustrator software, John Warnock, described by his colleagues as one of the greatest inventors of our generation, died on August 19 at the age of 82.
We also owe him the Warnock algorithm named after him, which enables the determination of hidden surfaces and is used in computer graphics.
The “But it’s honest work” meme.
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David Brandt unintentionally became a meme in 2018.
Photo: Reddit/pettergra
David Brandt, the Ohio farmer who spawned the “But It's Honest Work” meme, died May 21 at age 76 from injuries sustained in a car accident.
A picture of the man in overalls and a checked shirt in front of his field with the words “It's not much, but it's honest work” went viral on the Internet in the late 2010s.
The worker made the statement during an event on sustainable agriculture. The meme has become a symbol of traditional values and work ethic.