{"id":4243,"date":"2011-11-03T08:35:19","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T14:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4243"},"modified":"2011-11-03T08:35:20","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T14:35:20","slug":"20-years-of-gadget-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4243","title":{"rendered":"20 Years of Gadget Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/allthingsd.com\/20111102\/dialing-up-20-years-of-gadget-reviews\/\">Walt Mossberg:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Consumer technology has come a long way since that day. Digital gadgets\u2014then too often designed by techies for techies\u2014have become essential to our lives, and much easier to use, even if we still need the Geek Squad and the Genius Bar more than we should. And the pace of change has been mind-boggling.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nIn 1991, most consumer computers didn\u2019t have built-in audio beyond just the ability to beep. Most lacked any way to communicate with the outside world\u2014even via a slow, dial-up modem. The Internet wasn\u2019t available to most people. Search engines and social networks didn\u2019t exist.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nMobile phones were huge bricks. Digital cameras for consumers cost a fortune and took monochrome pictures. Digital music players and video recorders, e-readers and tablets were nowhere to be found.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nSo, this week, I decided to take a look back at some of the game-changing products that appeared in this column over the past two decades and propelled us from that primitive landscape to today\u2019s interconnected digital world. This list of milestones is just a sampling; yours might differ. Also, since I write for average consumers, the list is weighted towards consumer products, not gadgets for geeks or corporate use.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walt Mossberg: Consumer technology has come a long way since that day. Digital gadgets\u2014then too often designed by techies for techies\u2014have become essential to our lives, and much easier to use, even if we still need the Geek Squad and the Genius Bar more than we should. And the pace of change has been mind-boggling. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4244,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions\/4244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}