2012

James Cameron is a man who clearly likes to collect records. Already, the famous film director has twice broken the record for highest-grossing movie of all time, first with "Titanic," and later with "Avatar." But in 2012, he went for a very different kind of mark: the deepest solo sea dive in history.

On March 25, Cameron piloted a submersible known as the Deepsea Challenger to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, fully 35,756 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. He was not the first to make that dive -- Navy Lt. Don … Read more

There's a school of thought that says consumers have been secretly trained in the ways of gesture control for years, starting with laptop touch pads, then smartphone screens, and even the motion-controlled Nintendo Wii. Gesture controls, whether hands-on, via a screen or input pad, or hands-off, via camera control, are now everywhere, including televisions, game consoles, and PCs.

Hands-on gesture control has moved far beyond iOS and Android devices, with an entire new operating system, Windows 8, practically built around multifinger swiping, either on a touch screen, or via one of the increasing number of oversize touch pads these … Read more

This flipping, folding combination of laptop and tablet was one of the very first glimpses anyone got of the possibilities of Windows 8. Starting with a sneak peek way back at CES 2012, the Yoga was seen as a great advertisement for the ability of Windows 8 to serve both the traditional PC and touch-screen tablet equally well, jumping between the two (nearly) seamlessly.

Almost a year after that, both Windows 8 and the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga are finally available. It's still the example of a convertible laptop/tablet most point to, and with good reason. Unlike many of … Read more

How many times have you taken a picture that would've been great if only it weren't out of focus? Well, Lytro's first-of-its-kind light-field camera solves that problem by letting you shoot first and focus later. The camera and software lets users create living pictures that can be focused again and again and again. And again.

Unfortunately, when it was initially released in March, the Lytro came across as unfinished with lots of promises for what was possible and what was to come, which included support for Windows.

To its credit, Lytro has made good on those promises … Read more

Drone aircraft have been a fixture of U.S. combat and intelligence operations for some years now. But in 2012, the U.S. military's use of unmanned aircraft like the Reaper reached unprecedented levels, in both absolute and relative numbers. Looking at Pentagon stats, Wired reckons that the record 447 drone strikes in Afghanistan last year accounted for 11.5 percent of the U.S. air war, more than double the level of the year before. It's easy to understand why military planners are leaning more and more on drones -- they're a bargain, relatively speaking; they'… Read more

There were few sights as thrilling -- or as terrifying -- this year as that of Felix Baumgartner stepping out of a balloon gondola at 128,100 feet (24 miles) above the Earth. The 43-year-old Austrian daredevil was on a singular mission: to become the first person ever to go faster than the speed of sound in freefall. Why? Essentially, just because. Oh, Baumgartner and his backers at Red Bull Stratos talked a good game about the contributions to scientific understanding of human exposure at such a rarefied and deadly altitude (the "edge of space" they called it, … Read more

Much of the talk about smartphones in 2012 centered around swifter processing power and 4G data. Mobile addicts know, however, that all the fancy features in the world are useless if your battery runs dry.

Luckily handset-maker Motorola decided to make battery life a serious priority this year in its Droid series phones on Verizon. First the Droid Razr Maxx broke all the run time records with its massive 3,300 mAh battery. A little while later, Motorola followed up with the Droid Razr Maxx HD, which used the same legendary 3,300mAh battery but upped the ante with fresh … Read more

At the Technosensual exhibition in Vienna earlier this year, models sashayed down the runway in clothing rigged with sensors, speakers, and LEDs. Fashion of the future? Maybe, but hitting the street decked out in wearable tech has never been more today.

Some of the technology -- like the fleece with embedded video player that just went on sale at Macy's -- aims for fashion, while much of it aims for function.

Been noticing more jogging stats and maps running through your Facebook and Twitter feeds? Pedometer-style devices like the Fitbit Zip and Nike FuelBand kicked up the social this … Read more

Working conditions at the plants that make many of our favorite consumer electronics have long been a subject of concern -- even for those manufacturers that contract with them.

Employees at Foxconn factories in China have committed suicide, jumping from buildings. Explosions have injured and even killed workers at plants run by Foxconn and another contact manufacturer, Pegatron. And pay has been often barely enough for Chinese workers to get make ends meet and send a bit home to their families.

Those issues came to a head after an exhaustive New York Times report on working conditions at Foxconn. Activists … Read more