2012

The photo-filtering frenzy that is Instagram grew into a true phenomenon this past year as Android users got invited into the Instagram clubhouse. Some in the iOS crowd weren't thrilled about sharing, unleashing a Twitter war of words between the two camps. Tweets veered from whiny to borderline offensive. Those waters have since calmed, but not all is smooth sailing on the sea of Instagram.

Following the lead of feuding fans, Twitter and Instagram have gotten into it by refusing to play nice with each other. The result is a turf war that has Twitter working on its own photo-filtering system … Read more

Intel's "ultrabook" campaign was born in 2011, ostensibly to bring Apple-style sex appeal to stodgy PC laptops. No longer would Windows laptops look like embarrassing, blocky throwbacks. Instead, you'd get ultrathin design, light weight, and solid performance -- basically, a Windows machine with the same design chops as the MacBook Air.

That was the plan, anyway. As the ultrabook train rolled into 2012, its very definition became increasingly vague -- small screen sizes and flash storage were no longer "must-haves," which pretty much stretched the definition of "ultrabook" to "almost any … Read more

The business of home entertainment is changing slowly but surely, and 2012 moved the needle even further away from traditional cable company models and toward streaming services. DVR usage is higher than ever, but more importantly people are looking to on-demand brands like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant, and HBO Go to augment and in some cases replace regular TV. This year we also saw new products catering to "cord cutters" -- startup-centric upstarts like Simple TV (a DVR for over-the-air TV), Aereo (app-based TV delivered over the Internet), and the Boxee TV (featuring a Cloud DVR). TV providers … Read more

As manufacturers released new smartphones with larger screens, people began to ask themselves, "How big will these things get?" But as we saw with the Samsung Galaxy Note, which debuted at the tail end of 2011, phones can get much, much bigger.

With its 5.3-inch HD screen, the Note redefined the trend by pushing the limits of smartphone touch screens, while testing user tolerance for size. Of course there were skeptics. Were people ready for such a gigantic screen? And are users seriously going to use that stylus? While the term "phablet" -- a portmanteau … Read more

In April, Facebook said it would buy the young but fast-growing, photo-sharing service Instagram for a jaw-dropping $1 billion. By early December, consumer and entertainment startups were complaining they were having a hard time finding early-stage funding. So what happened? It would be easy to blame Bravo's nausea-inducing reality TV show for the reversal of startup fortunes, but the reality is something a little less Hollywood: Lack of good ideas, economic fears, and poor returns from many of the startups that have already been funded.

In other words, an investment cycle obsessively focused on consumer-tech startups may have finally … Read more

Got an idea for a new product but haven't tracked down enough serious investors yet? Why not just ask the great multitude of strangers online to front you the dough? Sounds crazy, but this notion, better known as crowdfunding, took off like a rocket in 2012.

Kickstarter, the best known of the crowdfunding platforms, has been around for more than three years now, but this was the year projects like the Pebble smart watch and Ouya game console raised millions of dollars on the platform. In fact, the growing number of multimillion-dollar crowdfunding campaigns have all happened in 2012.… Read more

Wireless operators say they face a crisis if they can't get additional wireless spectrum to fuel the growth of mobile data usage. What does it mean for the average cell phone customer? As some wireless operators scramble to get their hands on additional network capacity, they've rejiggered their data plans to put some heavy data users on a mobile data diet. A couple of years ago the two biggest players -- AT&T and Verizon Wireless -- eliminated all their all-you-can-eat plans for new customers. And this year, Verizon made it harder for existing Verizon customers to … Read more

Apple and Samsung's patent fight may have received the most attention about intellectual property litigants, but they were hardly the only ones. In fact, it may be easier to name big tech companies not engaged in a patent suit than it is to name the ones that have taken their intellectual property disputes the courtroom...or at least threatening to do so. The so-called balance of terror where big companies amass stockpiles of patents in order to discourage litigation turned into a legal free-for-all. Barely a day passed when a tech company, from Facebook to Microsoft, wasn't named … Read more

If it just didn't work, the thought on some people's minds became whether quality at Apple has begun to slip with the intensely detail-driven Steve Jobs no longer at the helm.

Some examples of flubs included an ill-received overhaul of the built-in maps software in iOS, which CEO Tim Cook later described as something the company "screwed up"; some very bad TV commercials featuring one of the company's "Genius" support crew; and changes to Apple's retail operations which brought cut hours and -- in some cases -- layoffs at the company's … Read more