This past year we saw plenty of cool new technology.
There were smartwatches, 4K televisions, and Google Glass.
But we also saw the death of many gadgets and services.
I'm Bridget Carey and in this special edition of CNET Update, we look back at some of the tech that we lost in 2013.
Google is quick to try new things and it's also quick to kill products that don't work.
In July,
Google shut down Reader.
It was a web-based RSS Feed reader that launched in 2005 and people used it to keep up with news from their favorite websites.
But when it closed, sites like Digg, and Feedly rushed in to fill the hole it left behind.
This was also the final year for iGoogle.
It also debuted in 2005 and it let users customize their homepage with widgets, but it met its end in November.
Many bloggers were upset with the death of Posterous, the service that challenged Tumblr.
It was shut down April 30th after being acquired by Twitter a year earlier.
Posterous first launched in 2008.
Microsoft's Hotmail was moved over to Outlook.com over the summer.
Those with the Hotmail email address could keep their name, but everything was just moved to Outlook.com.
This was the year where Microsoft admitted defeat and killed the Tag.
It was its own alternative to the black and white QR code.
This box of colorful triangles was used by many advertisers and magazines,
but scanning codes with a special app never took off with the public.
This summer, Yahoo shut down one of the oldest search engines, AltaVista, it launched in 1995 and Yahoo ended up acquiring AltaVista in 2003.
Most folks were surprised Yahoo kept it alive all this time.
We lost an old friend in Winamp, the multimedia player that was the first software many people used to play MP3s.
It was huge in the 90s, AOL owned it and decided it wasn't worth keeping around anymore.
Many
folks thought otherwise and started a petition on savewinamp.com.
We're seeing the evolution of digital media and 3D TV is not working out.
ESPN dropped its 3D sports channel and now it's focusing on new tech, like 4K resolution.
One of the most unexpected losses this year was from Apple.
It killed the one-year old iPhone 5 and replaced it with the 5C.
Usually Apple keeps old models around and just lowers the price.
But the biggest lost for technology this year is the
Panasonic Plasma TV.
The company announced it is no longer making plasma TVs and that's unfortunate because Panasonic's plasmas are the favorite television of the CNET reviews team.
These TVs hit the sweet spot of value and performance, but plasma has been losing market share to LCDs.
And looking ahead to 2014, let's see if Blackberry can make it out alive.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
