In no particular order...
Google: It seems that not a week went by without some news
(and it was really news) about the ubiquitous search company. The
highlights: Free email, free satellite images, free Wi-Fi (if you live
in the right neighborhood, but be patient), daily stock price highs,
and a
new deal with
AOL. The lowlights: being sued by publishers and
becoming
a resource for hackers.
Katrina: The US was tested on the world wide stage in the
weeks and months following the hurricane that hammered the Gulf
Coast. Close to home, Page Editor
gregoryyoung
found himself evacuated and relocated a couple of times, and spent a
month living in a motel in Georgia before finding a new house and a
new job. The highlights:
the Survival
Blog that still amazes. The lowlights can be summed up in one
word:
FEMA.
Microsoft: No list of tech stories would be complete without
the folks from Redmond. Highlights:
beta versions of IE7 (which
doesn't work on older operating systems) and Vista (AKA Longhorn, which
had a virus written for it within 24 hours), the Xbox360 (which may or
may not be buggy and doesn't have that much new software anyway),
the settlement of most of the major lawsuits against it (but there's
still that
European Union
thing out there), Bill Gates not only
was knighted, but
together with wife Melinda and singer Bono, was Time's
Person
of the Year. The lowlights: We can't think of a single thing,
but we'll have
patch for it a
week from Tuesday.
Cisco: One big story dominated the news for a couple of
weeks during the summer, when the company threatened legal action
against Mike Lynn, a consultant who was scheduled to give a talk on
flaws in Cisco's systems. Lynn gave the report anyway at the
Black
Hat conference in July, Cisco sued, and caught all kinds of
grief. To make things worse, Lynn went to work for Cisco rival
Juniper in November.
US national security: Between stories of long delays
at airports, outdated computer systems and software, and domestic
wiretaps without warrants, many of the public information officers
in various departments and agencies in the US government earned
their Christmas bonuses this year. One bright spot was that
The Patriot
Act was extended -- but only for five weeks.
Wikipedia: The online encyclopedia had a great year,
becoming the
second-highest
ranked reference site on the Internet in April. But for all
its successes, it took a real hit in the last month or so of the
year when a former Robert Kennedy aide's biography was edited to
include the allegation the aide was involved in Kennedy's
assassination. That brought about changes to Wikipedia's original
system of allowing anyone to anonymously edit articles -- which
itself brought about new rules for creating and editing
articles.
Oracle: Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft made for
interesting reading in the financial pages at the end of last year,
but that didn't slow the database giant; by the end of 2005, it
had acquired several more companies, and finished the year by
winning approval from the European Union to
merge with
Siebel, a transaction that still faces scrutiny from the US
Department of Justice.
Sony BMG and the recording industry: So much to say, so
little room. The recording industry kept suing 12-year-olds and
soccer moms, losing in the court of public opinion, but winning
in court rooms and the marketplace by shutting down Kazaa in
Australia and the original version of Napster. But all of that
paled compared to the scandal over Sony's copy-protection system
built into its CDs, which created a huge security hole for anyone
who dared make a backup copy of a disk. Last week, Sony settled a
class action lawsuit over the matter, but still looming on the
horizon: a big fight with Apple over the pricing of iTunes, and
subpoenas
from the New York Attorney General.
Apple and Intel: Still the subject of
the
best quote of the year, two weeks after Intel CEO Paul Otellini
said people should buy a Macintosh, Apple announced it was switching
to Intel processors. While both had some strange days during the year
(Apple's botched search for the people who released "secret"
product information, and Intel's slip into second place in the
consumer computer processor battle with AMD), both went out with
triumphs: Apple has the video iPod, and Intel has
a new
logo.
Open source: The open source movement got three huge
boosts in 2005, as first
IBM and
then
Sun
Microsystems announced major initiatives into the field. But
the biggest boost came in September, when the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts became the first state to
mandate
open source documents for all state agencies.
These aren't the most popular, but they're among the sites we've
found in our attempts to bring you news that's entertaining, pertinent,
and even occasionally important.
Information
Week -- Another news site that focuses a little more on
the people side of technology.
Earthcam -- We
found this when they put up a list of the 25 most "compelling" cams
that included
Skellefteå,
Sweden, one of our favorite cities anywhere.
SlashDot -- You never
know what you're going to find, except there are some pretty funny
people who post.
Wikipedia -- We
don't care to get in the middle of the site's recent issues. But
we will say that following the site's history pages and rules
is fascinating stuff.
Snopes -- The
Mikkelsons never cease to amaze me. Every time we get an email from
some friend telling me something is true, Snopes is our first
point of reference.
Who
Would Buy That? -- There's something to be said for people
who spend hours looking for stuff that someone, somewhere, probably
wants.
EEQP --
ameba gets
ink almost every issue of the EE Newsletter, but he keeps adding
new things. The latest: SVG charts.
The Register
-- Sometimes we take ourselves just a little too seriously. For
better or worse, this British site is what most tech news sites
would be if they had a sense of humor.
EE Stuff -- Okay,
we're pulling a bit of a fast one, but this site -- brand new --
holds all the newsletters we have, plus will link to everything
EE-related.
Making a list, checking it who knows how many times. Some of
the lists are actually pretty entertaining.
Ten
Worst Products Of 2005 -- We actually had
one of these on our Christmas list because the idea seems
pretty good. We admit, though, that we didn't review it.
Ten
Worst Products of the Decade -- Microsoft hits the daily
double with Bob and me... ME. This is what can happen when the boss
takes an interest in a project manager.
Six Least Safe New Cars -- At least three of these
will surprise you. On the other hand, three of them won't come
as any news at all.
Ten
Most Fattening Cocktails -- We're still trying to figure
out why tonic water has so many calories. The secret to staying
somewhat slim while you're getting happy: avoid sweet stuff.
Twenty Internet
Vulnerabilities -- The list is NOT all about Windows, though
Redmond does hold down the first five spots and is certainly
implicated in the many of the next ten. But the Mac OS?
Ten
Virus Celebrities -- Or should this be celebrity viruses?
In any case, "the blonde tennis player" is
so 2001, and we
haven't seen anything about Bill Clinton for a while.
Ten
Tech Trends For 2006 -- Looking to change careers? Looking
to spend a lot of money today for a product that will cost half as
much in 18 months?
Fifteen
Tech Concepts -- We've mentioned a few of these over the
last year or so, and we've even been on the receiving end -- on
our cell phone, no less -- of SPIT already.
Fifteen
Homes Of Billionaires -- When Bill Gates was building his
house in Washington, we read that the property taxes alone were
$675K, a nice little windfall for the county.
A lot of you have your own websites, and
you might make a little money off them by using Google's AdSense
system. Or you might not, if the computer your page is being delivered
to is infected with a 