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Sure, the Facebook IPO faceplant marred the idea that the world's biggest social network is worth anywhere near the $100 billion market valuation that bankers gave it out of the gate. But look beyond that massive miscalculation and you'll find plenty of evidence that 2012 was a breakthrough year for social media -- businesswise, that is.

Facebook's on track to post revenue of more than $5 billion for 2012 -- a growing portion of that coming from ads it serves to people doing their social networking from their phones. And it's amping up its commerce business, … Read more

Sometimes it takes a little nudge to do what we know we should.

After a blogger disclosed that photo-sharing service Path was uploading and storing people's complete contacts lists without having asked permission, user outrage ensued. A month later, a group filed suit against Apple, Path, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and eight other sites for doing the same.

The scandal led to Apple saying any apps that collect user contact lists without permission are in violation of its app guidelines. It then rolled out a software change to begin actively enforcing stronger contacts protection.

At the time, Path founder Dave … Read more

Newsflash: Macs do have security vulnerabilities. While people who understand how viruses and malware work have understood this for ages, Mac vulnerabilities became big news as the Flashback malware tore through the Apple community. At its peak, Flashback and its variants had infected an estimated 1 percent of the worldwide Mac population.

This one was a particularly nasty wake-up call known as a drive-by download, as it required only that you go to a Web page to become infected. Apple malware could be unusually lucrative for malware makers because Apple owners have been told implicitly for years that Macs don'… Read more

Since taking over as the CEO of Research in Motion in January, Thorsten Heins has opted to go in a different direction than his predecessors. Aside from a few missteps here and there, Heins has been more open, held himself more accountable, and shown an enthusiasm when touting the BlackBerry 10 devices. He spent the first few months cleaning house and swapping in a new management team.

Of course, there's still that bit of old RIM, with the company yet again delaying the launch of BlackBerry 10 until next year. It's a disappointment for many faithful BlackBerry fans … Read more

For nearly a decade, think tanks and government officials in Washington, D.C., have been wrestling with the question of what cyberwar will look like.

In 2012, we learned the answer: Stuxnet, the malware that infected Iran's Natanz plant in a bid to slow the nation's nuclear effort, which was developed by the U.S. and Israel. Security researchers had speculated those governments were the most likely Stuxnet suspects, and a New York Times report in June confirmed it.

Flame, the name given network-sniffing, audio-recording, keystroke-logging malware that infected Iranian oil ministry computers, was discovered in May. At … Read more

Yes, there was an Apple TV released in 2012 -- but it was just a slight refresh of Apple's venerable $99 video-streaming box -- a great gadget, to be sure, but not the game-changing television product that dominates the fantasies of the Apple faithful.

It's that "real" Apple TV -- a smart TV designed from the ground up by the wizards who developed the iPhone and iPad -- that's spawned a cottage rumor mill industry, with nary a week passing in 2012 without a new story from a tech blog, wire service, or (worst of … Read more

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