The TOP Tech Stories OF 2013!!!!!

With 2013 coming to a close, it's time to look back at some of the bigger stories in tech. What were people talking, tweeting, and writing about? What changed the industry? Let's dive in.
Certainly, there were a number of major smartphone and tablet releases this year. But they weren't necessarily all that surprising. We had a Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2 last year, so it was pretty clear we'd be seeing a Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3 in 2013. And for all the Apple rumors, we ended 2013 with a new iPhone launch in September and a new iPad launch in October – just like last year. It was also time for a new Nexus 7 this summer, not to mention the latest versions of iOS and Android.
So while those stories all certainly got their share of headlines, and contributed greatly to the year in tech (and our holiday wish lists), they weren't necessarily the ones that made you do a double take or say "whoa" when it showed up on your Twitter feed. Read on for our picks for the top 10 tech news stories of 2013.

§  CONSOLE WARS BEGIN ANEW: Waiting two years for a new smartphone can be so tortuous for some techies that carriers this year started offering early upgrade programs. But gamers have been much more patient, playing on systems that haven't seen a major refresh since the mid-2000s. That changed this year, however, with the November launch of the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4. Both companies slowly leaked details about their new consoles throughout the year, and that slow burn seems to have done the trick. When the consoles hit store shelves, consumers snapped up millions of them in just a few days. It's still too close to tell who is winning the console wars, though the PS4 appears to have a small lead, according to NPD. For more, check out Why the Xbox One Is Better Than the PS4.

§  BALLMER RETIRES: In the face of lackluster response for Windows 8 and Windows Phone, there was talk about whether CEO Steve Ballmer should be held accountable. But after he outlined his "One Microsoft" strategy in July, many thought he would be given time to see it through. By August, however, Ballmer announced that he would retire within the year, clearly a tough decision for the Redmond veteran. But business is business. While Microsoft has slowly been making headway in mobile, and Windows 8.1 fixed some of the problems with the new operating system, it was not enough. The Microsoft board is currently in the process of finding a replacement for Ballmer - and rumors have focused on everyone from Ford's Alan Mulally to former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop - but an announcement is not expected until 2014.

§   MICROSOFT BUYS NOKIA: Speaking of Nokia, Ballmer's impending departure did not prevent Microsoft from putting in a $7.2 billion bid for Nokia's handset business. The move wasn't that shocking - Nokia committed to Windows Phone several years ago - which makes this the "slowest major merger in tech history," PCMag's Sascha Segan joked "Microsoft has a clearer path to success now, but it's far from guaranteed," he warned. Thus far, the deal has earned the go-ahead from a variety of regulatory agencies, but still has a few more hurdles until it closes next year. For more, check out With Nokia Buy, Microsoft Poised to Rule Enterprise Mobile. Honorable mention on the acquisition front: Yahoo's $1.1 billion Tumblr purchase and Google re-awakening our Terminator nightmares by purchasing Boston Dynamics.

§   GOOGLE BARGE: Perhaps Google will be housing its robot army on its mysterious barges? In October, reports emerged of a barge in the San Francisco Bay that apparently belonged to Google. Given that the search giant had secured a patent for water-powered data centers several years ago, that seemed like the logical conclusion. But Google later revealed that the barges would be an "interactive space" to showcase its new technology. "Google Barge … A floating data center? A wild party boat? A barge housing the last remaining dinosaur? Sadly, none of the above," a spokesman said last month. "Although it's still early days and things may change, we're exploring using the barge as an interactive space where people can learn about new technology." That will likely include Google Glass, but hopefully not a self-driving car, unless it's James Bond's Lotus submarine.

§   BLACKBERRY'S CONTINUED DEMISE: Poor BlackBerry. It was once the smartphone to have, in large part because it was the only one that would support your work email. But with the enterprise embracing iOS and Android, and BlackBerry failing to wow consumers with BlackBerry 10, Thorsten Heins this year could not return the Canadian phone maker to its heyday. By August, it was exploring "strategic alternatives" and entertained a buyout deal from Fairfax Financial, which would have taken BlackBerry private. Ultimately, however, Fairfax decided to invest $1 billion in BlackBerry rather than purchase it. That deal meant that Heins was out and John Chen was in as CEO, but it remains to be seen if that will help the struggling company. The one bright light? BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), which was released on iOS and Android this year, and appears to be popular. BlackBerry also inked a deal with Foxconn for a smartphone deal in Indonesia, a BlackBerry stronghold. But it's far from catching up to Android or iOS, and even Windows Phone in some markets.

§   TWITTER IPO: Micro-blogging site Twitter had a much better year than BlackBerry, going public in early November after just seven years of 140-character status updates. After Facebook's troubled debut on the NASDAQ, all eyes were on Twitter and the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 7, but the company had a strong opening at $26 per share, resulting in a new group of Internet startup millionaires. Around the same time, the origins of Twitter were chronicled in a juicy tell-all book from New York Times reporter Nick Bilton, Hatching Twitter, which was recently optioned by Lionsgate for a TV show. But gossip aside, Twitter continued to be a Silicon Valley powerhouse in 2013, which also saw the release of the company's six-second Vine video app - a move that prompted Facebook-owned Instagram to get on the horn and unveil its own 15-second video option.

§   T-MOBILE DITCHES CONTRACTS: The two-year wireless contract has become de rigeur for cell phone owners in the U.S. On the upside, you get a subsidized phone - so you'll pay $200 instead of $600 for that new iPhone. If you have a change of heart in the middle of those two years, however, tough luck unless you want to pay a hefty early termination fee (ETF). T-Mobile this year turned that idea on its head, eliminating contracts to become the "un-carrier." Customers on T-Mobile now pay a gadget down payment (usually around $99) and can then pay off the cost of their device in monthly payments or purchase it upfront. But there's no contract. Also this year, T-Mobile started offering free 2G Internet service to customers traveling abroad and 200MB of free monthly tablet data. This and other moves, according to PCMag's Sascha Segan, prompted other wireless carriers to rethink a few things, proving that "competition works," he said. One thing that won't work, Segan said, is the rumored acquisition of T-Mobile by Sprint.

§   NSA SPYING: In June, The Guardian published a story that said Verizon had been ordered to hand over three months worth of customer call records to the National Security Agency (NSA). Shortly thereafter, The Washington Post said the NSA was tapping directly into the servers of nine U.S. Internet firms for a program known as PRISM. The information was turned over to these and other publications by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor who took off for Hong Kong before the information was made public. Since June, more and more data from Snowden has been published by papers around the globe. The feds argue that the release of this information is a threat to national security, while supporters say Snowden is a hero for bringing the NSA's practices to light. The tech community, meanwhile, is currently pushing the feds for permission to more widely disclose their national security-related dealings with the NSA or FBI, but has thus far not been successful.

§   ELECTRONICS ON PLANES: When Edward Snowden departed Hawaii for Hong Kong (and later Russia), he and his fellow passengers likely had to power down electronics upon take-off and landing. Travelers have long wondered why this was necessary, with many leaving gadgets powered on in their bags, to prove a point, if nothing else. Finally, after a lengthy review, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in October finally gave the OK for customers to continue reading their Kindles or watching a movie on the iPad from gate to gate, provided those devices are in airplane mode. Later, the Federal Communications Commission also voted to review the use of cell phones on planes, which caused an uproar among those who feared having to listen to their seatmates' inane cell phone banter on a cross-country flight. The FCC, however, said that it will be the discretion of the airline as to whether they allow voice calls. Delta has already said it will ban them.

§   WEARABLE TECH: Holding things in your hands is so 2012. This year was all about "wearable tech," from Google Glass to fitness gadgets to smartwatches. Here at PCMag, we were all eager to try on Google Glass, while many are wandering the halls with a Fitbit, Nike+ Fuelband, or Basis device clipped to our clothing. Others still secured a Pebble smartwatch, or gave the Galaxy Gear a go. For now, however, many of these devices are still novelties. The Galaxy Gear still needs some work, according to our review, and Glass is still very pricey at $1,500 (not to mention, only available to a select few). But even Tim Cook has deemed the wearables market "interesting," so keep an eye on the space. We may get that mythical iWatch yet.

§  Drones and Robots: Through the year we reported on continued advancements in robotics, starting with fun stories and video clips of robot fish and surfing robot drones. DARPA has been investing in robotics for years and reports throughout 2013 showed continued progress in humanoid robots as well as military systems. Years of DARPA work and follow-on work by the USN and integrators resulted in Robotic drones landing on and taking off from Aircraft Carriers. We also highlighted Northrop Grumman's fielding of a fearless combat Robot with incredibly firepower. The biggest news in robot technology was Boston Dynamics and their acquisition by Google. This story caused many of us to think through the scary prophecies of Bill Joy in his April 2000 Wired piece on "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us."

§   Enterprise Data Hub: This could be the number one trend in data. The Enterprise Data Hub is the place for enterprises to store all data with enterprise grade data management and protection, with access by any system (from legacy to modern, from proprietary to open source). This is the big data news of 2013, from a technology perspective.

§  Google Glass: While still in a beta program, the Glass is out there and we have been testing it. A killer app for Glass is the camera, which can take photos and video. Another killer app is the ability to search Google (including asking just about any question in the world) just by your voice. These devices are just the most widely known of the new category of wearable computers. Wearables were a definite hot topic in 2013 and this will continue. For more about google glass read here

§  Software Defined Networking: This new concept and technology, referred to as SDN, has the potential to be just as virtuous and disruptive to communications as virtualization was to the server industry. 2013 saw many government technology professionals begin to examine this construct.

§   In Memory Computing: This is a new architecture approach that is being leveraged to modernize old systems and design new systems that perform at incredible capacity. This takes advantage of new powerful RAM technologies that allow massive quantities of data to be held in memory.

§  Microsoft Office 365: For many this just snuck up on us. Microsoft has been saying they were going to the cloud for years, but always seemed to be behind the first movers. In 2013 they came out with this offering and its functionality has leaped ahead of the crowd, delivering incredibly low cost, high performance capabilities for individuals, small businesses and enterprises.

§  Business Intelligence 2.0: For years, Business Intelligence was a discipline and a set of technologies that helped answer specific questions of use to specific groups. For the most part, it was for closed-world-types of problems where the data and questions were known long in advance of system design. With the new technologies of Big Data, a new way of doing business intelligence has come about and these tools are making their way into the federal enterprise and are already making a difference. Expect this to accelerate into 2014 as well.

§  Hadoop 2.0: 2013 saw the release of a new version of Hadoop, the first major upgrade since the beginning of Hadoop. Hadoop 2.0 consists of significant improvements to many components, including new abilities to program Hadoop (new Map Reduce capabilities called YARN), new ways of tracking jobs, new ways to track the status of resources and other new capabilities. Hadoop was, in my opinion, the most significant technology in the federal space in 2013 because of its mission impact in so many sectors. It may well be that again in 2014.

§  Bitcoin sparks a gold rush
Bitcoin was at once one of the most hyped and bewildering technology-related phenomena of the year. The most popular of the so-called "crypto currencies," Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system devised in 2009 by a developer using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It uses open-source cryptographic algorithms to enable transactions and create units of digital currency called bitcoins. Bitcoins are created or "mined" as computers on the network solve mathematical problems used to verify transactions. As speculators and tech faddists fueled the buzz, bitcoins skyrocketed in value from under $20 at the beginning of the year to $1,200 by December. Transactions are processed free or for low fees, and because no personal information is exchanged, are anonymous and touted as more secure than credit cards. Some of these qualities also attract criminals and when U.S. authorities shut down the Silk Road contraband website they also seized a cache of bitcoins. In early December the French central bank issued a warning about Bitcoin volatility and a China central bank ban against banks dealing in bitcoins caused the giant search engine Baidu to stop taking them as payment. The value of bitcoins plunged by more than $500 over the next 48 hours. Bitcoin's volatility presents risks that it may remain just a niche payment system for the Web and a vehicle for speculator

§  BlackBerry's death rattle

      Diehard BlackBerry fans thought the company had a chance for survival when in January then-CEO Thorsten Heins debuted the touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 and a handset with a physical keyboard, the BlackBerry Q10. Both devices were designed around the BlackBerry 10 platform. The company had replaced co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis a year earlier, after losing ground to Apple and Android devices that offered sleeker interfaces and bigger app stores. But the BlackBerry 10 phones were too little, too late. For its August quarter, the company reported a $965 million net operating loss. Then, the company announced it would cut 4,500 workers and go private in a $4.7 billion sale to Fairfax Financial Holdings. But Fairfax could not get financing for the deal, and in November the company appointed ex-Sybase CEO John Chen as chairman and interim CEO and accepted a $1 billion loan from a consortium led by Fairfax. At this point, though, it is hard to see how a cash infusion can keep the company intact and solvent.

§  Dell opens new chapter as private company

      When Dell announced in February that the company planned to go private, founder Michael Dell said the move was necessary to turn around the company's flagging fortunes. Fierce competition in the PC market had curbed profit for years, and the idea was that free of the scrutiny of Wall Street, the company would have the breathing room to better execute its strategy to focus on high-margin products and services and refresh its push into the midmarket. But first, so-called "activist investor" Carl Icahn swooped in and scooped up shares, insisting that Dell's offer of $13.65 per share was too low and that Michael Dell should be ousted. What followed was a nasty public battle to win over shareholders. After several shareholder vote postponements, Michael Dell prevailed by sweetening his offer to a total of $13.88 per share, or about $25 billion overall. While competition against the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo won't get easier, the company that Michael Dell founded three decades ago in his college dorm has a new lease on life.

§  Yahoo buys Tumblr
Yahoo's $1.1 billion deal to buy social networking and microblogging site Tumblr was not the biggest tech acquisition of the year but it marked the boldest move that Marissa Mayer has yet taken to reinvent the company. Yahoo's success as an Internet portal in the '90s has been overshadowed by competitors, including Facebook and Google. The 38-year-old Mayer, a star at Google, was hired as Yahoo CEO in 2012. Her predecessor, Scott Thompson, had taken the reins from founder Jerry Yang but lasted just four months before resigning amid controversy over a false claim about his college degree in a regulatory filing. The combination of Mayer's youth, programming chops, reportedly imperial management style, and all-American blond looks has fascinated industry watchers, and a jump in the company's share price during her tenure thus far has given her something of a honeymoon period. Mayer herself, though, has acknowledged that the stock has been lifted by investments made years ago, which include a stake in Chinese Web giant Ali Baba. Meanwhile, revenue and profit shrank for Yahoo itself in the quarter ending in September. At some point, the company needs to show that Mayer's strategy of expanding content such as news while boosting the company's tech infrastructure is paying off.

If you have any other important tech news comment that......Advance New Year!!!!!!!!!