The Top Tech News Stories of 2012: Part 1

that's professional, to be fair. That cookie was was looking at me funny and now it's not because it has no head, the snowman cookie. Yeah, holidays, and and saying that we are approaching the end of two thousand twelve. Um, it's it's been a different sort of year for tech. We decided to do a year wrap up in tech and um this year. I mean that's the kind of article that appears on virtually every website that has to

do with anything. Um. You know, the news sites have this year, and news and the entertainment websites have the you know, the who got divorced, who got divorced, who who passed away? And those kinds of things. We all like reading these kinds of articles. Um, but um, you know, I've been going back through things. It seems like this year we didn't We had a lot of news, but there weren't these big, kind of monumental things that have

happened like in years past, which is weird. See I look back at two thousand and twelve and I see some pretty major stories. I mean, things that I think of as having the potential to affect technology well into the future. But I mean you could argue that there was nothing as big as say Steve Jobs passing away that was such a huge story in two thousand eleven that you know, there wasn't anything of that sort of nothing that had that kind of spectacle around it, right,

or or or things that were really fun in tech. Right. Yeah, there weren't a couple of stories, but nothing again, nothing that was like, uh, the debut of a brand new technology that just blew everyone away, like you know again,

like the iPad when it came out of Grant. Don't don't yell at me, people, I know the iPad wasn't brand new in the sense that tablet computers have been around since the nineties, but it was the first one to really kind of be a success in the consumer market or or even you know when the keep sticking with Apple, but they really are good at introducing form

factors and making them work in the marketplace. But the iPhone, you know, that making that was the big news because it created the smartphone market in the consumer um world, in the in the Western hemisphere anyway. UM, I didn't really have any of that this year. UM. I was going to say that part of the reason why those were so successful as quote unquote big news story eas is partially because um, you know, the PR push behind it, and UM the impact that that had. I think that that,

of course, UM escalated those particular stories for Apple. Apples talented it at at generating prum And we should point out so we are not We're not like trying to say that Apple is the greatest company ever. They just have a real success with this PR push that Chris is talking about. So I want to point that out because I used to be accused of having an anti Mac bias, and I don't want people saying that now I'm a pro Apple bias. It's not true. He really

enjoyed that that reputation. I did for for a while. The one iTunes comment lasted me a good two years, two and a half years, something like that. But let's let's start off with talking about two thousand twelve and some of the big stories and some of the things that happened. UM. I was gonna start off by talking about c E S two thousand twelve because that sort of opens the year, especially within the first week or week and a half of January, and U C S

two thousand twelve introduced several different technologies. Mostly it was a lot of incremental improvements on existing tech, So we saw a lot of super thin TVs, saw a few ultra high definition television sets being bandied about, mostly in the prototype stage. I expect that in two thousand thirteen will see a lot more of those at c E S UM. In fact, it would shock me to not see at least a dozen, you know, four K type sets at c E S and two thousand thirteen. But uh,

those were general trends. Didn't see as much three D in two thousand and twelve as we had in years past. I think the consumer reaction to three D has been lackluster, and so it's sort of has set that to the side. I mean, you still have a lot of television. They are three D capable, but that doesn't seem to be featured as a, you know, a killer feature anymore. But the there was a few things that came out in two thousand twelve at ces that caught attention. Ultra books

debuted at ces UM. They have not really done that well in the market, but they are you know, high performance, sleek laptop computers and they have there's a very specific set of parameters that you have to follow in order

to be considered an Ultra book. We actually did an episode on it, so we won't really dive into it, but those made kind of a splash at c S. I remember the Roku Streaming Stick was something that caught a lot of attention at this idea of a a USB like thumb drive sized device that was a Roku box essentially in that format, you would plug it into a USB port on a TV and it would give the television the Roku uh feature set, so you could watch streaming video over your over the Internet through your

television and not have to hook up an actual set top box, which was kind of cool. And that's actually on sale now, so that that did come to market because sometimes we see things that sees that are awesome but never go anywhere. Um, And it seems like that is an form factor improvement, um, which which would in a way sort of exemplify what I was trying to say a minute ago, which is, um, you know, we'd had Roku devices out there. Um. This, you know, was

a big improvement in in form factors. You know, much tinier than the box. You could plug it right into the side of the TV itself. Um, but you know, doesn't generate the same kind of story as a brand new O. MG, this is a really cool thing. You should check it out sort of news story, right right. Yeah, there wasn't anything that was so revolutionary as to uh to really become v Darling of c E S two

thousand and twelve. There there weren't any technologies I can think of that were so uh buzzworthy as to capture everyone's attention. Uh. I think the coolest thing I saw there was the maker Butt replicator. You know, three D printers are awesome, and maker Butt creates a pretty compelling one. So yeah, now, UM, you know these devices, we talked about those a long time ago too. We discussed rapid prototyping.

Three D printers aren't brand new, but Jonathan's right that the topic has come up quite a lot in the news in uh simply because um maker bought in some a handful of other companies have made them more I won't say affordable, I will say more affordable than they

used to be. That the kind of thing too that has a form factor where you can PLoP it down on your very large desk and uh you know they're there's it's starting to make it possible to create your own uh stuff from scratch, and we'll introduce I think it's funny. I think we're sort of in between on that news cycle because now that we have three D stuff available to us to print, you know, in this context,

um it's still kind of expensive. But now we're starting to see organizations um upset with the idea of three D printing because now you can go print your own things that maybe under copyright. And I think that will be the big story going forward. You'll see more of that. It's already started, but it's not really hit the mainstream news.

Like I could see Ikea becoming a big um uh critic of this sort of technology, right because you could go and you could say, hey, I really love this design of this chair, but why would I buy this chair when I can just print it at home, or I can I can maybe even tweak this design a little bit, not so much that you know, you can't tell where it came from, but just a little bit like I just want to add this one little element

to it. Yeah, that could definitely become a thing. Um So those were sort of the items we saw at CES two thousand twelve. Again, nothing that really jumped out, but uh, but some interesting improvements on stuff. I also had a great time at c S two thousand twelve because I got to hang out with some of my my yeah peers in the technology space, so folks like Tom Merritt and I his actar and um uh you know, uh Will Harris, and it was it was a great time.

But I'm looking forward to two thousand and thirteen to see what what news stuff will come out. Moving into actual some news stories in two thousand twelve, The first one I have is the raid on the on Kim dot COM's house in New Zealand, the I Got upload raid that was done as part of a joint effort between United States federal agents and New Zealand police officers, and we did the whole episode about Mega Upload. So again I won't go too far into this, but that

was you know, that was a big deal. The idea of this international crackdown on someone who was accused of creating a service that is essentially, according at least according to the allegations, essentially designed to allow piracy uh of intellectual property, and that that was the main purpose of

the site. Now whether or not that really is the main purpose of the site is completely debatable, but that's essentially the allegation and the rate made big news, I mean from for a good part of two thousand and twelve. It was a story that unraveled throughout the months of two thousand twelve where we learned that, uh, the agents acted without complete authorization. They didn't have all the paperwork necessary to conduct the raid that they did, so that

caused some problems. Uh. There's also questions about whether or not it was even legal for the United States agents to get involved in something that was not a US centric matter. You're talking about a company that's based out of Hong Kong and a the leader of the company was a resident of New Zealand. So there were a lot of issues that came up about this, and this story has not concluded. It's still playing out, so it's

gonna continue on into two thousand their team. Although I should say we are recording this at the beginning of December two thousand twelve, so technically there will be a month's worth of stuff that could potentially happen between when we record this and when it publishes, in which case we'll just say we were running long and we had to end our episode. Oh, I thought you were going to say that. We just didn't want to offer any

spoiler alert. We knew about it, just in case some of you guys are pirating the episodes before we published them, which would be quite a feat. Please don't try. Actually, here's a here's an example of the very kind of thing that you're talking about, because, um, not long ago, we also recorded another big legal thing that affected the world of tech, which is UH famous tech um entrepreneur John McAfee being uh and a person of interest in

a murder case in Belize where he's been living. Um he had been in in his in his parlance, he had been sort of harassed by the authorities because apparently they thought that he was into the manufacture of illegal drugs,

which he says he wasn't. Uh and uh. When he saw the authorities approaching his home after a neighbor UM was found dead, UM not far from his property, not far from his property, UM, he thought the authorities were coming to at least at what he claims is that he thought that they were coming to harass him about drugs again, so he UM he high tailed it out

of there, if you will. And UM has been on the run up until UM really right, not immediately, but in a couple of days before we recorded this, in between the time we recorded that podcast a few weeks ago and now he's been apprehended in Guatemala trying to enter the country illegally. UM. Of course, the police still say, as at the time we're recording this, that he's not wanted for the murder of this person. But is they want to ask him some questions. Is a person of interest?

I mean he he had a history of disagreements with this neighbor. And UM also has in the past perhaps associated himself with people who are not on the up and up. There have been a few indicators that would make him a person of interest within the mean, just the fact that he lived near the guy was enough to make him a person of a person of interest. Plus the fact that the guy's body was found not far from McAfee's UH property makes him a person of interest at least as far as asking and finding out

what really did happen. And yeah, we still don't know all the details on that one. Yeah, but of course this episode goes live, it may all be out in the open, but at the moment we don't know. Of course, I'm McAfee's name is still synonymous with UM virus protection. They they intel about the company some time ago, but they still use McAfee as the name for their their virus software. So UM the news reports coming out about him this year sort of brought the founder of that

company back into UM, back into the public eye. And you know a lot of us had said, really, the guy who came up with the virus software is the guy who was a person of interest in this murder case.

That's very, very strange. Back at the very beginning of two thousand twelve, we had the Internet blackout Day, which was in relation to UH, to a couple of different proposed pieces of legislation and in the in Congress uh Sopa and Pippa, both of which were about protecting intellectual property, and critics of these pieces of legislation said that the the powers that were being given to the government far exceeded what was necessary to protect intellectual property, and in fact,

potentially went well beyond what any country, any sovereign country, could do, because these these pieces of legislation specifically concerned themselves with intellectual property theft that happens outside the borders of the United States. So if you have let's say you're you're are a United States company, and you are you're an owner of a lot of intellectual property. So let's say you're a movie studio, because that's a good example.

So you're a United States movie studio and you're concerned because your movies are being pirated and uploaded onto servers that are in China, and you know, how do you how do you pursue a complaint against that It's in a different country. Uh, the country may or may not be sympathetic at all toward the intellectual property rights holder. They may not care, or they may not They may have other concerns that are so great as that they

cannot dedicate time to that problem. So sopen people were really about trying to find ways to cut off access to sites like that, essentially to to shut down the pathways that people could use to get to sites that were alleged to have piracy on them pirated material on them. But the problem is this could really cause issues with the way the Internet works and how how you navigate places. Also, it raised questions of well, what happens if the the

data there was not violating intellectual property? I mean, where's where is the protection for innocence out there? How many innocent websites could get shut down or not necessarily even shut down, just the access itself would be blocked to

anyone in the United States. Beyond that, people who were critics of this these pieces of legislation pointed out that there were ways around it that anyone who was determined to get at that material could do so using a couple of different workarounds, some of which were really really simple. And so the argument was that this legislation could do more harm than than good, and ultimately it won't protect the intellectual property rights holders the way it's intended to,

So it doesn't work and it would break stuff. Therefore it's bad, And a lot of websites ended up having a policy where in January two thousand twelve, they had UM they would do a blackout where if you visited the site, you would either get a message just saying that the site was completely offline as part of a protest against this legislation, or it would be a landing page that would give you a little information about the legislation and then you have to click through to get

to the real site. But UM, it was a big deal, and the legislation ultimately was withdrawn after after receiving heaps of criticism, although I don't expect that to just mean that the issue itself will go away, particularly since the people who were responsible for the legislation are many of whom are still in Congress. After the elections. They were either either they were not up for re election and so there's still serving their terms, or several of them

were reelected. So it could very well be that we'll just see a different version of the same sort of um legislation passed through Congress again. Yeah, and another uh sort of political um. It's sort of political bent to the to the tech world this year it happened outside the United States and again recently as of the time we're recording this UM. You know, there's there's been a big armed conflict this year in Syria and UM just

not too long ago. UM. I guess about a week or so before we record this UM, the entire Internet was cut off to Syria or or mostly cut off. And UH it's still UM at least according to my research.

It's still somewhat unclear UM as to the cause of that, whether the government actually had it shut off, or whether there was some kind of UM the government actually claims or that UM that rebels Syrian rebels had UM cut off access to the Internet, although it seems that some organizations, probably the governmental organizations, still had access to the country's UM Internet connection. UH, it was actually cut off, not not for very long period of time, only for for

a few days. UM. But you know, it's one of those things where people were wondering whether or not UM both sides in that conflict would be able to tell their story via the Internet. I mean, that's been been pretty common over the past few years, the ability for UM people who are UH speaking out against the government in their countries to be able to use Twitter and other social media to to communicate their ideas, to communicate

the beliefs, to organize protests. Um, of course that's some that's been very common, especially with the Arab Spring upper I think. So that wasn't this year really but actually still that that kind of activity is still going on in in Egypt as of the time when recording this too. Um but um, but yeah, that was that was a big story this year. That also happened in Libya where the Libyan uh internet access was was cut off to

some degree. Um. It wasn't as uh colorful or actually funny as the woman in two thousand eleven who cut off internet access to Georgia and Armenia because she was find she found a cable and wanted to sell the copper in the cable, so she cut it and cut off web access to the entire country. But apparently she she had never heard of the Worldwide Web. Um, so that's no one else over there ditt either. Um but yeah, but that that is a conflict that appears to be

uh politically motivated as well. And staying in the world of politics, of course, in the United States, we had our our presidential election and that ended up the social networking ended up playing a big part of that election. And UM not a big surprise. I mean, we've we've seen that in the previous elections as well, but it wasn't. Again one of those uh stories that kind of UM

caused some amusement in that Uh. The Democratic Party had their approach to managing social media and the Internet and communication as far as communicating out to supporters, you know, ways to to uh get get out the word for people to vote, and the Republican had Republicans had their side as well, which famously did not work so great a couple of times. UM. As a matter of fact, the Republicans tool, which was nicknamed Orca um crashed on the election day. And both both tools were had had

similar purposes, they went about it in different ways. Orca and and Narwhale, which is the Democrats uh software tool that they used, we're both designed to get people out there and get people to vote, um, but they went about it in different ways. Rumor has it that the Republicans chose Orca as the nickname for their tool because they had already heard of Narwhale and Orca's prey on Normal's it's a whale eat whale world. Orcas are not technically whales. A whale of a tale to tell your

lad a whale of a tale or two. But um, actually that's sort of a fascinating story. Is is the tale the two software tools? But yeah, it's it's obvious now that um, politics in at least in the United States has been forever changed by social media and networked communication, uh, mobile communication and you know, things like text messaging and

the ability to communicate to get the vote out. Um, I don't think you will see another unplugged election, at least not unless the world of NBC's revolution happens upon us. The internet. I think Twitter has played such a big role. I mean just just even if it's not a direct role, whenever any event happened, it seemed like the part of the story that would cover this would be how Twitter reacted to that event, Like, within you know, x amount of time, over one million tweets went out about this

particular thing, that kind of thing. So we heard about that a lot with the election, but also about the Olympics in two thousand and twelve. The Internet played a

big role with the the access to the Olympics. Um, I know that I was not alone in doing something naughty in that I watched the streaming of the opening ceremonies live via the Internet by finding a link that let me do that, because otherwise I was going to have to wait and I didn't want to because it was a slow day at work and I was hearing about Mr Bean on the Olympics and I said I have to see this. So anyway, it was entitlement, that's all me. But but anyway, yeah, the the Internet played

a big role in our access to the Olympics. Again Twitter did it gave athletes and and outlet where they could communicate directly with people who were supporting them. Uh, so we see that that it's playing a larger and larger role in big events. This is really I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone. It's just one of those things where it's in another indicator of how our world is changing, and that we are gradually moving toward more and more of an online world when

it comes to these big real world events. UM, and relying less on traditional forms of media. Now, that doesn't mean that the online world outweighs those traditional forms of media. That's not the case. There's still plenty of people watching TV or or reading about it in in other traditional forms of media. Uh, it's not like the scales have tipped. It's just that we're seeing a growing uh uh reliance

on the online world. Yeah, and and uh there was a big story actually as the Olympics were going on here in the United States about the TV channel. The story was in the United States. The Olympics weren't going

on here. Okay, good point. I said that a little funny. Yes, there was a big story in the United States about the Olympics in Britain because um, you know, they were several hours ahead of us in in the the time, and just like British, I think there's so big their tea in there, five hour advanced time from here, even

more of a difference on the West coast. Um. But yeah, the the the availability of information, the the fact that this information of scores and outcomes of events, news stories, you know, somebody might get hurt or um you know the the bad mitten Gate story of this summer, Um, look it up. Um. Oh yeah, it really was a thing.

These stories were coming out over the internet in channels that we all look to every day and in places that we look every day, and we're thinking, you know, why do we have to wait until prime time here in the United States? How why do we have to wait until evening? Defined out these things? And the thing is it's sort of I think it was a lot of a lot of noise really because people still tune into those broadcasts. Um. But it it highlighted a couple

of things. One, uh, it highlighted just how much difference in time there really is between the times that when it's someplace that is vastly different in time, like um uh than the next Winter Olympics will be in Russia, So there's going to be an even bigger time difference for those of us here in the United States who are going to be following those events. Um. And they go, well, we can get this in real time. Why don't we have to wait until TV? Well, the thing is, you

you don't um. And people still wanted to see those those things on TV, but it also pointed out the things that they weren't showing, and people started to question the network that that carries those events, saying why didn't you show this story or how come you're focused on this one game when you know this other one meant so much to the outcome of the medals um And the answer is, you know, they're showing they can't show everything without you know, basically turning it into a twenty

four hour Olympics channel. And even then there's so much going on that you can't so it's sort of um it was. It was a big thing for a while among some people to say, well, they are not showing the whole thing, and they're not showing it in real time.

But I think in the end it's sort of proved that the people who really want that information are going to go get it anyway online, and the people who really want to see it packaged and a nice, neat format with a little human interest stuff are still going

to watch the traditional broadcasts on TV. But it was interesting to see how much the the technology has pervaded our lives to where we sort of expect everything in in full ready when we are What I thought was interesting also is that it gave options, uh not necessarily options that were sanctioned by you know, whatever entity was in charge of broadcasting the Olympics in any given country, but it gave options that some of US found very valuable.

For example, you could watch the opening ceremonies without any commentary. Yes, so you didn't have either in the case of the UK commentators like people talking about stuff that you know or or interrupting something that you found interesting, or in the case of US commentators, people who don't understand the references that are being made and are showing their national ignorance of things that I actually know about being an

anglophile and ticking me off, are using there's some commentary there, Are you using that soapbox or a little bit um? Yeah? No, I mean, but but that was kind of an interesting

thing too. Is that the idea that you don't have to consume this particular type of of well not even just entertainment, but this particularly particular content in one way, like there's only one way that you can get this stuff, and there's only one form that you're going to see it in the idea that you suddenly could have access to streams of this content that would be totally different

from what you would get on TV. It was really interesting. No, of course that's not gonna apply to every single kind of content that's out there, but for something like a sports event where you may not want commentary, you may just want to watch the the event itself and that's it. Then it was a it was a nice option to have, and uh that I think is something that could be

very valuable in the future. Now in this case, again it wasn't something that was necessarily sanctioned, but I could see that easily becoming like an option, like like you know, you could can you imagine you just you go to let's say it's a website or a portal of some sort that you could access even on your television, and there'd be an option there click with commentary or without commentary, And for something like the opening ceremonies of of the Olympic,

that could be a total game changer for the people watching it. I think that would be a really cool feature to have for the next Olympics. Is you know something along those lines, or do you want to have the you know, the commentary from a particular country to be the one that accompanies the footage, and uh, you know, that would be I think a pretty cool thing to

have at your disposal. Because we've got plenty of people in every country, there are plenty of people from other parts of the world who might want to watch a sporting event with the people providing commentary speaking in their native language. I think that would be a really neat thing to do, and it's uh uh, you know, it's

within the realm of possibility. So I'm hoping that we see that trend become an official trend, something that is sanctioned and isn't just you know, left up to people who are clever who have discovered a feed that doesn't have anything attached to it and then they broadcasted on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. Um. Speaking of Facebook, big year for Facebook. Yes, they bought a little company called

Instagram for one billion dollars. Yes they did. And they also had a little I p O. Yes, initial an initial public offering of stock. They got to the point in size they actually reached a billion customers worldwide and still growing. Um of where some of those are the same people, but I won't tell Facebook if you don't. Um. Yeah, they they got to the point where they had enough cloud where they were really kind of had their backs to the wall and were forced to release a stock

offering and become a public company. Yeah. They wait, once your company reaches a certain size and has a certain number of stakeholders. Uh. In the United States, you are required to have a public offering. You can't you can't main tained that indefinitely once you reach a certain size and you have a certain number of stakeholders. And Facebook was pretty much at that point. So there wasn't a whole lot of choice in whether or not it would hold an ip O. It just came down to win yes, yes.

And so before this happened, before they went public, there was a lot of hype as there would be around a company as pivotal as as Facebook. Um. Of course there was the famous dot com bubble and the late es UM and UH, people sort of discussed this, Hey,

this is a big deal. You know, tech companies haven't had this kind of flashy public offering on the scale of of a company like Facebook in years really um and you know, there there have been some exceptions to to the public offerings, but this was a big thing

um before. However, then they actually went public and the stock sort of took off fish and then didn't and then started to drop it having trouble as right now, there's a bit of controversy in that or controversy for my friends in England I was going to say, you're an anglophile. Um, But anyway, there was some contriversy. Controversy in the in the sense that uh that Facebook had you know, it's it's essentially it had a call that

talked about its financials and then updated debt. I came out that Facebook found out it wasn't going to hit the numbers that it had projected, which would in turn affect the value of the company. That information made its way out to a certain group of essentially investment groups. Is really banks, really is what it got to financial institutions.

The information got to them. Facebook apparently, uh communicated information to a select number of financial institutions, which then could make the decision to you know, sell off all that stock at a higher value than what the company was

actually worth based upon this new updated information. However, that same info, that key critical info about the value of Facebook, did not get communicated to a broader audience of investors, which meant that there were people who were buying up Facebook stock assuming that the stock price reflected the actual value of the company. And once that information started to become public, then there was this big uproar about it

being an unethical business. Practice. Now, I should state this is not illegal what Facebook did as far as I can tell, there's nothing illegal about it, but it is some people would call it unethical. Yeah. Basically, UM, I think this sort of hedges on on what is known as insider trading UM, where somebody who is on on the inside, if you will, knows something about a company before the company announces it to the public, and they

make stock trades based on that. And UM, basically this this is you know, this makes people think that there is something like that going on. UM, and that is what is in legal terms known as a no no. Yeah. I have to consult a lawyer, but I think that a no no is pretty much Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Uh. And Facebook was not, of course, the only coming to have some pretty big changes happen, uh you know with

without going public. That was a big change for Facebook, and H well, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out, whether or not the company can kind of get out of the doldrums. There have been some some statements that perhaps the web advertising market is going to um continue to to decline in importance and therefore the chief revenue stream for Facebook is going to kind of uh not not go away and not even not make money, but it just won't make as much money as quickly

as traditionally had been the case. And therefore that will affect the value of Facebook. And that's why the stock price may not change much. Unless Facebook finds a new way of generating revenue UH or if the web advertising market turns around somehow, that could dramatically impact Facebook's value as well. So the stock price is not it's not a guarantee that's going to stay where it's at, but it is, you know, an ongoing story. As far as other companies go, we saw some pretty big changes of

I mean, Yahoo had a year of changes. In January, Scott Thompson became the interim CEO. UH. He announced that they were going to be massive layoffs. UM. He made some decisions that were pretty dramatic. And then there was another controversy. UH. There's another controversy with Thompson's background. It came out that his executive bio had some information in it that was what we would call not entirely accurate

or made up. UM. But he he had on his bios some information about UH degrees that he did not actually hold, like computer science. Yeah, and so this ended up prompting some shareholders in Yahoo to call for Thompson's resignation, saying that you know it was he's misrepresenting himself, it's a bad fit for the company, it's bad pr for

the company. He needs to get out. And he did resign, and uh Yeahoo brought on Marissa Meyer, formerly of Google, one of the earliest female employees at Google, the first engineer at female engineer at Google, uh to come in and become the new CEO. And that was a huge story. People who were very pessimistic about Yahoo's chances in two

thousand twelve began to hedge their bets a bit. And I'm not saying that people were saying, oh, well, now Yahoo is definitely saved, but there was more optimism around the company than I had seen in the last few years. Also, she actually has a degree in computer science. Also, this story will come into play in our next episode when we talk about the results of our predictions for two thousand twelve, because she ruined our predictions for Yahoo. So

we shake our fist at Meyer. All right, Okay, So it turns out that Chris and I talked way more about two thousand twelve than we expected, so we are actually split think this epic long episode into two manageable episodes. You're welcome. So this concludes part one. Chris, I think you'll agree that this was the prudent choice. Yep, Okay, thank you. That was just to prude that Chris is in fact in the studio. I'm not doing this by myself.

So we're going to wrap this up. If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, please write us. Our email address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or let's know on Facebook or Twitter are handled There is tech stuff hs W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com