Highlights of tech's hectic year in rapids of mainstream

NET RESULTS:A personal selection of significant tech events – the most intriguing, dramatic, topical or representative of the 2010 zeitgeist

TECHNOLOGY NOW permeates so much of everyday personal and business life that it is difficult to narrow down a list of the past year’s most significant “technology” stories.

The failure of the banks, for example, has connections to the lightning-fast ability to move money around; the Chilean miners’ rescue story involved innovative use of technology from Irish company Mincon’s drill bit to communications links; Twitter was involved in so many political and world events.

So I’ve opted for the personal: I’ve chosen the Irish and international tech events that I found most intriguing, dramatic, topical or representative of the 2010 zeitgeist. In no particular order:

Irish stories:

The release of the Government- appointed Innovation Taskforce report. Launched in March, the report was produced by some of the Irish tech industry’s great and good (with civil servants seemingly editing in much dull governmentalese). Solid (some would say, stolid) and serious, the report spurred several new initiatives (such as the Innovation Fund) and was contentious and controversial enough to create some much needed public and private debate.

Ireland’s data retention laws get referred to the European Court of Justice. In May, the High Court referred the challenge of feisty civil rights group Digital Rights Ireland to the State’s data retention laws – under which citizens’ call, internet and e-mail traffic data is stored for up to three years – on to Europe.

A European challenge had been expected, but unexpectedly, it was Ireland that stepped up and brought the difficult issue up to a European level.

The year-ending Dublin Web Summit and associated f.ounders event brought a geeky star- studded attendee list to Ireland.

Organiser Paddy Cosgrave worked tirelessly for months to bring in a cast of speakers, entrepreneurial up-and-comers and tech hangers-on who, at least momentarily, made Dublin the feel-good social media capital of the world.

For networking, parties and fun, the event has set a high bar for international organisers of tech events. The Irish hope is for some knock-on benefits to come from having had so many of Web 2.0 and 3.0’s biggest names hanging out here for several days.

International stories:

The January release of the iPad and the never-ending rise and rise of Apple. Has any company shape-shifted as successfully and lucratively as Apple in the past decade? This brand of brands invented yet another product category with its iPad, which swiftly thumbed its nose at the naysayers and flew off the shelves worldwide.

As the company grows ever more diverse, while retaining some of the largest product profit margins in the business, many wonder whether Apple could survive without co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs’s golden touch.

HP’s “safe pair of hands”, chief executive Mark Hurd, gets the boot from HP’s board. As the sober, hard-driving, business focused chief executive who arrived at HP to replace the controversial Carly Fiorina (just in time for a board spying scandal to materialise), Hurd was the man who steadied the tiller, cut jobs, focused product lines and boosted profits. News that he had resigned over a sex scandal at summer’s end came as a shock to many.

His subsequent jump to pal Larry Ellison’s company Oracle, as a company president and director, cheered Oracle shareholders though.

Oraclezilla gets larger and larger. While most other tech companies withered under the onslaught of 2010’s vile economy, Oracle just grew and grew.

For a decade, pundits have predicted that the company’s aggressive acquisition strategy – more than 60 companies have been subsumed since 2005 – would bring it down (it officially swallowed Sun Microsystems at the start of 2010 – who would ever have thought it possible?).

However, the insistence by multi-billionaire chief executive Larry Ellison that consolidation was the strategy of winners turned out to be right, and he’s having the last laugh.

The phenomenon that is Facebook rampages onwards and upwards. Mid-year, the social profile site surpassed the European Union’s population, with more than 500 million users.

Once a college student online hangout, Facebook has quashed its competition by becoming grown-up, sleekly designed and addictive. It has also – significantly – morphed into a place businesses need to be if they want to talk to customers.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg weathered a potentially damaging biopic, The Social Network, which he claimed was more fiction that reality, and ended 2010 being lauded for his philanthropy. And he isn’t even 30 yet.

WikiLeaks turns investigative journalism on its head and becomes the juggernaut of whistle-blowing. The website, which releases leaked documents, startled with its first tranche of stories early in the year but it is now garnering headline after headline with a mind-bogglingly large cache of leaked secret US diplomatic communications in the hundreds of thousands.

Controversial founder Julian Assange made headlines in his own right at year’s end as he found himself jailed, released and fighting extradition. A lucrative book deal at December’s close will have eased the pain somewhat.

Google multitasks and morphs, while trying to fend off never- ending European threats. As with Apple, it becomes increasingly hard to explain what Google is. A search company? An ad company? An e-book company? With Android, a mobile operating system company? A cool free things company?

Still the king of search and tech’s innovation bellwether, Google nonetheless had its share of doh! moments in 2010. Its social chat service Buzz launched in February and was immediately lambasted for an ill-considered approach to user privacy.

It abandoned its Wave collaboration platform to the frustration of users and developers. Germany attacked and blocked Google’s Streetview on the grounds it violated citizen privacy and European regulators kept the company in their sights.

Millions adore Streetview though (and 2010 saw the launch of Irish Streetview, complete with two mooning southsiders), Google’s bevy of cool free apps and services – and Google search. Getting too big for its britches? We don’t know yet.

And finally, Microsoft – for NOT properly winning a place on such a list. Perhaps nothing more signifies how fast and furiously the tech world order changes.

Not long past, the company would have been dominant in news, products, acquisitions, legal travails – all the hallmarks of a leading player. Now, the only achievement that comes to mind for 2010 is the launch of the (quite excellent) Kinect game controller. Not a top-10 coup, though, making Microsoft perhaps a memento mori for today’s seemingly invincible giants such as Oracle and Google.