RIP Technology: 10 Products and Services That Died in 2011 - duryeapecter

Humans are list-fashioning animals. At no time is that impulse to a greater extent prevalent than December, when we set ourselves the task of churning out class-remainder retrospectives. In the tech universe, those lists in the main cry out the C. H. Best products, the splashiest debuts, and the almost promising technologies of the year (see, for instance, PCWorld's own "100 Best Products of 2011"). Only there are tech losers apiece year, too–products, concepts, and services that kick the proverbial bucket. Some, like the vile Rustock botnet (interpreted down in March), we were sword lily to see give out.

Other tech demises evoke honest-to-god regret: good products lost in the ferocious market of 2011, tech initiatives that grew too expensive to retain their sponsor's funding, even well-engineered gear that just never caught on with the public. Herewith, my respects to 10 tech goners that we at PCWorld are rightfully going to overlook.

RIP Technology: 10 Products and Services That Died in 2011

The Flip: Starting in 2007, Pure Digital's ultraportable camcorder kicked disconnected a revolution, putting video in the hands of unremarkable folks, and probably enabling the creation of more than YouTube computed axial tomography videos than whatever product in story. Just a 2009 sale to networking heavyweight Cisco and the rise of video-capable smartphones composed to bury everyone's favorite pocket camcorder. Cisco pulled the cud in April.

Verizon's unlimited data architectural plan: If you'Ra a Verizon customer, you've likely been safekeeping close tabs on your mobile downloading habits since July. That's when the carrier scrapped its all-you-can-eat option for a smorgasbord of mobile data-usage plans. With overage charges costing $10 per gig, movie and music streaming can get very expensive. And every bit the twelvemonth closes, various pundits are predicting that Sprint may soon discontinue its unlimited data plan. Repay, DVDs: Every is forgiven.

H.P. WebOS: To take over the words of The Princess Bride's Miracle Max, HP's mobile operating system "is only mostly dead. There's a big difference 'tween mostly dead and every last dead." Indeed, there may be animation after death for this promising multitasking Oculus sinister, which was installed on commercial flops much as the Palm Pre and the HP TouchPad (see mathematical product number 99 in our Topper Products of the Class list). For months, rumors circulated that HP would sell off the OS. Then sooner this month, HP announced that WebOS was going open source. Here's hoping for a spirited revival.

Zune HD: 2 reactions greeted news that Microsoft had finally pulled the male plug on its portable media player: 1) gnashing of teeth from the (few) faithful, who deemed the Zune superior to the iPod; and 2) surprise from most music fans, who didn't hump information technology was still being produced at whol. On the other hand, maybe the Zune isn't completely gone, since its revolutionary "Subway system" interface figures prominently in Windows Phone 7, the Xbox 360, and Windows 8.

AltaVista: This once-powerful search engine has effectively been dead for years. But its demise became regular in May, when corporate parent Yahoo swapped in its personal search locomotive engine and started returning results on a Yokel Thomas Nelson Page. Yet in the days before Google, AltaVista was the Web's most sophisticated search engine, providing unprecedented full-of-the-moon-text searching capabilities to the sprawl that was the middle-'90s Entanglement. For that I'll be always grateful, and perchance even a little wistful.

Google Labs: The development playground that gave originate to services such as Google Maps and Google Groups is no more, referable "streamlining efforts" enforced in July. The good news is that app-specific projects, such as Gmail Labs and Google Maps Labs, are however alive and kicking.

Google Wellness: Google will close this ambitious service, studied to ply users a promised base to store their face-to-face health information, just as the big ball drops in Times Square, officially making it the first tech demise of 2012. But I'm including it here because I'd rather non await a year to deliver the eulogy. A promising concept, Google Wellness was a victim of our suspicious human nature: Apparently we're non snug putting our health information in a third political party's hands. Imagine–we don't trustfulness Google. What a storm.

Google Knol: Unveiling act three for Google in this year's Technical school Senescence Stakes, Knol had big plans–that is to say, to challenge Wikipedia. Intended to be a drug user-written cyclopedia, Knol coulda been a contender if it had launched in, say, 2001 instead of 2007. Merely with so many of the world's content experts already doing their charity work for Wikipedia, Knol lacked enough fleshed-out articles to be affected badly. Google's blog spot along the subject notes that every bit of May 1, 2012, "knols won't be visible." Fortunately, Knol won't be irrecoverable completely. Wikipedia has an article on it.

Dingle Streak: Dell's entry into the crowded tablet sweepstakes, the Streak ne'er gained some traction against the dominant iPad. The poorly reviewed tablet (which came in 5- and 7-inch versions) somehow felt up like a me-too product even though IT was one of the first Android tablets out there. The $200 price shred should have been a draw (as IT was for the Amazon Kindle Fire), simply the cardinal-twelvemonth AT&T contract required for activation was a turnoff. Dell can do better than this; I say it's clip for a winning mottle.

The white MacBook: From physics drives to FireWire ports, Apple has shown an uncanny power to phase exterior technologies right before they become old hat. We're not really all that broken leading about losing the white MacBook laptop this year. But if its retirement spells imminent doom for the colourize white person, we're not going to be gratified.