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Moon mobiles, Windows without Gates and DIY wi-fi signal boosting
Stories of the year... What did you miss in 2008?

By Natasha Lomas

Published: Monday 15 December 2008

2008 has been a year of many interesting tech developments, especially in the mobility space - from the launch of Apple's 3G iPhone, to the ballooning take-up of mobile broadband and a veritable explosion of mini laptops and iPhone-a-like touchscreen smartphones.

One notable gadget in the latter category that launched this year runs a shiny new open OS known as Android - fashioned by none other than online behemoth Google.

Not content with diving into the mobile world, the Mountain View-based company has also stuck a tentacle into the online browser pie with its Chrome offering, giving Internet Explorer a new upstart to worry about.

2008 has of course been a year of worldwide economic uncertainty too, leading to recession and swathes of job cuts - many in the tech sector, from EA and eBay to Sony and Yahoo!, and many more besides.

Another defining characteristic of the year has been the endless stream of data breaches - especially where the UK government and its contractors are concerned.

Top 10 stories of 2008

From mobiles on the moon to life after Bill Gates and futurist Ray Kurzweil's musing on spiritual machines - click on the links below to read silicon.com's stories of the year...

Mobiles on the moon? Nasa prepares trial for takeoff

UK students outsource IT coursework to India

Five ways Microsoft could change after Gates

Peter Cochrane's Blog: Out of range?

Prisoner data breach firm paid £100m

'BlackBerry Storm was Vodafone's idea': RIM co-CEO

ID card costs rise - but is the security weakening?

The 10 projects at the heart of NHS IT

Sepa adoption 'could take five years'

Kurzweil: "Technology is a double-edged sword"

But on the good news front, the UK at last saw a concrete pledge by incumbent telco BT to invest in fibre for next generation broadband - though don't expect full fibre to the home all round, with Blighty more likely to get a compromise patchwork of wireless and wireline techs. We also got the results of a six-month trial of mobile wallet tech on the London Underground - trumpeted as a success, though any commercial rollout is not likely to happen for years.

There were outsourcing acquisitions (HP-EDS) and a big mobile buy (Nokia-Symbian) - but far more entertaining was the tech non-acquisition of the century: Microsoft-Yahoo!. Will they, won't they? We still don't know for sure. Perhaps 2009 will have the final word.

Various tech CEOs have also 'moved on' this year - or announced plans to do so - including BT's CEO Ben Verwaayen, Vodafone's Arun Sarin and Yahoo!'s Jerry Yang. 2008 is, of course, also the year Bill Gates stepped down from day-to-day duties at Redmond.

Meanwhile, the big name atop this year's silicon.com's Agenda Setters list was father of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee - with the judges reckoning he's as relevant now as he was when he invented the world wide web back in 1989, as he continues to campaign for openness and work on the next-gen semantic web. Apple's Steve Jobs and UK information commissioner Richard Thomas also made the list, coming in second and third respectively.

Looking beyond the big tech events of 2008, our top 10 stories of the year presents an intriguing blend of the eccentric and unexpected, the hard-hitting and crystal-ball gazing.

Click on the links in the grey box above to read the scoops of the year as we see it - from the prospect of having mobile phones in the hands of Lunar colonists, to silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane's tips on DIY wi-fi signal boosting and our comprehensive progress report on the 10 projects at the heart of the NHS IT upgrade.

There are also predictions for Microsoft's life after Gates, revelations that Home Office data breach contractor PA Consulting raked in close to £100m in recent years, and warnings the ID scheme is being diluted to a mere "flash and go" card.

This year we also secured an exclusive interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil with whom we discussed gene therapy, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and the Turing Test, and some of the dangers posed by advanced technologies.

2008 - we bid you farewell. Here's hoping for more intriguing headlines in 2009.