No. 7: Bedbugs
Like any good outbreak movie, this one starts in New York City. Imagine a montage of newscasters announcing that the Empire State Building, the United Nations, and Niketown have all been affected. Then heart-tugging shots of children as reporters announce that city schools are infested. Cut to a street with…
No. 6: Facebook
Our relationship with Facebook? It’s complicated. As anyone who’s seen the poster for the film “The Social Network” knows, Facebook made more than 500 million friends this year, including the Queen of England. Friendship with the social networking giant, though, can come with an awful lot of conditions. When the…
No. 5: Jersey Shore
After taking the reality-show world by storm in 2009, the uber-tan, fist-pumping “Jersey Shore” housemates from Seaside Heights signed with MTV for a second season and continued their infiltration of the known universe. Snooki, J-Woww, Pauly D, the Situation, Sammi, Vinnie, and the others lurked in every corner, ringing the…
No. 4: Glee
Like a hyperactive, overachieving freshman, “Glee” accomplished in one season what “American Idol” took years to do: a successful tour, Emmy nominations galore (and a few wins), a holiday album, even a clothing line (slushie stains not included). Actually, forget “Idol”: “Glee” album sales broke the Beatles’ Billboard records. How…
No. 3: iPad
After years of speculation and rumors about Apple’s work on a tablet device, CEO Steve Jobs finally presented the “magical and revolutionary” iPad to the world in January. Jokes about the name hit the Web, sending “iTampon” soaring as a Twitter trending topic. But the mocking faded as our fascination…
No. 1: iPhone
Early this year, fervor around the iPhone 3 had cooled. Tech media once again indulged in speculation about whether another smart phone might come forward as the ultimate iPhone killer, finally ending our addiction to Apple’s sleek offering. Candidates such as the HTC Droid Incredible and the much-hyped Google phone…
10 Obsessions of 2010
The definition of a 2010 obsession: a person, a pop-culture phenomenon, a political party, a gadget, or a pesty plague that spurred constant online monitoring and obsessive tangential searches. 10 Obsessions of 2010 iPhone Lindsay Lohan iPad “Glee” “Jersey Shore” Facebook Bedbugs Tea Party Silly Bandz Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl”…
No. 10: Austerity Strikes
The credit crisis that swept through the banking world in 2008 may have started on American shores, but it quickly found its way to all corners of the globe, sending tremors through economies that thought themselves impervious to shock. We know the U.S. wasn’t. Neither was Europe. In truth, they…
No. 2: Lindsay Lohan
The year started off hopefully enough, for those who kept an eye out for a Lindsay Lohan turnaround: Her December 2009 trip to India called attention to child trafficking for a BBC documentary. A few weeks later, she hosted a London fundraiser for Haiti earthquake victims. But the comeback story…
No. 9: Dow Jones Flash Crash
On the morning of May 6, 2010, the financial world had its eyes on Greece. Trouble was brewing in the land of the Acropolis amid fears that a national debt crisis was at hand, one that had the power to spread to the European Union and beyond. To stabilize the…