While it might not quite have been the gung-ho madness of 1999 (a good thing, all things considered), 2006 was the year in which the technology industry got its mojo back. After half a decade of it almost being embarrassing to say you worked in an internet start-up, suddenly it was cool and cutting edge again, especially if you were touting Web 2.0.
The Nasdaq, stock market home of the majority of tech companies, came roaring back at the end of the year. Oracle, Google and other big technology companies proved they had open purses for acquisitions. Microsoft actually finally launched Vista.
But in a reminder that the tech mania of the dotcom era hadn't really gone away, you know, we saw some guilty pleas and sentencing of of those who found themselves mired in the accounting scandals of that era - Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, whose 25-year sentence was upheld, the Enron gang, and Computer Associates chief executive Sanjay Kumar (who, having pleaded guilty to perpetrating a $2.2 billion securities fraud, is being sued by his former company to get back the $14.9 million it says went on his defence).
Several tech companies, including Apple, are busy restating accounts this year following irregularities in executive share options.
Plus ça change? One eternal tech verity held in 2006: "Thou shalt be attacked by viruses". Security - and its corollary, privacy - remain a top concern for digital networks and systems and all those who use them or whose information resides on them. Meaning, everybody.
Here's a personal view of the key trends and stories of the past year.
1. Web 2.0/social networks
Web 2.0 shifted from a trendy term primarily used in small circles of technology bloggers and hard-core web users to the mainstream as interest in and use of social networking technologies blossomed across the net. From mashups to wikis, Flickr to Bebo, MySpace to YouTube, blogs to FaceBook, the web's hottest spot is where people converge to create and share their own content.
While Google's big-ticket buy of loss-making YouTube toward year's end underlined how seriously some of the net's big players are taking this area, hundreds of small start-up are waiting to move on this area too. Some - like social network site Ning.com, started by Netscape founder Mark Andreessen - feature internet pioneers at their helm.
2. Google, Google, Google
We knew Google was smart and to be reckoned with but in 2006 it proved it was possibly the most formidable and influential internet company of them all - and because of that position, also one of the most powerful technology companies, full stop.
It kicked off the year with much negative press as it opened a self-censored site in China last January.
As the year progressed, it swallowed a number of smaller online companies from word processor Writely to YouTube, the latter becoming one of the highest profile acquisitions of the year with its $1.65 billion price tag and a clear sign of the mainstreaming of Web 2.0 technologies.
Hardly a month passes without a big Google story of some sort, whether it be an acquisition or an astronomical share price. As it grows ever larger (while remaining even more secretive than Apple), Google will find it harder to follow its corporate motto, Do No Evil - or get the rest of us to believe it.
3. Vista finally launches
Ruining one of the beloved jibes in tech circles about endlessly postponed release dates, Microsoft finally launched the new version of its Windows operating system, Vista, in late November (having delayed it earlier in the year).
Still, expect a lowish profile for Vista until its January 30th release to the consumer market - for now, only the business version is out. Expect the hype machine, heavy press coverage, and opining among the punters and the pundits to start early next year.
4. Company scandals
Even as we watched some of the high-profile scandal perpetrators of previous years plead guilty, get prison sentences and fines, along came new misbehaviour.
Corporate governance reared its head as numerous technology companies restated past earnings, in particular because many had apparently issued options to executives that were backdated to align with moments when share prices were low. Apple and Nvidia are among those which had to sort out the accounts.
On top of that, venerable HP, famous for a squeaky-clean image and much admired corporate ethos, admitted it had hired private investigators that spied on some board members, as well as a number of journalists, at the behest of other board members. Several former board members, including its former chairwoman and chief executive Carly Fiorina, are under felony indictment in California.
5. Security and spam
While the days of the high- profile mass-circulation virus that brings enterprises to a standstill and plagues the home computer user seems to have passed, new horrors have emerged that are more complex and more sneaky.
This past year was the year of the converged computer virus - a little bit of a worm to hack into your PC and email itself to your entire contact list, a fake link to redirect you to a web page with a bit of infected code or an attempt to grab your password to access accounts or personal data, maybe some code to surreptitiously take control of your PC, get hold of passwords, use your PC as a drone to launch an attack on a website somewhere. Next year promises more malicious fun.
6. Gains and challenges for Open Source
Open source software - applications created and maintained by teams of programmers who make the source code freely available to anyone under what is known as the GPL (GNU general public licence) continued to demonstrate it is firmly mainstream even as the move of big technology companies into its space challenged its already- challenging business models.
As open source-based companies struggle to find a way of making money off software that is freely available (selling services tends to be the answer), database giant Oracle showed where the future may lie once a small company begins to get big.
Showing no mercy, it announced in October that it would offer long-time partner Red Hat's version of the open source Linux operating system from Oracle's website for free and offer services at up to half the price that Red Hat charges.
7. Apple
Burying memories of those horrible years in the early and mid-90s when it struggled to survive and lost market share, Apple had its annus mirabilis in 2006, with its final calendar year results showing the best business year of its 30-year history.
Along with doing a roaring trade in the digital music player loved by the masses, the iPod, Apple also shocked many in 2005 when chief executive Steve Jobs announced a seismic shift from PowerPC to Intel chips for 2006. By year's end, the entire computer catalogue had Intel inside and Apple was selling more Macs than it has in a long, long time.
Some analysts even feel that Apple could again take a significant, rather than merely niche, slice of the PC market, not least because buyers can run both Mac and Windows operating systems on the new Macs.
And then, of course, there is the apparently inevitable arrival of the iPhone.
