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Year in review: February 2011

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg drew mixed reviews for his cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live opposite actor Jesse Eisenberg, who played Zuckerberg in the biopic The Social Network.

The status of wireless startup Wind Mobile was in question after a judge quashed the federal cabinet order allowing it to start business in 2009. Federal Court Judge Roger Hughes said a 2009 cabinet order concluding Wind was controlled by Canadians as required by the Telecommunications Act was “based on errors of law and must be quashed.”

Meanwhile, the CRTC bowed to public pressure to re-examine Bell Mobility’s controversial usage-based billing, which critics argued would allow Bell to influence the billing practices of independent ISPs that bought wholesale Internet capacity from the company.

Seculert red-flagged a new generation of online banking virus that appeared to contain elements of the previous Zeus and SpyEye malware.

Hewlett-Packard Co. introduced its long-awaited tablet based on the webOS operating system the company acquired with the bones of Palm Inc. Within six months, HP would discontinue the OS and the tablet.

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices cut loose two vice-presidents, just a month after the resignation of CEO Dirk Meyer, with analysts expecting a less bureaucratic and more responsive regime under interim CEO Thomas Seifert.

Shortly after Nokia CEO Steven Elop admitted in an internal e-mail the company was standing on “a burning platform,” the company announced a tight partnership with Microsoft Corp. to use its Windows Phone 7 operating system on its smart phones.

Research in Motion Ltd. announced a plan to allow its PlayBook tablet to run Android apps.
 

Microsoft offered developers up to 750 free hours of use of its cloud-based Azure platform as an enticement for them to start working in a cloud environment.

A Hackett Group survey found companies were planning to increase their investment in cloud hardware and services, and ratchet back their spending on IT salaries. Another study showed older IT workers were hit harder by the recession than their younger colleagues.
 

And Canada’s Treasury Board admitted it had been dealing with an apparently malicious intrusion into government servers.

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