2009十大科技发明回顾

Engineers didn't make huge improvements to technology in 2009. The year's big tech names -- Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon -- all existed before January.
工程师在2009年并未给我们带来多少科技惊喜。Twitter，Facebook，Google，Apple，Amazon，这些如雷贯耳的品牌早在今年一月份之前就出现了。

Instead, this is the year technology changed us.Here's a look back at how it happened.
换而言之，这是一个科技改变我们的时代。来看看为什么吧。

Smartphone craze
By the end of 2009, having a basic cell phone wasn't good enough anymore. Now the standard is a smartphone -- a mobile phone that also acts as a computer -- and links its users to Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the digital universe.
09年末，普通手机面临淘汰。当前的潮流非堪比电脑的智能手机莫属。用户能通过它登陆Facebook，Twitter，整个数码世界都触手可及。

Facebook grows up
Founded in 2004 for college students, the online social network exploded in 2008 and might have been expected to level off this year. Instead, it went global and expanded into new and older demographics.
成立于2004年的这个社交网站在08年大肆风行。本来预计今年的势头会平缓下来，但它不仅更为全球化，还发展了更多新用户，包括上一辈的人。

Bloggers threaten regimes
Individuals became publishers in 2009, using the micro-blogging site Twitter to post instant, bite-sized updates to the world. The political ramifications of the micro-blogging trend became evident in June when Iranians used Twitter to organize and publicize protests of a disputed presidential election.
通过在微博网站Twitter上发布即时、简短的新消息，人人都能成为出版商。今年六月，随着伊朗人通过Twitter抗议争议颇多的总统选举，Twitter上的政治分歧现象愈加明朗。

Books go digital
Sick of lugging hefty books with you on vacation? Portable, electronic readers -- with their easy-on-the-eyes displays and ability to carry hundreds of titles without gaining weight -- started to make inroads on their hardback cousins in 2009.
不想再搬着沉重的书去度假？轻巧便携的电子阅读器凭借其大储存量和舒适清晰的屏幕，向纸质同仁发起了挑战。

Meanwhile, libraries, authors, publishers and Google continued to haggle out the details of a settlement that could give the Internet giant permission to create the world's largest library -- online only.
与此同时，图书馆，作者，出版商和Google还在就一项协议的细节问题纠缠不清。这项协议一旦达成，世界上最大的网上图书馆就有望成立了。

Info in an instant
In 2009, it's no longer enough to search for information that was current 30 minutes or an hour ago. Now, Internet junkies look for their news to be updated in "real-time," just as they are on Twitter.
网上搜索30分钟或一个小时前的新闻已经不能满足人们的需求。网虫们希望搜索到的新闻能像Twitter一样实时更新。

Microsoft and Google struck deals with Twitter to pipe in or replicate its real-time search function. The micro-blogging site lets authors post short bursts of information, which become searchable the moment someone clicks send.
微软和Google同Twitter达成协议，引进、模仿它的实时搜索功能。Twitter上一旦有人发布短新闻，就能立刻被搜索出来。

App mania
In 2009, mobile phone customers made a strange realization: The phone isn't as important as the applications that run on it. Droves of iPhone owners downloaded games, widgets and tools for their phones from Apple. By September, just over a year after the company started selling apps through its iTunes App Store, 2 billion of the applications had been downloaded.
2009年的手机用户们产生了一个奇怪的想法：手机软件比手机本身重要。大批iPhone用户从Apple网站下载游戏，小程序和工具到他们的手机里。Apple公司通过iTunes销售手机应用软件不过一年时间，下载量已经超过20亿。

Games leave the living room
Remember the days when people played video games on huge TVs in their living rooms? That was so 2008. This year, gaming became mobile and social.Many of the year's popular phone-based games cost less than a buck.
还记得在房间里对着电视屏幕玩游戏的情景吗？那是2008年。今年，游戏变得移动化，社会化。不少流行手机游戏的花费还不到一块钱。

Government gets techie
Government has a reputation for lagging behind the technological curve. But in 2009, the Obama Administration tried to prove that bureaucrats could be hip and tech-savvy, too.The administration launched DATA.gov, a clearinghouse of information on how the federal government works and how tax money is spent.
政府向来被视为落后于科技潮流。不过今年，奥巴马当局建立了DATA.gov网站，希望证明公务员也熟知最新技术。在这个网站上可以查到联邦政府工作情况以及税款支出的信息。

Search engine wars
Google is still the world's dominant search engine, but it faced its first real challengers in 2009 as smaller search companies came up with new ideas about the way people can and should find information online.
Google仍然是引擎界龙头老大，不过今年它也不缺竞争对手。小型搜索引擎公司提出了网上搜索信息的新概念和新方法。

The major newcomer was Microsoft's Bing, a "decision engine" that introduced new ways to sort through photos online and to search for products. Bing quickly grabbed a foothold, gaining 10 percent of the search market by the end of the year.
其中主要干将就是微软开发的Bing，被称为“决策引擎”，提供搜索照片和产品的新方法。Bing很快站稳了脚跟，并占据了引擎市场10%的份额。

Smart electricity use
The federal government invested billions in a smart grid in 2009 that connects homes and apartments with power plants. Smart-grid technology monitors energy use and helps steer consumption to times of day when other people aren't using much electricity.
联邦政府花了数十亿开发智能电网，将千家万户与发电厂联网。智能电网可以监测电力使用情况，帮助避免用电高峰。