Stories by: Marc Ferranti

Facebook may end up being the biggest name on the IPO calendar this year, but it's also part of a trend in which technology, and particularly Internet companies, are outpacing public offerings from businesses in other sectors.

This week's tsunami of tech earnings, led by Apple's jaw-dropping quarterly report, has given market watchers something to cheer about and also points to industry shifts around tablets and cloud computing.

There were weak spots in the last quarter of 2011 for sector bellwethers Google, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, but corporate demand for technology appeared to remain resilient going into what is expected to be a year of slower growth for global IT spending.

Get ready for a perfect storm of earnings news. With tech bellwethers including IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Google set to issue financial reports next week, earnings season will pick up in earnest and judging from recent forecasts and profit warnings, it could be a bumpy ride.

Tech stocks ended the first trading week of 2012 on an upbeat note even though both Forrester and Gartner this week forecast slowing growth in IT spending, due mainly to concerns about the global economy.

After a rollercoaster ride on the stock market, tech companies are ending the year just about where they started, despite strong and in some cases record sales and profits for IT bellwethers.

Details of allegations of sexual harassment that ultimately caused Mark Hurd, now co-president at Oracle, to quit as CEO of Hewlett-Packard are now plastered across the Internet after a letter written on behalf of the complainant was unsealed by the Delaware Supreme Court Wednesday.

Confidence in the tech sector appears to be recovering on strong results from Tibco and Red Hat and optimism about the economy, after sinking earlier this week in the wake of a disappointing report from Oracle.

Zynga's initial public offering Friday, a raft of acquisition announcements this week from IBM, Salesforce and others, and some upbeat reports on the chip and hardware sector are putting a positive spin on year-end news for the tech sector.

In 2011, the increasingly mobile and socially networked world of technology became more intertwined than ever with politics and the law. Patent wars shaped competition in tablets and smartphones, hacktivists attacked a widening array of political and corporate targets, repressive regimes unplugged citizens from the Internet, and the U.S. government moved to block the giant merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA. With the passing of Steve Jobs, the world lost a technology icon who redefined the computer, entertainment and consumer electronics industries. These are the IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 technology stories of the year: