As reported on Wired.
BY MICHAEL CALORE
Longtime readers will be familiar with Wired/Tired/Expired, our snarky cultural scorecard that began appearing in the magazine way back at the dawn of Wired. (Actually, it started as Wired/Tired, and Expired was added in 2002.)
Not content to let a good idea sit on the shelf, we’ve asked product reviews editor Michael Calore, the office’s most opinionated loudmouth, to weigh in on the topics most deserving of this year’s honors. Actually, on second thought, maybe we should have let this sleeping dog lie.
The Mobile Web
WIRED Responsive Web Design
The idea behind responsive web design is that no matter what kind of device I use to visit your website — PC, tablet or phone — you’re serving me the exact same code. A responsive layout self-adjusts to suit the screen being used, and the text, images and navigation elements all rearrange themselves fluidly and cleanly. This not only guarantees that every visitor to your website has a great experience, but it’s also less work for you in the end — you don’t have to redirect mobile users to a separate URL, and you only have to build one version of your website.
Few sites are actually doing this. But the ones that are? Extra cool. Join the club at This is Responsiveand Mediaqueri.es.
TIRED Ignoring Mobile
If you can’t build a responsive website for some reason, at least build an adaptive one — a destination with some flavor of mobile-friendly experience. Even if it means shunting phone or tablet readers to a different URL (like one with an “m” at the front), it’s better than nothing.
But too many sites do nothing, serving mobile visitors full-size web pages meant for desktop browsers. Treating mobile users as second-class web citizens is an insult, not to mention shortsighted and foolish, considering the explosive growth in mobile browsing.
EXPIRED Download Our App!
When I’m browsing on my phone and type in your URL or click on a link I see on Twitter, I expect to see the page I requested. Instead, I get this full-screen interstitial ad: Hey! You’re on an iPhone! Check out our App! Did you know we have an App? We have an App! Click Here! And of course it takes me three taps to hit the tiny “No thanks” button.
You know what? I don’t want your goddamned app. I want the web page I asked for. If you had shown me that page — and given me a clean, awesome layout that looked great on my phone — you’d probably have earned a new fan. Which means repeat visits and more clicks and more sharing and all the best kinds of traffic. Maybe I would’ve even enjoyed your content so much, I’d actually want to download your app. Instead, you’ve just made me angry. Is that really why we’re visiting your website? To get angry?
Worse are the interstitials that break the back button (a cardinal sin) or lose track of where you were headed and send you to the site’s homepage. Go ahead, kick me while I’m down.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired 
The New Radio
WIRED Streaming Music
This is absolutely amazing. Think about it: whatever you want to hear, you just type it into the internet and it starts playing seconds later. That is so cool! Whether you’re an Rdio girl, a Spotify guy, or a Rhapsody brosephina, this is the greatest thing to happen to music on the internet since Napster. Even if something isn’t available on whatever service you subscribe to, you can probably find it on YouTube.
These services cost $5 or $10 a month, but c’mon, that’s peanuts. Is it worth it? Are you kidding me? This is exactly what we’ve been waiting for all these years.
TIRED Cloud-based Storage
Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player, iTunes Match — all storage spaces owned by big corporations, all wanting to rent you a locker to stash your tunes. They’re OK for pride-of-ownership types who lack sufficient storage on their mobiles, but none are smooth enough for the masses to grok. Maybe these will be awesome in a few years, but on-demand streaming is the better bargain for now — it’s not just everything you own, it’s everything in the store.
EXPIRED iTunes
I actually got kind of excited when iTunes 11 arrived, because at the time, Apple’s player was the worst-performing piece of software on my computer. Then iTunes 11 ended up being a steaming pile. Sure, it’s faster, but the usability changes are disastrous. Search is now effectively broken, and all the metadata I used to be able to see at the end of every click is hidden behind a useless, gee-whiz grid of album art. I wish I could delete iTunes forever, but I need it to manage my iDevices.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Displays
WIRED Retina
The appearance of the Retina display in the iPhone challenged everyone to step up their game and make better displays. Then Apple put one in the iPad, then the MacBook Pro. We’ll have Retina everything in our Apple devices soon, maybe even within a matter of months.
This is one of the biggest leaps forward the computer industry has taken in years. A rising resolution sharpens all displays — look at the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10, or HTC’s One X. Everything we do is looking better.
TIRED PenTile
Samsung’s display technology was heralded as a huge advancement when it first rolled out in 2010, but now PenTile is looking pretty sad. Its subpixel matrix scheme, which inserts an extra red pixel and/or an extra green pixel in every RGB array, is intended to more closely match the color sensitivities of the human eye. However, PenTile screens look blurry, text has easily discernible edges, and colors don’t appear naturally. Yet some of this year’s most popular phones — including the Samsung Galaxy S III and the HTC One S — use the outdated technology.
EXPIRED qHD
Why is it called qHD? Because the resolution measures 960 x 540 pixels, one quarter the resolution of a 1080 full-HD panel. So… why is HD in the name? Even though it’s not HD? And why does it look like total ass? Oh, because it’s not HD.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Digital Pugilism
WIRED Twitter Fights
The best thing about Twitter is the 140 character count limit. It forces us to self-edit and keep things crisp. It also makes us sound smarter than we are. So when it becomes necessary to deliver a few jabs across the Twitterstream, the terms of the duel default to the tiniest daggers — painful little needles of acerbic smugness. Hashtags are suddenly tumescent with subtext. Single sentences unravel, revealing themselves as complex insults. Get two masters of the form arguing about something like kerning pairs or Wankees vs BoSox, and the results are positively Shakespearean.
TIRED Blogfights
Because nothing’s more boring than an endless string of 1,400-word blog posts about why so-and-so is an asshole.
EXPIRED Comment Flame Wars
I think xkcd said it best.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Payments
WIRED Venmo
It’s a simple tool for sending money to your friends. Venmo is mobile-centric, so it’s built to work over SMS. There are also simple apps for iOS, Android, and the web. Best of all, if you tie it to your regular debit card, there are no fees involved. Once you establish a tit-for-tat friend relationship with somebody, you can send them money just by typing a quick text. Venmo is simple, elegant and awesome. This year, I used it to pay a $5 bar tab, split a $32 charge for a pizza delivery, and buy a $1,000 bass guitar from a friend. And did I mention there are no fees?
TIRED PayPal
PayPal is getting long in the tooth, and it needs to innovate. Better systems for mobile micro-payments between consenting adults have emerged. Also, NFC-based credit systems like Google Wallet and POS systems like Square are planting flags in PayPal’s potential growth areas. It’s still popular on Craigslist, eBay (duh) and other near-anonymous person-to-person markets, but PayPal needs to unlock the social component of swapping cash if it’s going to avoid getting passed.
EXPIRED Bitcoin
At the height of its popularity, Bitcoin was trumpeted as a viable alternative currency for the internet age, a monetary system engineered to prevent theft, gaming, and criminalization. Then came the malware, theblack market, the legal ambiguities and The Man. Today, you can’t even use it to buy Facebook stock.
Bitcoin image: Trader Tim/Flickr. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Photo-Sharing
WIRED Snapchat
Pure genius. You take a picture and send it to a friend. You set a timer indicating how long your friend is allowed to look at the picture before it disappears. If they take a screenshot, you get a notification. Earlier this month, Snapchat added the ability to share 10-second videos. No other app better satiates the modern mobile user’s hunger for playful social snacking.
Of course, the app is getting all the wrong kinds of attention because it sounds like something that’s perfectly designed for sexting — it bypasses MMS, so it’s easier to hide your activity from nosy moms. But the truth is, over a billion Snapchats have been sent so far, and all the kids are on it. God only knows what they’re doing.
TIRED Instagram
There was once a lot of love in the room for Instagram, but the company’s recent shenanigans are chafing the faithful. First, they killed Gotham (WTF!). Then the Android version was released (Who let in the hoi polloi?). Then came the Facebook acquisition (Sellouts!). Then Instagram stopped implementing Twitter cards (Huh?) and kicked off a truly bizarre platform war. And the last straw: the TOS debacle.
The backlash has begun, and the high and mighty are dusting off their Yahoo credentials and once again posting to Flickr, where you can choose one of several licensing options, including CC BY-NC 2.5 . Better yet, Flickr just added photo filters to its new mobile apps, so you can continue to dress up your snaps from the #PDX #artisanal #dishsoaps #meetup to make them look like the summer of ’82.
EXPIRED Color
When Color launched, I read every genuflecting article in the tech press, and I still couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do with it. Then I downloaded it and became even more confused. The company has since imploded. The app will stop working at the end of this month, and I still have no idea what it does.
Photos: Wired Instagram
Home Audio
WIRED Bluetooth Streaming
If you’re investing in any sort of speaker to pair with your mobile, you really can’t go wrong with Bluetooth. It’s ubiquitous (show me a mobile handset worth buying that doesn’t support Bluetooth) and recent updates, such as the addition of the apt-X codec, have the quality of the audio sounding better than ever. Plus, with a flood of winning audio products like the Big Jambox, the UE Mobile Boombox and NuForce’s new S3-BT speakers, the hardware ecosystem is big enough to serve every need.
TIRED AirPlay
Like every other red-blooded Apple hardware owner, I’m rooting for it. But AirPlay is one of the most indefensible streaming options on the market. First, there’s the $50 to $100 premium on AirPlay-enabled devices. Second, there are nagging DRM issues. And third, it suffers from stability problems galore. Like other streaming music options that piggyback on your existing Wi-Fi network, it’s full of stutters, hiccups, dropouts and freezes — a huge buzzkill when you just spent $300 on a premium speaker. Shouldn’t we have all these problems ironed out by now?
EXPIRED Docks
Hey, nice! The wife bought me a Nexus 4 for Christmas! And the new Rdio app looks awesome on my iPad Mini! And my sister bought me… a sound dock with a 30-pin connector. This is only going to get worse.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired
Personal Security
WIRED Secure Authentication
If you don’t have 2-step authentication enabled on your Google account, do it now. Then do it for every other set of credentials where the service owner provides the option. 2012 is the year we learned all a hacker needs to ruin your life are your billing address, your e-mail address, and a telephone. As we become more dependent on the cloud services tied to our various devices, we’ll need to better educate ourselves about how to lock them down. Paranoid is the new normal.
TIRED Passwords
For now, we’re stuck with passwords. But passwords suck, so use a passphrase instead. Again, I point you to xkcd, who has an excellent formula. My favorite method: gently squeeze your cat, type out whatever she says, then throw in some punctuation. Mrowr!brrfftclaw Done.
EXPIRED “password”
You should really change it “1234” — that’s way harder to guess.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Data Entry
WIRED Dictation
Are you still typing text messages and manually entering calendar items? That’s for squares. iPhone users have been able to dictate text messages ever since the arrival of Siri, so if you’ve got a 4S or a 5 and you aren’t constantly pressing that little microphone button below the keyboard, you’re totally missing out. Also, Android’s dictation engine has gotten alarmingly good with the arrival of Jelly Bean. It even works offline. If you don’t have one of these devices, you can still speak your sandwich order by downloading a good dictation app — Voice Dictation is the best for iOS, and Text by Voice is a good one for Android.
TIRED Thumb Typing
Please tell me you’re at least using Swype.
EXPIRED Physical QWERTY
Why do manufacturers continue to make smartphones with physical keyboards? I refuse to believe real people actually buy them. I bet it’s all just fleet purchases by midwestern firms that do IT for dentists offices or something. The phones are ugly and laughably huge, the sliding mechanisms are cumbersome, and the typing experience is almost always slower than a touchscreen. QWERTYs are so dorky, each phone should come with a free belt-clip holster and a pair of pleated khakis.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Lulz
WIRED Animated GIFs
Back in the 1930s, at the dawn of the web, the GIF was invented as a way to present raster graphics alongside text. As a bonus, you could animate them and make a little Scotty dog run around under your AOL e-mail address, or you could utilize one of those triangular signs showing the hard-hat guy digging with a shovel to signify your Geocities page was “under construction.” Animated GIFs were useful for helping humans communicate effectively, which was otherwise extremely difficult in those days before Facebook. Eventually, the GIF gave way to the JPEG and the PNG. Animation duties were assumed by Shockwave, which changed its name to Flash and enjoyed a good run but is now dead.
Now, at long last, the animated GIF is back, and it’s totally owning the market on fantastically funny short animations. It has assumed its new place atop the throne of web culture, where it has reclaimed the crown of Lulz. There’s even an entire website called BuzzFeed dedicated to the artform.
TIRED Emoji
How am I supposed to figure out what you mean when you comment on my Instagram photo with: Clapping hands, sad cat, dancing girls, gun, atomic explosion, koala bear, koala bear, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, surfer, sunset, thumbs up? If you like my picture of my soy latte and my $7 donut, just fucking say so.
EXPIRED LOLCATs
OMG DEDZIES!!1!