The Protester is Time Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year. It always feels like a bit of a cop-out when Time doesn’t choose a particular person and goes with a concept or a generalization. But in this case, Time might have a point. The Protester, whomever we choose to believe him or her to be, had a big year. There were protests in Africa and the Middle East as well as plenty of protests across the United States as “Occupy” became as much a noun as a verb.

A busy day for technology: The transportation board wants to ban cell phones and driving altogether; unmanned drones are possibly being used to spy on the U.S.; and a camera can now capture light particles.

A pair of mega-reader/mini-tablets undergo some changes. Amazon’s Kindle Fire has only recently started shipping out to customers but already a flood of complaints have been rolling in on its touchscreen, one-click shopping and volume and parental controls. Meanwhile, the latest Nook Color update will essentially give users the capabilities of the Nook tablet — for $50 less. And comedian Louis C.K. skips the middleman in selling his new concert special.

Three different bills going through Congress could actually affect the sites you visit online. The OPEN Act would fight online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods by going after those sites for trade violations. SOPA and PROTECT IP are aimed at preventing and punishing acts of online piracy and theft of intellectual property. All three could give the United States government the ability to target a website solely because the government claimed it was facilitating somebody else’s act of copyright infringement.

If you follow celebrity gossip, you know about actor Alec Baldwin being removed from a recent flight because he refused to get off his electronic device. This behavior, of course, violates Federal Aviation Administration rules, but those rules may violate common sense. Is a state-of-the-art jumbo jet really affected by a little gizmo?

Amazon has a free smartphone app called Price Check and they’re offering an interesting deal with it starting Saturday. You go into a store — an actual physical bricks-and-mortar store — find an item, scan it and the app will show you the price on Amazon.com. Then, Amazon will knock an additional 5 percent off that price if you buy it using the app. So the idea, from Amazon’s perspective, is to have you go into a store somewhere else, but buy from Amazon.

Sen. Al Franken is looking into the Carrier IQ scandal. The Minnesota Democrat is giving several wireless carriers and phone manufacturers until next Wednesday to answer questions about exactly how they’re using software from Carrier IQ and what they’re doing with the information it collects.

TV is at the heart of the latest update to the Xbox Live. Under the program, which begins rolling out today, subscribers will be able to watch a variety of streaming cable channels and enjoy a library of TV content. Sounds pretty neat, but it isn’t quite a game changer yet. Plus, we also talk about the possible comeback of mammoths.

Video game music has come a long way since the days of Pac Man’s 8-bit boppy opening screen tune. Today’s games feature top composers creating ambitious scores that are built into the creative process of producing the game. We talk to Emily Reese, host of the Top Score podcast, which is dedicated to video game composition.