Synth-lover Tycho makes the list with “Hours.”
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

An interoffice e-mail hit our inboxes one morning: “Have any favorite songs for 2011?”

The responses, unsurprisingly, piled in. Before lunch was fully digested it was born: the Wired Top 100 Songs of 2011 playlist. The vetting process had simple criteria:

1) Be submitted by a Wired staffer.
2) Be verified as from 2011.
3) Be a killer track.
4) Be available on Spotify.

Favorites ran the gamut. At any point in the office, you could overhear Beyoncé at one desk with Revocation rocking next door. There are predictable inclusions ...

“Patent lawsuit filed against Android” has become a distressingly familiar headline for Google and its hardware partners. With Microsoft signing license agreements covering more than 50 percent of Android phones, Apple working the courts to block sales of HTC and Samsung devices, and various lawsuits launched by rivals from Oracle to BT, the Android mobile operating system is stumbling through a legal minefield.

It’s fair to complain that the patent system itself is broken, as we’ve done on numerous occasions. Google has publicly bemoaned what it calls “a hostile, organized campaign against...