Windows Phone backers declare mobile war

Editor's note: Follow @cnntech, @griggsbrandon and @markmilian for Twitter updates this week from the Consumer Electronics Show.

Las Vegas (CNN) -- Stephen Elop gave an impassioned speech on Monday about waging a war to re-enter the United States by establishing a beachhead here.

Elop, a Canadian with a military general's vocabulary and haircut, is the chief executive for Nokia. The Finnish company is the highest-volume cell phone manufacturer worldwide, but has struggled in the U.S. and in staying ahead of the technological curve.

The 10 biggest stories of 2011 in mobile tech

Editor's note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.

(CNN) -- For Americans who own cell phones or other mobile devices (at least 85% of the adult population, according to a new survey), 2011 ushered in a whirlwind of news.

25 million people in a month - Google Plus growing faster than MySpace, Facebook or Twitter did

news.com - GOOGLE is a latecomer to social networking but its new site is growing much faster than MySpace, Facebook or Twitter did in their early days, according to technology experts.

However it still remains to be seen whether Google Plus can pose a serious threat to Facebook, which has more than 750 million members.

NASA set to launch spacecraft to Jupiter

bbc.co.uk - The American space agency, NASA, is planning to launch a new mission to Jupiter today.

The unmanned solar-powered spacecraft, called Juno, will take five years to reach the planet -- the largest in the solar system.

Once there, it will make thirty polar orbits in a bid to discover how much water is in Jupiter's atmosphere and whether the gas giant has a solid core.

The chief scientist on the project (Scott Bolton) said Jupiter held the secret to understanding how all the planets, including Earth, were formed.

Sony gets 'epic fail' award from hackers

Las Vegas (CNN) -- It's the Oscars for hard-core computer hackers, except that the trophies at the Pwnie Awards are cutesy little toy horses with pink and purple manes.

An explanation helps make some sense of this: "Pwn," in hacker jargon, means "to own" or "to take control of." It's the ultimate IT-nerd dis. As in, "I totally own your network." Or "I just pwned you in that World of Warcraft battle."

Add an -ie to the end, and you get "Pwnie," which is pronounced "pony" -- as in My Little Pony, which is exactly what these awards resemble.

See how much sense that makes?