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Everyone's favorite photo filtering and sharing app for iOS got a significant update on Friday afternoon. Version 2.1 of Instagram adds a new filter, a tool for easily enhancing low-lit photos and a redesigned navigation.

Sierra, the latest filter to join the Instagram family, is a white-bordered filter that adds a lightened, low-contrast vintage look to photos. As far as Instagram filters go, it's pretty standard stuff, but it's always nice to have new options. The more substantial addition to the app is a feature called Lux, which lets users automatically increase the brightness of photos and boost the contrast. The option is meant to offer a way to improve underexposed photos and make them more Instagrammable.

The great thing about being a Wall Street analyst is few people ever go back to check and see if the bold predictions you made months or even years ahead of time actually come true.

Still, a report released by IHS in the wake of Microsoft's earnings announcement last week is worth a closer look.

The king of digital devices is ready to impose its will on the rest of the ecosystem in 2012. It is lining up billions of dollars in investments and is rumored to be in on every significant acquisition or partnership. Its empire sprawls across televisions, smartphones, laptops and computer processors. What is Apple doing now, you might ask. That would be the wrong question. The biggest influencer of the entire digital ecosystem does not hail from Cupertino. Look across the Pacific to South Korea. There, you will find Samsung.

An alteration made for the latest 2.0 version of the Dropbox app for Android in order to better comply with the rules of the operating system resulted in the removal of some features that, in the 1.x versions, users had come to rely upon. As a result, Dropbox team members these past few weeks have found themselves in damage control mode, as they work to stem a rising tide of frustration from users, some of whom aren't yet buying the company's message that these changes were necessary.

The biggest change the new version makes is to the storage locations for files downloaded from users' Dropbox storage areas to their phones. One is the cache for files that may be useful on the phone, like pictures and music. Another is for documents that may then be opened up in apps on the phone, like the QuickOffice productivity suite or the KeePassDroid password cache. The new version of the Dropbox app moves these locations to directories specified in the Android guidelines. But the change was implemented before users and developers were ready.

If you're attending the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) this week and have an Android phone, you'll be able to use Google Maps to navigate inside the Las Vegas Convention Center. Select resorts and casinos on the Las Vegas strip are also covered, as is McCarran International Airport.

Google has also partnered with some Las Vegas-area Best Buy stores, so it can guide gadget-addled convention-goers straight to the cash register. Today's update also releases the floor plans of some of the first locations submitted to Google.

Anybody with a passing interest in the headlines pouring out of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas cannot help but identify one major theme: 2012 is the year that the TV will converge with mobile platforms. For all of the talk that CES has lost its clout, it is still a good source for identifying trends that will drive the innovation of major technology companies in the new year. Last year tablets and dual-core processors were all the rage. This year, developers have something bigger on their minds.

The Stop Online Piracy Act. The mere thought of the controversial Internet regulation bill passing even one house of Congress keeps you up at night. You've already transferred all of your domains from GoDaddy, even after they flip-flopped on their SOPA stance. You instinctively click on every anti-SOPA story on Reddit and Hacker News, voting up the best of them. On the Internet, you've eagerly joined the growing army of digital activists opposing the law, but what about the real world? What about when you go to the store?

A new Android app called Boycott SOPA aims to help bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds and keep users in tune with which companies support SOPA and thus which products to avoid. The app scans barcodes on real-world products and then checks against a database of 800 SOPA supporters, letting you know if buying that box of tissues is going to ruin the Internet or not.

The segment of the media delivery industry that may yet take off for consumers consists of programming and services that are delivered to newer HDTVs "over-the-top" (OTT) - meaning, outside of the cable or satellite provider's pipeline. Naturally, the Internet is the delivery medium here. In prior years, analysts have wondered how (or whether) traditional programming from multi-service operators (MSOs) like Comcast would compete.

The answer we may get from CES 2012 is that it won't have to. Semiconductor maker Broadcom is set to demonstrate a new class of system-on-a-chip (SoC) components that could be integrated into set-top boxes (STBs). This new class, numbered BCM72xx, would deliver OTT services alongside cable channels, in a format that would enable MSOs to utilize Android as the operating system, and Sling Media as the streaming provider for wireless devices. It could be the formula behind the phrase, "Goodbye, TiVo."

At this point there's probably nothing in geekdom, no matter how arcane, that hasn't ended up on someone's skin. "In" someone's skin, to be precise. From ASCII art, to xkcd comics, to video games, to binary, to parts of your childhood you just can't leave behind, there are entire sites like Geeky Tattoos now devoted to nerd ink.

Back in 2010 we put together our first list of the 30 best and worst Web tech tattoos. Here's our latest compilation, including an augmented reality tattoo, HTML tags, Javascript and C++, Debian, Wordpress, Google, Microsoft, RFID, QR codes, even Bill Gates' face. If you have work that's better, or worse, show it off in the comments.

During the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, users downloaded more than 1 billion apps for the first time ever in a week-long period. Across iOS and Android, over 1.2 billion apps were downloaded, according to a new report by Flurry Analytics. That was a 60% increase over early December.

The holiday season typically sees a surge in mobile application downloads, especially once Christmas Day arrives and countless consumers all over the world unwrap their new Android devices, iPhones, iPads and iPods. In a true testament to the continued proliferation of these devices, this year's holiday spike in app downloads was a one for the record books, according to Flurry's data.