From PCWorld:

It’s easy to look at a laptop, an iPod, or a laser printer as nothing more than a tool to get work done with or to while away your free time on, but these and many other high-tech devices didn’t fall off a tree. They emerged following years of hard work–and in some cases, an entire career devoted to a single technology–by inspired researchers, designers, and developers.

Our list of technology visionaries includes the guy who invented a way to store data in a portable form–and who almost got demoted as a result. It recognizes the woman who popularized the term “bug” after a moth flew into a computer relay. And it acknowledges a genius who might have saved modern gaming by inventing Jump Man.

So it’s time to pay homage where homage is due. Here’s our take on the 50 most important people in the recent history of technology–the most critical players (including a few forgotten heroes) who’ve been instrumental in crafting the last 50 years of technical innovation.

Our opinion doesn’t have to be the last word on the subject, however. If you have additional nominees who deserve recognition, or if you want to chime in to agree with or reminisce about or rail against our choices, please add a comment to let us know.

See the List

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We’ve been analyzing historical TechMeme data to dig a little deeper than the leaderboard information on the site that shows top blogs over the trailing 30 days. We’re slicing the data in a number of ways and will publish in shortly on CrunchBase.

But for now we thought we’d show a teaser – below are the top 100 tech bloggers/authors, based on the total number of headlines they have had on TechMeme from January 1, 2008 to today. The data isn’t 100% perfect as we’ve been grabbing it only once per hour, so a headline that was up for less than one hour may not be counted. But statistically speaking, the data is meaningful. Since a lot of the top leaderboard blogs are multi-author, this helps to shake out who’s actually writing the popular stories.

See the List

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