Photos of the year

2007 has seen a bumper crop of top tech photos from silicon.com, including the Apple iPod and iPhone launches, solar bikinis, St Pancras' reopening, trips to destinations including India, Kenya and Russia, sneak previews of the O2 - aka the old Millennium Dome - Heathrow's new Terminal 5 and a host of new apps from the ever-incumbent Google.

First up is Microsoft's fourth Innovation Day - hosted in Brussels - with partner organisations showing off the tech wares they predict could take off in the near future.

This photo shows a system developed by the Microsoft Research team in Cambridge, where the car learns how to drive around a track within a computer game. With further work it's hoped it can be tested on real vehicles.

The three green laser lines measure time to impact to various objects, while the lines on the road show the route the car has taken previously which it uses to perfect its line.

Microsoft has been eager to show of its wares in 2007, with pics of its Surface technology, touchscreen tabletop PC and remixed Zune featuring in the year's photo stories.

Photo credit: Tim Ferguson