It seemed like 2011 disappeared faster than a discounted tablet on Black Friday. It certainly left its mark on the digital world. From a tech perspective, 2011 was the year that brought us the continued upsurge in all things mobile (such as smartphones, tablets and apps), the social media-fueled Arab Spring, the emergence of social commerce, the demise of Flash, the resurgence of tech IPOs (with LinkedIn, Zynga, Groupon and Pandora leading the way) and the untimely passing of Steve Jobs.

Mobile payment systems enable consumers to use their smartphones, instead of cash or credit cards, to purchase products or services in stores. A number of these systems leverage near-field communication (NFC) chips installed in smartphones, such as Google’s Nexus S and the rumored next-generation iPhone. When consumers touch or wave their NFC-enabled smartphones at devices installed at registers, the NFC chip communicates with the register to process the transaction.

What could possibly be better than running a company like Groupon nowadays? You have the joy in knowing that you’re providing consumers with super bargains on goods and services from local merchants, while making money hand over fist by taking a 50% cut on any revenue you generate from the merchants offering deals. All it takes is a little bit of legwork (ok, we’re oversimplifying it) finding the right merchants and selling them in on the idea of doing a deal in the first place. Not a bad gig.

2010, the year that brought us the iPad, augmented reality ads, the attack of Groupon and the group buying clones and the rise of location-based social networks, has come to a close. Winners like Apple and Facebook may look upon last year fondly given their dominant respective business performances whereas much of the rest of America may just be breathing a sigh of relief because the fragile fed-fueled economic recovery did not collapse.