Ars deathwatch 2014: Companies on the edge of relevance

With all of the holiday cheer now behind us, it’s time to take stock of the year ahead. And while 2013 was a good year for the stock market and a somewhat better-than-recessionary year for the economy as a whole, the ravages of the past twelve months have placed a handful of technology-related companies at a crossroads—one that could lead to a miraculous recovery, an acquisition, or the sort of corporate undeath that turns them into intellectual property zombies that feed on other companies’ brains for survival.