This holiday season, keeping in touch with the loved ones, seeing and talking to them seems to be as important as sharing gifts and cards. But a lot people are out of home these days, so they may be missing out on something essential. Skype is addressing this problem by offering travelers in airports across the U.S. a great opportunity to connect with their family and friends for free. The Internet phone service, which was acquired by Microsoft in May, is now offering a free hour of Internet access to third-party wireless hotspots within the Skype WiFi hotspot area in 50 airports in the U.S., so that travelers could see and hear their loved ones between flights.

With less than a few weeks left before we all enter the year of 2012 (as some believe, the last one in our calendar), we are looking back at what innovations captured consumers’ attention over the past 12 months. Some of the new projects and products appeared within the trends, which emerged earlier, and some of them are truly innovative and ambitions and pave the way for something completely unseen and unpredicted by average minds.

With a heritage of producing handsets that combine the best in style and substance, Prada and LG unveiled the partnership’s latest must-have smartphone, the Prada phone by LG 3.0. This highly anticipated handset is the third phone to come from the collaboration and represents a key design venture for both companies. The Prada phone by LG 3.0 combines Prada’s distinctive style with LG’s innovative technology, including one of the biggest and brightest screens in the world with 4.3inch and 800-nit screen.

Google is getting close at Facebook Events service heels with its newly released Schemer, an activities recommendation engine with Google+ integration. Though the service is an invite-only beta so far but it already has partnered with well-known brands to organize schemes. These brands include Bravo, Entertainment Weekly, Food Network, IGN, LifeHacker, National Geographic, the US Department of the Interior and Zagat