Is there a burning question you have about tech? Like what's the difference between $100 and $100,000 headphones? Or why every country has a different f@%#ing plug? We explained all that, and a whole lot more this year.

Photography

What Everybody Should Know About Cameras
The essentials of digital camera knowledge, from all the different types of cameras to image sensors to jargon like ISO, all in one epic spot.

Why Lenses Are the Real Key to Stunning Photos
Despite what stupid spec wars would have you believe, a fancy slice of glass is just as important as silicon to taking a stunning photo.

When (Not) To Use Your Camera's Flash
What is photography's greatest scourge? Cellphone cameras? MySpace self-portraiture? No, it's that dratted flash—here's when and how you should-and more importantly, shouldn't-use it.

Why More Megapixels Isn't Always Better
In short, twelve megapixels stuffed onto a tiny ass sensor looks like crap. Twelve megapixels with plenty of a room on a full-frame sensor can look pretty great.

Television

The Ultimate HDTV Cheat Sheet and Buying Guide
Read this before you go buy and HDTV, and you'll have the Best Buy employee spinning in circles. Or at least, he won't be able to take you for a spin.

The Difference Between a $600 TV and a $6000 TV
There is a difference, and it goes way beyond the logo sitting front and center. How much do all those extra inches cost? What about 120Hz, or hell 240Hz? The cost of a fancy ass TV, broken down.

What's So Great About LED-Backlit LCDs
Any LCD display worth its salt—especially when it comes to laptops—is lit up by a bunch of LEDs, not the fluorescent bulbs that light up high school cafeterias. But, not all LED displays are created equal.

Audio

Why You Can't Get Decent Headphones for Under $100
Building truly great in-ear headphones is hard. Which means it's expensive. We got an earful of the secret sauce that goes into the pricey headphones that sound oh-so-delicious, and why you can't buy 'em for a song.

The Difference Between $100 and $100,000 Speakers
Well the title really says it all, don't it?

Why Analog Audio Cables Really Aren't All the Same
Yes, there really is a difference between analog cables. And you want there to be.

Computers and Software

Why Quantum Computing Is the Future, But a Distant One
Computing with quantum physics! It's as crazy as it sounds, so we'll let quantum physicists explain it.

Why Stuff Crashes, and Why It Happens Less Often Now
Ever wondered what causes a BSOD or kernel panic? Notice how it happens a less often than it used to? (Though Firefox crashing every five minutes seems to make up for it.)

Android and How It Will Take Over the World
No, it's not because of the mysterious Nexus One. The true nature of Android is a little more complex than you might realize, able to run everything from phones to nooks to set-top boxes. And Google's giving it away for free.

GPGPU Computing and Why It'll Melt Your Face Off
Graphics cards, they're not just for PC gametards anymore. Thanks to new programming standards they'll be accelerating everything on a computer that can take advantage of oodles of processing cores.

How Apple Affects Your Tech World Through Standards (Even You, Windows Guy)
The easy way to have power over technology and people outside of your own little domain: Create tech standards. Here's a few Apple's been instrumental in getting out there.

Microsoft and Standards
The flip side to how Apple plays with industry-wide standards, Microsoft just establishes them de facto, when it can. Here's some of the bigger ones they're responsible for.

Cellphones

How Cell Towers Work
Until Wilson explained how cell towers work, I always thought Stormtrooper fairies carried the signals from my phone to the Death Star and then to my mom's cellphone.

Why WiMax and LTE Wireless 4G Data Will Blow Your Mind
WiMax is really here (at least in some places) and LTE from Verizon and AT&T will be ramping in short order. The days of ubiquitous wireless broadband are very nearly here. Exciting, and scary.

Bill Nye Explains Oleophobic Screens
Uh, Bill Nye. Explaining stuff. Do I need to say anymore?

Electricity

Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug
There actually are reasons there's like a billion different types of power plugs scattered across the world. I know you want to know why.

How Electrocution Really Kills You (With Adam Savage)
MythBuster Adam Savage tells us how electricity really kills you—surprisingly, it's not by poaching your brains inside of your skull.

Coffee

How to Actually Make Coffee
Odds are, you're doin' it wrong. Here's most of the major ways to make delicious coffee, with advice from our friends at Ninth St. Espresso, Intelligentsia Coffee and La Marzocco.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about cameras, processors, or anything else crazy complicated to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

For those moments when sane earphones just don't cut it, consider these Crazy Earphones from Solid Alliance. Especially if that 243rd playing of Feliz Navidad makes you want to put a sword through your head.

There's also an arrow through an apple for when you're feeling wacky, an ear earbud for your meta moods, and a mushroom for when... you're dodging Bowser's fireballs?

Don't be put off by the sad mannequin heads: these buds are definitely for you. Available at the Solid Alliance store in Japan for about $22. [Solid Alliance via technabob]

The joy experienced on Christmas morning is wonderful, to a point. If you take it too far, however, you end up looking crazy. And just think of the meltdown he'll have when he gets his first RROD! [Funzine.nl via TDW]

Asus's subsidiary is coming out with this colorful robot vacuum called the E-Clean. It includes a bacterial killing UV light, a fragrance sprayer and remote control. It's set for China and Taiwan only for a mere $150.

[Wired]

The moment you unpackage a new smartphone is a magical one. Don't let the moment right after that, when you realize that it's practically useless out of the box, cancel that out. Here's everything you need to know:

What You Need to Buy

There are plenty of smartphone accessories that are worth considering, and a few that you actually need. Proceed with caution, but don't be afraid to treat your new smartphone, and yourself, to a few goodies.

A Case: They look goofy, Jason hates them, and they screw with your device's carefully designed curves. But here's the thing: smartphones are fragile. They aren't like dumbphones, and a single fall—especially with devices with a glass screen—can poop all over your new smartphone party. Until you're trained, play it safe. Wrap your unit. Case brand isn't important, so just take your pick from your local Best Buy or wherever. Just make sure your device's corners are covered, because it's edge impacts that break the most glass. Just remember, you're stuck in a multi-thousand dollar contract with this device, which itself would costs hundreds of dollars to replace. It's actually kind of terrifying! Pretend it's a baby, if that helps.

Headphones: Your smartphone is now your primary media player, too, so you're going to need to ditch the headphones or headset it came with. Yes, they all suck; no, your phone's aren't the one exception. If you don't care about a microphone, treat yourself to a decent pair of in-ear headphones. If you do, get a midrange wired headset.

Storage: Phones either come with internal storage, like the Pre or the iPhone, or taunt you with "expandable" storage, which pretty much means they've got an empty microSD slot. If your phone comes with less than 2GB of space and has said slot, you need to fill it. Buying a microSD card is a little different than buying a regular SD card, because speed doesn't really matter, and nothing you're using your phone demands particularly high transfer speeds. This is a place to store your music, photos and videos—that's it. Buy these online, where branded 8GB cards regularly dip below $20—in stores, you'll pay much, much more. Also, don't worry too much about getting a full-sized SD adapters, as pictured above. Most phones will allow you to mount your smartphone's microSD card as mass storage when they're plugged into a computer, so removal is rarely necessary.

Cables: Pick up a spare charging cable for your phone. For most smartphones this is a simple mini/microUSB cable, while for iPhones it's an iPod dock connector. Why worry about the spare? Think of it this way: if you lose your only iPod cable, you can't listen to music until you buy another one. If you lose your only iPhone cable, you're out of touch with the rest of the world in a matter of hours.

What You Don't

Of course, the temptation of new accessories is great, and there are legions of companies waiting to seize on your post-transactional bliss. When buying smartphone accessories, proceed with caution.

A dock: Again, people have a tendency to confuse their PMPs with their phones, which may look and act similar, but are used in a completely different way. Unless you want to dock your smartphone near your bed to use as an alarm, it's going to be charging—and syncing—with your computer whenever it's not in your pocket. An impulse-purchased dock will, in all likelihood, live a lonely life. Don't let this sad thing happen!

A branded navigation mount: These are almost always overpriced, and all they really do is hold your phone in your line of sight. Just buy a dirt-cheap windshield or dash mount, buy a 12v DC converter to plug your USB charging cable into, and you've got all the functionality you need for about $20.

Cleaning Kits: Cleaning your smartphone isn't hard, and it shouldn't cost you much at all. Just follow our instructions, and avoid any smartphone-specific cleaning kits. They're a guaranteed waste.

Bluetooth anything: Bluetooth headsets can make anyone look like a dweebish soccer dad, and while they might make chatting on the phone while driving more legal, they don't really make it much safer. Just hold your phone like a normal human, put it on speakerphone, or take the call later. You should avoid Bluetooth headphones too, but for a different reason: they suck. They sound terrible, they'll drain your phone's battery and they're overpriced. If you have to buy a pair, spend as little as possible.

Getting Started

If your smartphone is a newborn, this is where we teach it to walk.

Contacts: Somehow, in over two decades of cellphone development, we haven't settled on a simple way to transfer contacts from one phone to another. Here's how you should proceed through this somehow-still-painful process:
• Get your carrier to do it. If you're upgrading handsets on one carrier, they should be able to transfer your contacts, and probably for free. If you're switching carriers, there may be a small fee. Don't spend more than five bucks.
• Use your SIM. Are you on AT&T or T-Mobile? Is your smartphone on the same carrier as your old dumbphone? Most phones will have an option to write all contacts to a SIM card, which is the little chip that your phone uses to identify itself on a cell network. Do this, pop your old card out, pop it into your new smartphone, and transfer all your contacts from the old SIM onto your new phone's memory. Sadly, this won't work with Verizon or Sprint phones, which are CDMA-based, and therefore don't have SIM cards at all.
• Google Sync. Through a protocol called SyncML, Google Sync supports quite a few features phones, and can pull all your contacts into your Google account. Your new smartphone can then yank them back down from the cloud. Bonus: they're now backed up to Google server's, too.

Email: Email, you'll find, is one of the best things about owning a smartphone. Setting up your email varies from smartphone to smartphone (iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile) and service to service (Exchange and Gmail setups will be completely different, obvious) but there are few rules of thumb to keep in mind during account setup. For example, use IMAP (versus POP) whenever you can—this will keep your messages and their read/unread statuses in sync with your desktop clients. And since most of your email downloading will be happening over 3G, set the individual message size limit at or below about 10kb. This will ensure your messages come in quickly, but also that you have something to read once they arrive.

Calendars: If you keep a Google Calendar, having it sync with your smartphone is a revelation. Android phones will automatically sync with your default Google account's calendars, as will the Pre, while the iPhone will need to be configured with CalDav. If you don't keep a calendar, your new smartphone is a good excuse to start.

Media and Syncing: Most smartphones rely on some kind of desktop software to transfer personal info, music, video and photos to and from the handset. For the iPhone, this basically means downloading iTunes—which you have to do anyway. For BlackBerry, this means downloading BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Windows Mobile phones are best served by Windows Device Center, while Android and Palm phones—and optionally Windows Phones, iPhones and BlackBerrys—play nice with doubleTwist, a cross-platform music player/media syncing app.

Converting Video: You can't just copy your torrented videos or home movies over to your smartphone; you need to downsample those videos, stat. Just download Handbrake for this—it's basically magic, and it works on Windows, OS X and Linux. These instructions are iPhone-centric, but videos converted to 320x240 h.264 will be suitable for most new smartphones.

Apps! Apps! Apps! Apps!

Without apps, smartphones are nothing. With apps, they're practically anything. Every smartphone platform has an app storefront now, from Apple's pioneering App Store to BlackBerry's App World to the Android Market, and they're all, to different extents, treasure troves.

iPhone: First stop, Gizmodo's Essential iPhone Apps Directory. These are the best of the best, and everything you need to make your iPhone into a mobile powerhouse. If you're averse to spending money on your new iPhone—this thing wasn't cheap, after all—check out our Essential Free Apps. We do regular posts and weekly roundups around here too, so just keep an eye out.

Android: It's got the second best app selection, which is to say there's some really great stuff out there. Our Essential Android Apps roundup cuts through the noise of the App Market, while our monthly roundups keep you up to date with the latest additions to the store.

BlackBerry: We cover the biggest new additions to App World, but it's best to defer to a specialist site like CrackBerry for this one—they have their own app store too, which isn't really much better or worse than BlackBerry's janky official shop.

Palm: We've just pulled one of our patented "Essential" roundups fresh out of the oven, so consult that first. Beyond that, PreCentral's official app reviews are fairly fantastic. Also worth checking out is their extensive homebrew app gallery, which has about as many decent apps in it as the official Catalog.

Windows Mobile: App development for WinMo isn't exactly picking up nowadays but there's a tremendous backlog of useful reviews and materials at WMPowerUser, WMExperts, XDA and MoDaCo. And yeah, we occasionally still do Windows Mobile app roundups, though until things get exciting again, expect less, not more.

Living Happily Ever After

Lastly, a few odds and ends to make sure your metal'n'plastic darling lives a happy life, at least before the end of its two-year contract.

How to back up your smartphone: Your smartphone probably contains as much personal data as your computer, and it's subjected to way more physical risk. Preempt the pain. Back it up.

How to keep you smartphone clean: These little machines are fantastic at collecting fingerprints, dust and grime. Wipe them off every once in a while.

Any other tips for new smartphone owners? Chuck them down in the comments. Happy Holidays!

Ereaders are still at the point where the price is slightly too high and the functionality is slightly too low to purchase on a whim. Aluratek's LCD-based reader, however, offers a damn low price but sacrifices functionality in return.

The Price:

$180

The Verdict:

Relatively cheap, compared to the major ereader brands, but it's probably the worst ebook reader we've tested.

Instead of going for an e-ink screen like the Kindle or the Nook, Aluratek went with a monochrome LCD screen. This is fine, in theory, because it keeps costs low and actually improves refresh rates, it also sacrifices battery life. For example, I could only make it through 80% of the 7th Harry Potter book before it demanded to be charged. You're looking at a day or two's worth of reading at best, and by that I mean reading on and off and not for 24 hours straight.

Performance is pretty horrible as well. Aluratek seems to have only put in a processor strong enough to turn the pages at a decent speed, because startup times, navigation and book loading times were atrociously bad. Granted, this won't be an issue when you're actually reading books, which is most of the time.

The worst thing about the reader is probably the button placement. There are three ways you can turn a page: using the page turn buttons on the bottom left, the arrow keys on the bottom right or the page toggle on the left edge of the screen. They're all pretty clumsy. The bottom left and bottom right methods are too far down the reader for you to hold your hand in that position while you're reading, so you'll have to move it down every time you want to advance. As for the left hand slider toggle, those traction edges that they placed in there to make it easier to grip and scroll is actually too rough for my delicate hands, so I avoided using it when possible. Basically, they've got an ebook reader that's difficult to turn the pages with.

Even if you go beyond the lousy controls, the sub-par performance and the LCD screen that's not all that readable, you've still got yourself a fairly cheap ereader, and it's somewhat compact as well. If you're someone who actually doesn't mind reading books on their computers, this is one—albeit tiny—step higher. [Aluratek]

Screen refreshes faster than e-ink readers

It's cheap (relatively)

Slow

Awkward button placement

Lousy battery life

The iMac CS: A Coffeemaker, Subwoofer and Mac Mini All-In-One. You don't even know why you want it.

This isn't modder Klaus Diebel's first experiment with the iMac case. In the past he has also used it to create a mailbox and a birdhouse. However, this design is far more ambitious—allowing you to use the computer, listen to bangin' tunes and make a cup of Joe all at the same time. Plus, if you ask him nicely (and fork over some cash), Klaus would be happy to make a custom version for you too. [Kiwidee via TUAW via Technabob]

You got a new Mac for Christmas? Awesome. But don't let Justin Long's smarmy face fool you, it doesn't just give you a warm hug and set itself up. Here are 10 things you need to do pronto:

1. Check Out Snow Leopard's Interface Tweaks: They're not life-altering, but Apple's spiffed up the OS X interface in a couple of ways in Snow Leopard. Notably, there's Dock Expose (which works like Windows 7's Aero Peek) to show you all the windows of open app by clicking and holding on its icon in the dock. Also, giant, scalable thumbnail previews.

2. Move All Your Stuff: The funny thing about switching OSes or moving to a new one is that it's really not hard anymore, since so much of the stuff we do is online. The most complicated gambit for most people, I'd wager, is moving your iTunes library to a new machine—especially going from Windows to Mac—since organizing that stuff (if you're anal about it like me) takes forever. Luckily, there's a hack for that. And if you're going from old Mac to new Mac, well it's pretty easy to move all your crap with the built-in Migration Assistant.

3. Learn What's Actually Under the Hood of Snow Leopard: Apple says a lot of the magic of Snow Leopard is actually under the hood, so you can't see it, like Grand Central Dispatch, which promises in the future to make applications use all of those cores in your machine that much better to become superfaster. Or OpenCL, which uses your graphics card for non-graphics applications to go more fasterer. And there's a whole bunch of other standards Apple's real big on too.

4. Don't Buy MobileMe, Sync Your Stuff With Yahoo or Google: Don't buy MobileMe. Instead, sync your contacts with Google, straight from Address Book, and use Google Sync to deliver 'em to your phone. Same deal with calendars—use the open standard CalDAV to sync iCal with Google or Yahoo, which is as simple as putting in your account info now. And you can upload photos to Flickr directly from iPhoto. Online storage? That's free too.

5. Install Windows: Whether you do it through Boot Camp so you can play PC games ('cause gaming on a Mac sucks, at best) or use Parallels or Fusions to virtualize it and run alongside your Mac apps, with Windows 7 being $30 with a valid .edu address, there's no reason not to. It's even easier to move your Windows apps and files over that you wanna keep if you're making the slow transition, with Parallels Switch edition, which has a handy USB transfer tool.

6. Back Up to Any NAS With Time Machine: Time Machine, OS X's built-in backup, is indispensable. Unfortunately, if you wanna do it over the network, it's kinda limited, unless you know what you're doing. After you figure out your network storage of choice (HP's Windows Home Server with Time Machine compatibility is a damn good option; and for those on a budget, there's Iomega's ix2 200), it takes just a few minutes a couple of lines of code in Terminal to get your Time Machine backup going on any NAS you please.

7. Make It Play Nice With PCs On Your Network: If you get a NAS, you obviously don't have to worry about moving crap back and forth directly between your Macs and PCs, but if you want a method that will work every single time, this is how to do it. It's progressively easier with newer versions of Windows—stuff seems to just work more often.

8. Forget Apple TV, Stream to Your Xbox or PS3: If you've already got an Xbox 360 or PS3 (who doesn't?) there's no reason to bother with another media streamer, even if you're ditching Windows. The programs Connect 360 and Rivet will stream music, movies and photos from your Mac to your Xbox for $20. For the PS3, there's MediaLink, from the guys who make Connect 360, which does pretty much the same deal, but with slightly better integration with iTunes and iPhoto. The P2P app Vuze—which is free—also streams videos to Xbox 360 and PS3 from any OS it runs on, but obviously it's a little less feature-rich.

9. Download the Best Free Software: At first, there seems to be less freeware on a Mac, but you just need to know where to look. Lifehacker's essential free apps has you covered on everything from the best IM app (Adium) to better disc burning (Burn) to video playback (VLC, of course).

10. Remote Control It: Sure, you could shell out for MobileMe to use Back to My Mac—except, you shouldn't—but why bother when you do the same thing and remote control your computer from anywhere with VNC? An afternoon and you're done.

That's it from us. Share your own tips and tricks in the comments, and Merry Christmas!

If you got a new Windows 7 laptop for Christmas, you are truly in luck. But here are 10 things you need to get the most out of it.

1. Take a Spin Around the New Interface: Still glassy, glossy and damn near glittery, the Windows 7 interface is actually a major progression for Microsoft: It's not just easy to use, it's a whole new paradigm with the revamped taskbar and Aero Peek making multitasking with multiple windows more natural than ever.

2. Turn Off Everything You Don't Need: While Windows 7 is missing some odd things, like a mail application, the flip side is that you can turn off pretty much every major feature you don't want. Internet Exploder 8? Gone. Windows Media Player? Poof. And if you're used to tweaking the crap out of Windows, you still can—a lot of the old tricks, like for manipulating context menus, still work.

3. Move All Your Crap from Your Old Machine: Windows 7 actually has pretty decent built-in powers for moving all your crap from your old and busted PC to your new pride and joy, though you need to download Windows Easy Transfer separately onto XP if you're pulling stuff from that.

4. Master All of the New Keyboard Shortcuts: Why deal with flipping around a mouse or scribbling on a trackpad when you do the same thing in a tenth of a second with a keyboard combo? The Start key (oh sorry, Windows key), which I've always neglected as a useless monotasker, is supremely useful in Windows 7, as the underpinning for a metric ton of keyboard shortcuts.

5. Get It to Play Nice With All of Your Gadgets: The good news about Windows 7 is that, unlike Vista, most of your gear that worked with your computer a couple years ago with Windows should still work. And newer gear interacts with Windows in a fancy new way with a big ol' splash graphic and easy access to all the stuff you'd wanna do with it. While even simple things, like adding a second monitor, are more straightforward now, here's a device-by-device breakdown on getting everything to touch Windows 7 appropriately.

6. Share Stuff With Your Other Computers, 'Cause It's Easier Now: The networking UI hasn't just gotten a facelift to make it more accessible, it's actually easier to use with HomeGroups—join a HomeGroup, and all of the stuff you want to share with other computers spreads like herpes to the rest of the HomeGroup, no arduous networking required. Also, network in general—like with Macs—seems to just work better with Windows 7.

7. Stream Your Music and Videos Everywhere: Connecting your PC to a TV sounds so 1999. Well, you might not know this, but your Windows 7 PC is a badass music and video streamer, DVR, photo viewer, video aggregator and everything else you'd want out of a multimedia box, all thanks to Windows Media Center. The living room PC is legit now. Not to mention Play To, which beams music (and video and photos) to any compatible device on your network, no setup required (really!). All it takes it a right-click, and those Sonos speakers on the other side of your house will magically start yelling the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

8. Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium: If you got a Windows 7 netbook, there's a good chance you got stuck with the artificially gimped out Starter edition, which sucks. The cheapest way to fix this is to buy Windows 7 for $30 using a valid .edu email address, then follow our guide to installing Windows 7 on any netbook.

9. Set Up Some Network Storage: A fresh computer is a fresh start—meaning it's a perfect time to start a new life with fully networked storage for backup, especially if you're using your machine as a DVR with Windows Media Center. (But skip on faster drives.) One awesome option? A Windows Home Server machine, which can do backups and stream out media to all of your computers.

10. Remote Control It From Anywhere with VNC: While diving deep into the system and futzing with your network at the same time, you might as well set up a VNC server so you can control your computer from anywhere, whether it's to pull files or schedule downloads.

That's it from us. Share your own tips and tricks in the comments, and Merry Christmas!