Most Popular Lego Stories of 2008

1. The Lego Secret Vault
459,413 views, my favorite Lego story of the year by far.
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2. 3,800-Piece Death Star Diorama Is Coolest Star Wars Set Ever
249,263 views

3. Best Lego Sets In History
245,771 views
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4. Lego Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities
217,115 views
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5. Lego Master Completes 30-Pound Star Wars Starship
183,202 views

6. Inside the Lego Factory
167,815 views
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7. Lego Airbus A380 Is Biggest Lego Airplane In the World
151,317 views
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8. Forbidden Set Shows Darkest Side of Lego
137,344 views

9. Lego Colonial Space Ship Is Big Enough to Terraform Real Planets
137,268 views

10. Using Hundreds of Lego Star Wars Mini Spaceships to Create Huge Battles
135,898 views

Some of my favorites

65-Foot-High Lego Cathedrals Store 19 Billion Pieces a Year
This thing amazes me every time I see it.
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The Lego Minifig Timeline
135,089 views
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How Lego Builds the Minifig
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750,000-Piece Lego Kennedy Space Center Is the Mother of All Lego Models
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Winners of the Go Miniman Lego Video Contest
I still can't believe our readers did all this. Simply stunning.

[All Lego stories at Giz]

•10 Sex Toys That Are Confusing and Wrong (NSFW): A roundup of NSFW toys that are pointless, vulgar, confusing and (in some cases) scary.

•10 Gadget Get-Ups For Guys That Don't Mind Looking Like a Tool: This is a gadgety fashion guide for guys secure in their geekyness.

•10 Gadgets That Transform Your Bathroom Into a Home Office: Studies show that Americans like to take their work into the bathroom. I'm just giving you guys what you want.

•10 Gadgets That Will Trip You Out Without Drugs: Who needs drugs when there are gadgets that can tap into the psychedelic potential of your brain?

•10 Gadgets That Provide Perpetual Pleasure: These gadgets can simulate a pleasurable experience on demand.

•10 Gadgets For Instant Portable Partying: Big plans for the weekend? Everyday can be the weekend with these gadgets.

•10 Gadgets That Make You Less Physically Repulsive: These gadgets can get you cleaned up, toned up and *ahem* beefed up for the ladies.

•10 Gadgets For Guys That Hate to Cook (But Love to Eat): These gadgets help you eat like a king at home with as little effort as possible.

•10 Gadgets That Help You Survive In Cheap Hotel Rooms: Traveling this holiday season? These gadgets can help you stay alive even in the most disgusting hotels.

•10 Gadgets For Winter Fun: From Snowball Guns to Ice Saunas: These gadgets help you make the most of the wintery weather.

I still think Android, and its openness toward developers, can do some magical things and give iPhone a run for its money. But as we stated before, a lot needs to happen first—Android devices need to be a lot more numerous in consumers' hands, numerous enough for third-party developers (along with Google's first-party talent as well) to have a major incentive to drive the platform forward. It also has some major network power-management issues to overcome; the G1's battery never makes it through the day for me, and while that may just be because it's a shitty battery, Android's always-on approach to network access and background processes surely plays a part.

The Android Market is not yet the iPhone App Store, but here is a taste of what is, hopefully, a lot more to come.

Anycut: Anycut takes advantage of one of Android's fundamental strengths—the distillation of every possible event your phone can do—send a text message, go to a specific URL in a browser, etc—into a system-wide Intent, which any app can in turn access. Anycut allows you to take any intent and create a desktop shortcut for it—say, opening all of your Gmail messages labeled with a specific tag, or sending an SMS message to your most-texted contact.

Compare Everywhere: Like a hybrid of Japan's QR codes and Google SMS's UPC price check feature, Compare Everywhere reads barcodes (of just about everything, from a Criterion Blu-ray of The Man Who Fell to Earth I just watched to the stick of Right Guard sitting on my desk) and gives you a list of best prices—from online sources as well as physical brick-and-mortar shops near your GPS coordinates. The haptic buzz indicating a successful scan is unbelievably satisfying, and saves you money.

Shazam: Shazam's same great song identification skills—able to snatch notes from the barroom's speakers and pick the song in seconds—here on Android, co-existing with its identical iPhone version and similar ones for dumbphones. It's an amazing trick, regardless of the platform, and good to see one of the bigger hits on the iPhone quickly and smoothly ported over.

TuneWiki: Still jailbreak-only for the iPhone since apps can't access your iPod music, TuneWiki can show its full potential on Android, grabbing lyrics (that scroll karaoke style) and videos for all of your music as it plays.

Video Player: Video player plays H.264 MPEG4 clips, making up for a glaring hole left open in Android's first release: no video player. It gets the job done, and is a prime candidate for something to get sucked back up into the core Android distribution, as is an open source project's frequent wont.

Power Manager: Another necessity that's both a blessing and a curse, Power Manager lets you take limited control over the things that influence how long your battery will live—turning on/off all the radios, GPS, adjusting screen brightness, etc according to your current power level. It shouldn't be a necessary app for G1 owners, but it is; on the other hand, it shows how easy it is for a developer to fill a need and access hardware directly without having to ask permission. System-level functions like this, in large part, are not available to iPhone developers, and that's notable.

WikiTude: One of the apps we were most excited about at launch, WikiTude could still use some polishing, but it shows just how cool augmented reality apps can be. Overlaying link to geo-tagged Wikipedia articles on your camera's live view image utilizing the G1's built-in compass and accelerometer, it's an amazing thing to fire up on my roof in Brooklyn. Not so useful in the living room, but it's a great proof of William Gibson's classic notion—overlaying data from the web onto our live view of the world.

PhoneFusion Visual Voicemail: Solid visual voicemail support for Android. Another example of something other platform/carrier combos make you pay for (ahem, Verizon) or don't let you access at all.

Chomp SMS: Well, what do we have here. This looks familiar. Chomp is a replacement SMS app that mimics the iPhone's iChat-inspired text interface, and also happens to include a great soft keyboard looking exactly like the iPhone's, but adding haptic feedback—something coming to future Android distros. It also ties into Android's system-wide notification services, so if you want to drop the default SMS app altogether, you can.

Locale: In early versions, Locale was cool: it changed your ringtone or a few other phone settings based on your GPS location. Then, the features started coming, like the ability to send Tweets or use several other of Android's Intents, and it became clear exactly what Locale is—a framework (like Applescript, essentially) for triggering anything on your phone according to your location. When I'm at the office, set Facebook status to frowny face. When I get home and it's before 4PM, tweet "meet me at the bar" and start playing "O Happy Day."

•10 R/C Toys That Are Extraordinary (Or Just Plain Weird): This list has all things R/C...and I do mean all things (R/C Penises and Zombies anyone?).

•10 Ultimate Ghetto Gadget Creations: These gadgets may not be pretty—but they work.

•10 Record Breaking Consumer Gadgets: The fastest car, biggest plasma television, most powerful flashlight and highest popping toaster are all right here.

•10 Insane Bikes That No One Should Ever Ride: Designers with a deathwish push bicycles beyond all bounds of practicality and logic.

•Top 10 Desks For Gadget Lovers: Serious desks for serious professionals. If you love gadgets, these are the desks you should have in your office.

•10 Gadgets That Have No Business Using a Jet Engine: People will put a jet engine on anything.

•10 Hypnotic Gadgets You Just Can't Stop Looking At: These design and repetitive movement of these 10 gadgets are truly mesmerizing.

•10 Segway Killers That Don't Make You Look Like a Complete Tool: These vehicles only make you look tool-ish.

•10 Gadgets With Mind Boggling Moving Parts: These gadgets are so complex it will blow your mind.

•8 High Tech Christmas Trees: In honor of the holiday, I give you the 8 nerdiest trees on the planet.