The top three tech products of 2008 are Hulu, the iPhone and Facebook. Since the new version of the iPhone hasn't come out or been announced yet, I assume they mean the first version, which came out last year. Hulu was in beta for the last couple months of 2007, and Facebook has been around for years. So apparently the best tech of 2008 didn't come out in 2008.

The list is full of boring, predictable choices that are years old, such as Photoshop, Flickr, Gmail, Leopard and the Wii. I honestly have no idea why they made this list or what a product had to do to be included other than existing. And the fact that it's claiming to be the best of 2008 so early in the year means they already missed out on some great 2008 products, such as the Netflix set-top box, making the list look outdated and misinformed already. [PC World]

The entire article is a pair of spreads with gadgets strewn all over the page, with a black background (to Fetish's traditional white). The hed: Worst. Gadgets. Ever. And each entry has a caption with the date, price and a quip of a line taking the piss out of each. I would have PAID Wired to write this, by the way, but I'm sure current Fetish editor Mark McClusky took the same joy I would have in deconstructing it. Reading the copy from back issues makes me cringe—the voice is so hokey! Which is why I prefer current writer Joe Brown's tone of voice. I don't think he lets anyone edit him much, so it carries the tone of a real person talking about gear, not the over-polished copy that eventually makes a writer sound like a bit of a sales person.

Unfortunately, only five items I wrote with editor Rob Capps made it to the list, pulled from 442 pages of back issues: The Airstream Skydeck from April 2005, a $260k double decker recreational vehicle. It's the biggest item in Fetish, ever, but not the most expensive.

The Optimus Maximus is here from October 2005, with the slightly incorrect caption of "Shipping Soon!", but I guess the extended timeline for release does warrant that kind of critique, even if it's out right now.

Also on the list were the Iz, some dumb music toy Rob made me write about, and these cool Nike contact lenses with sunglass tint built in for athletes. I still might want to try those. There's also the Geneva Soundsystem iPod dock, which I admit, is garish.

All in all, I wish I had more items on this list. When talking to Rob, it was clear that we had one regret when it came to our work on Fetish: It's not that we didn't pick more timeless gear. It's that we didn't go insane enough in choosing truly crazy gadgets for the section. It's a hard section to put together. You have to find stuff three months ahead of when it's coming out, get a list of 20-30 things and the editor eventually gives the green light to 10 items. I'd write those, and four of them would get to the final list. If you could secure good prototypes for the photography. It was sometimes embarrassing how many leads would come from Gizmodo, which influenced my move here. Thinking about Fetish makes me proud to have contributed to it. If you're interested in helping the magazine out and need an internship, they're hiring.

In closing, I leave you with this old academic essay by Theresa Senft on modern fetish, which focuses on Wired's column. And, if you get a chance, check out the Worst of Fetish piece in this month's Wired.

Instead of using the typical heavy cranes and tugs, they do their jobs very cheaply using computer models of the ship's intricate ballast systems, heavy cutting and drilling tools, pumps (and more than a bit of personal risk.) And salvage like this, recognized as a form of legal modern piracy, is compensated by a percentage of the value of the loot they save. Generally millions for jobs only days long. Here's how they flipped her around:

This is the best feature I've read in a long time. It's worth checking out. [Wired, Illustration by Don Foley/www.newsinfographics.com]

• After Warner's announcement, HD DVD won't be attending CES this week, a fact that only looks worse after they put their logo on the press bags. Adding insult to HD DVD's injury, New Line Cinema also joined the Blu-ray exclusive crew.

• WowWee showed us three robots aiming to attack AIBOs, Robosapiens and autonomous helicopters everywhere. The only thing missing was a robot to bring us beer. Luckily, Inter Active Toy covered that with the RC Cooler.

• Other good finds included the Celestron SkyScout Scope, Cobra's OLED radar detectors, and an in-dash CD player for audiophiles. On the GPS front, Magellan's 5340 with built-in Google local search and Garmin's 880 with voice recognition stood out the most. Finally, Logitech unveiled a whole bunch of stuff, including a networked music player, a sleek set of speakers, and an IR remote with capacitive touch.

So far, so good, CES. We'll be looking forward to the press conferences today, and the floor opening on Monday. Until then, keep up with all of our CES 2008 coverage to date.

Editor's Note: When Apple screws up, we like to call them on it, like with the SDK and missing iPhone features. But I think it's pretty clear that the same question above could have been asked with more poise if the Journalist wanted it answered. To me, it seems like the preceding questions were lopped off, and as he pressed it over and over, the reaction you see above happened. The way it's phrased is to incite shock and the kind of panic you see above. All companies protect themselves from hard questions. Journalists are supposed to ask them. And even if apple gets softballed all the time, sometimes even by Giz at times when we're not doing our job 100%, it seems like maybe the journalist here was doing this for shock gathering, not fact gathering. That's the other side of the argument. I would have asked, "Does the iPhone work with Windows Mobile? Napster? No? So only one application? And no other music stores? Alright then!" Question answered.

I am glad he credits Apple with trying to do the right thing as far as the SDK and openness go. I just wish he was a little more skeptical of Apple, given that they now share revenues for monthly charges and I'd assume, ringtones and maybe future apps. My point is that I hope that Mossberg has a plan of action for journalists and consumers to fight this one and enacting some change, rather than just a theoretical bitch much like the 2005 column and the great craplet article from last year. Maybe journalists covering the topic should base their ratings on all phones in part by checking how tarted up a handset is by a carrier, and regular joes can buy unlocked handsets. But I'm unsure of what else can be done. So, Walt, lead the charge and we'll follow. What can we do to fight the machine? [AllThingsD]

A friend of mine at one electronics manufacturer says he has trouble because his counterparts in Asia always announce products without letting him know, so the Asian editions get blown all over the web, stealing his thunder. One major cellphone maker is constantly vexed by a European carrier that likes to blab about phones that are supposed to be secret. On a regular basis, Amazon.com posts products that ought to still be under wraps.

Recently, we had a situation where PR agency people handed us ready-to-print information and images, which they then discovered had been under embargo from their client. They asked us to pull it down, but it was just too late, it was all over the web. And besides, it wasn't a breach of any agreement.

Journalists and bloggers are not the untrustworthy ones—in fact, we're probably the only ones who still have some respect for the secrecy. As it stands now, anything that appears in public or via honest-to-goodness leak is fair game, embargo or not. But I encourage the industry to take it one step further: if the product appears in any form, we should be at liberty to share what you have given us directly, in informative briefings and press events. Why run half-assed product announcements when we know the full story? That doesn't hurt us, it only hurts you, the companies.

The point of an NDA is to keep competitors, retailers and consumers from knowing what's next, for reasons of competitve advantage or product sell-through. But when you can't keep the secret, why should the news suffer?

That said, it is not my plan to ever break an NDA or even a verbally agreed-to embargo. But I strongly encourage you to recognize that when the cat gets out of the bag, you should release us from our embargoes. Otherwise, all you'll keep getting from us are secondhand-sourced stories that only tell half of the news, with a tiny follow-up when the product is officially acknowledged.

BL: What is the difference between the BoingBoing gadget blog and Gizmodo when you wrote it solo? How has your experience changed the way you think about this stuff?
JJ: Man, hard to say. I think it'll be pretty similar to my solo Gizmodo days, minus any external impetus to blog about products I really don't give a crap about. I'm trying to write about either the really good stuff or the really bad stuff, because all the junk in the middle is just, you know, junk. Unless you mean how I feel about gadgets. In that case, I still hate almost everything about them, except when I am completely enamored by them. It's almost like my relationship has changed with games as I've gotten older: I almost enjoy reading and writing about them as much as I do actually using them.
BL: So you're basically freeing yourself up from the churn, and focusing on stuff that has an impact on your life?
JJ: That's the plan. There's a place for comprehensive, kitchen-sink blogging, but I think Gizmodo and company probably have that covered. I'm prolific when I'm in the pocket, but I don't want to try to post about every single new widget that falls off the assembly line.
BL: That makes sense. Because of the Gizmodo churn, I actually play with the gadgets I own less now, and frankly, I'd like to spend more time holing up with the ones I have and love, and hack them, install ware on them, and use them in new ways. Will new uses for old stuff be part of the focus, as opposed to the newsy stuff?
JJ: It might be. MAKE usually covers that pretty well for me (as do the rest of the Boingers, actually), but if I see something cool that I don't think is getting enough coverage, I'll definitely write about it. I'm actually less interested in writing about hacking gadgets—as cool as I think that is—than I am in writing about ways to make commercially available gadgets better off the line. It's stupid that we should have to hack so many gadgets to make them do what we want in the first place.
BL: What about your Dethroner project?
JJ: (Just a second. Posting something.)
[1 minute later] JJ: Dethroner is still happening, for what it's worth.
BL: How are you doing both?
JJ: Well, I've only been doing both for about a week, so all bets are off. But for now I'm using a technique I learned in my early twenties, called "drugs."
BL: I know that you use a MacBook and an iPhone like I do. So if you're focusing on the stuff you like and would use, does that mean you're skewing toward Apple coverage?
JJ: I've actually never been identified as an Apple fanboy, so thanks for blowing my cover, you prick.
BL: Oops!

[Gadgets.boingboing.net]

It's the exact same story that pathetic local news stations use for scare stories between "Your New Carpet Could Give You AIDS" and "Highway Killings: More Common Than You Think." But it's even worse, as it's in a "respected" newspaper and it's a good five years beyond when this could even questionably be considered newsworthy.

It goes through the same formula that all these stories do: first, it uses an example of "l33t 5p34k" that is full of numbers, is pretty much unreadable and no one actually would ever use. This is to shock people into feeling like they're out of the loop. It then interviews a bunch of kids "in the know" about it, who then show that, well, it's really just a jokey set of misspellings that people say when around fellow dorks. Then, they interview some dude with his panties in a twist about how the English language is going down the tubes because kids are saying lawl to each other.

Let me break this down for you: Back when you were doing the Lindy Hop and wearing zoot suits, you had a set of slang too. It freaked your parents out. It was a way for you to bond with your peers and have a shared language. It did not destroy the sanctity of the English language when you said stuff like 23 Skidoo and bee's knees. This is the exact same thing, but because it comes from the internet, something else that's new and terrifying, you think it's even more disastrous. Well, guess what? It's not. You're an alarmist idiot. Now go back to complaining about how the Wendy's menu used to be a lot better before they banned trans fats and leave reporting about tech culture to people who know wtf they're talking about. [WSJ]

66%

So is this a situation of "we know it's for our own good," or, "those other people can't text while driving, but my super multitasking powers make it safe for me"?

I'm guilty of the non-crime. And yes, it's because I believe myself to have heightened (some may say spider-like) reflexes. Should it be banned? Probably. [prnews]

My favorite moment: a heckler says, "You must feel like Lindsey Lohan right now."

My second favorite moment: the geek giggling at the end.

[via boingboing]

DefCon staff lured her to a large hall telling her that the Spot the Fed contest was in session and that she could get a picture of an undercover federal agent at the contest. When she sat down, Jeff Moss, DefCon's founder, announced that they were changing the game. Instead of Spot the Fed, they were going to play Spot the Undercover Reporter and then announced, "And there's one in here right now." Madigan, realizing she'd been had, jumped from her seat and bolted out the door with reporters carrying cameras chasing after her through the parking lot and to her car.

Madigan was last seen being chased by two dozen reporters hoping to interview her. Press eating the press. [Wired, gorgeous photos via Dave Bullock]