In the iPod's seven years, a sort of price mean has emerged, settling around $249 despite countless claims of "more space," "more battery life," and, err, "more smaller." It's no surprise then that $249 is the price of a new 120GB iPod classic, a few dollars more than a new model 8GB iPod touch and $50 higher than the cost of a 4th Gen 16GB iPod nano. Click the image above for the full keepsake chart. [iPod on Giz]

Click on the image above to access the full high-resolution version. [Bill Gates' Retirement Party]

Other Gizmodo timelines

Sony Trinitron Timeline Shows Why It Will Live Forever In Our Hearts
The Analog Cellphone Timeline
LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities
100 Years of Tech in the Times Square New Year's Ball

Click on the image above to see the full high resolution version

[Wikipedia and Sony Japan]

For other Gizmodo timelines, check:

• Requiem: the Analog Cellphone Timeline
• LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities
• 100 Years of Tech in the Times Square New Year's Ball

(Click the image above for a huge 2000-pixel wide version of the timeline)

490 BC
Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to transmit the news of the victory over the Persians.
Signal was really bad back then: he died on the spot after delivering the message, according to Plutarch.

1876
First successful telephone transmission. Graham Bell says "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" and Watson understands each word clearly. A century later, people would be "What? Say that again? Watson? Watson?" over cellphone lines.

1895
Marconi puts Tesla wireless communications discoveries to practice, develops commercial radio.

1906
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden demonstrates first wireless radio telephone.

1908
First US Patent on a wireless phone awarded to Nathan B. Stubblefield.

1926
Radio telephony starts to be used in the First Class of the Hamburg-Berlin train line.

1939
World War II starts. Germans start using radio phones in tanks on a large scale.

1945
Germany surrenders. Hitler kills himself, he never used a Windows Mobile Phone, (or a Playstation 3 or a HD DVD player).

1947
Bell Labs proposes hexagonal cells for mobile phones, with the three-sided antenna we know today. It sucked, because it was all theoretical.

1954
Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) uses a real mobile phone from his car in Billy Wilder's Sabrina (played by Audrey Hepburn).

1956
First fully automatic mobile phone (Mobiltelefonisystem A or MTA) system launched in Sweden by Ericsson. Each handset, pictured above, was 90 pounds (40 kg.)

1965
Ericsson's MTB is launched. This time, the headset is just 20 pounds (9 kg.) thanks to the use of transistors.

1970
Automatic "call handoff" system is invented, allowing mobile phones to move through several cell areas during a single conversation without loss of conversation.

1971
ARP, the first successful commercial cellphone network, is launched in Finland. You couldn't move from cell to cell seamlessly.
It was 0G (Zero G.)

1973
April 3, 1973: Motorola's Dr. Martin Cooper calls Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs, while walking in New York City using the first Motorola DynaTAC prototype. The beginning of 1G networks.

1978
Bell launches first trial commercial cellular network in Chicago.

1982
Nokia introduces their first cellphone, the analog Mobira Senator. FCC approves the analog-based Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) and assigns frequencies in the 824-894 MHz band.

1983
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X is the first commercial cellphone available in the US. MTB shuts down, still with 600 clients.

1990
FCC approves the Digital AMPS, the beginning of the end for analog networks.

1991
First commercial GSM call in the world. Done using Nokia hardware. 2G and digital begins.

1993
txt msgng apprs 4 1st time LOL.

1996
Motorola StarTAC debuts.

2000
3G appears.

2002
FCC decides to shut down the analog network.

2003
GPRS and EDGE, technologies for faster (but not too fast) data transfers, launch. It's 2.5G. 3G networks are not available yet.

2007
iPhone launches. Still runs on 2.5G technology, but adds Wi-Fi for data transfer. 3G cellphones start to become ubiquitous.

2008
February 19
Cellphone analog networks can shut down.

[Wikipedia, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and various other sources]

For other gadgety Giz timelines, click here.

(Click on the image to access the huge version—remember to zoom in if your browser auto-scales it.)

It all first started in 1947, when LEGO bought their first plastic injection machine. The brick was not invented then but took final form in 1958, when the shape of the stud-and-tube brick was patented. Since then, LEGO sets have been going through dozens of iterations, from the younger version, DUPLO, to the most sophisticated LEGO TECHNIC and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT sets, going through all the different themes of LEGOLAND and, of course, the most successful line of all times according to LEGO, LEGO Star Wars.

LEGO brick curiosities

• There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world's 6 billion inhabitants.

• Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.

• More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.

• LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colors.

• 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year.

• 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.

• More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.

• Two eight-stud LEGO bricks of the same color can be combined in 24 different ways.

• Three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways.

• There are more than 915 million combinations possible for six 2 x 4 LEGO bricks of the same color.

• 7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world.

• The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times.

• 40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon.

• LEGO bricks are so much more than just toys. They are used in classrooms from preschool to university level to teach everything from math, language skills and science to engineering and technology principles.

• The LEGO brick has inspired generations of innovators, like Jonathan Gay, inventor of Flash.

• World-renowned author Douglas Coupland believes the LEGO brick represents a "language in itself."

• A January 2008 Google search produces 57.6 million references to LEGO bricks.

• There are 55,600 LEGO videos on YouTube.

• Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, used LEGO bricks to build the external low-cost and expandable casing for 10 4GB hard disks when they were busy developing the Google search engine (today, they have reportedly been used in Google's college graduate recruiting exercises to test potential candidate's creative horsepower).

The first LEGO I remember—which I shared with my brothers and which my dad built for us, obviously without being able to contain his excitement—was a huge fair wheel, yellow. I don't even know where that set is anymore, but I remember the armless minifigs. Or perhaps I'm dreaming. The very first LEGO we got, and which I remember building clearly, was the LEGOLAND Space Galaxy Explorer, which came along with three other sets, including a Rocket Launcher, the Space Shuttle and the Mobile Tracking Station. Do you remember your first LEGO set? Tell us in the comments. [LEGO in Gizmodo]

The idea of a timeball was actually born in 1832 when Robert Wauchope, a Royal Navy Officer, devised a way for those at sea to sync their marine chronometers (watches) with the shore. A giant ball would drop at a pre-arranged time that could be seen for miles around. Sailors, of course, probably didn't throw confetti or kiss another in glee (though they were quite possibly drunk). Here's the rest of our timeball timline in written form.

1904 - Times Square coined.

1907 - The First Ball drops. It's made of iron, wood, 100 25-watt bulbs...and it's 700lbs.

1917 - First billboard with moving lights goes up (in Times Square).

1920 - Ball goes 100% iron, nearly 50% lighter at 400lbs.

1927 - Oleg Vladimirovich Losev discovers LED to little fanfare.

1939 - WWII begins.

1942 - Losev dies of hunger.

1942-43 - Ball out for WWII "dimout," people partied but offered a moment of silence at new year

1951 - Xenon lamps first went on sale in Germany.

1955 - Ball drops to 150lbs. Suck it, Oprah.

1962 - American scientists discover LED.

1976 - Times Square is declared most dangerous area of New York City.

1979 - Disco dies.

1981-88 - Ball becomes an apple for "I Love New York" campaign. Red lights, green stem...subsequent puke color not specified.

1989 - New Yorkers realize apple ball is stupid, go back to normal design with white lights.

1993 - BMW is the first to use Xenon lights in cars.

2002 - Gizmodo is born.

1993-2003 - Times Square violent crime drops 85%.

1995 - Ball is computerized, aluminumized, covered in rhinestones, and strobe lights.

2000-07 - Ball is made of Waterford crystal, now weighing 1070lbs (which is the heaviest to date, nearly 10 times its weight in the '50s). Lighting includes one 10,000W Xenon lamp and 432 multi-colored (5 colors) bulbs. Plus, it features 144 strobe lights and 92 rotating pyramid mirrors—disco anyone?

2008 - Today we have the same base crystal ball, but it's been fitted with 9,576 Luxeon LEDs from Philips with 16.7 million programmable colors. Needless to say, that's a lot more visual variety than the 5 available colors of just a few years back.

Happy New Year everyone!

For more information, check out New York's own guide and timeline on Times Square and this helpful wiki. And a special thanks to our own resident Jesus Diaz, who stayed in for part of his New Year's celebrations to make us this badass graphic.