"GIF" is officially the word of the year, so it's only appropriate to use it as a lens through which to view the most important events of 2012. From the Costa Concordia to the Presidential election to Hurricane Sandy, this is your year in GIFs.

We hope you're standing and saluting when reading this post, because Wisconsin-based FeLion Studios has created the most touching and beautiful tribute to the United States of America we've ever seen. Cast iron skillets shaped like every state in the country.

Is this an image of some horrible irradiated wasteland? Maybe this is what happens when Lindsay Lohan wades into the ocean at night? No, it's actually a celebration, not cause for a full-body acid wash.

It's finally here — the biggest alternate timeline of all alternate timelines, the alternate history trope to top all alternate history tropes. Today we look at some alternate histories of the Second World War.

Thanks to the House of Representatives passing the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010, Caller ID spoofing will be outlawed. Sure, you may prevent your number from being seen, but no more pretending that you're calling from another phone:

Updated: Core i5 iMacs are fast, but early Core i7 benchmarks show 30 percent performance gains. A good upgrade for $200 (which adds 10 percent to the $2000 price). Timon-Royer's graph uses Geekbench 2 results (OS 10.6.2). [Timon-Royer]

The Z5610 seems like a better-looking, but less powerful version of the Gateway ZX6800. Both all-in-one PCs have 23-inch (1080p) multi-touch displays, and Windows 7. But the Z5610's 2.6GHz Pentium E5300 processor won't match the Gateway's Core 2 Quad chip.

The xpPhone has a 4.8-inch touchscreen, GPS, notebook-specs, and runs a full-blown copy of Windows XP. Seriously. And while I'm still skeptical about the use of XP, the phone has come a long way since I saw it at Computex.

Society's bad eggs are increasingly turning to the use of BlackBerry devices to skirt detection from law enforcement. Authorities report they have trouble intercepting illicit emails and conversations because of the relatively secure BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

While you know .com as the most popular top level domain, every country has a unique TLD of its own known as a country code. Here is the entire world in those country codes.

Someday, 3D images could actually catch on, and if that ever happens you'll be ready with this Loreo 3D Lens in a Cap that lets you snag stereoscopic images with your digital SLR. Inside this Viewmaster-like contraption are a couple of focusing lenses that gather images from two slightly different angles. Therein lies…