Were you naughty or nice this year? I’ll wait a minute while you go look under your tree. Is this the year that Santa brought you a Blu-ray player? No? Maybe you weren’t nice enough. A lot of other people will get Blu-ray players (and hopefully piles of discs) this holiday season. That’s more evidence that slowly but surely, Blu-ray is taking off. The format had a rocky start before it finally established itself, mainly by killing off its competition, HD DVD. But what’s next? The future of Blu-ray is about to change.

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For years, well, since 1955, NORAD has been tracking the progress of Santa on Christmas. It started by accident; that year, a Sears advertisement told kids to call to talk with Santa, but because of a typo, the kids’ calls went to the Commander-in-Chief of what was soon to be NORAD instead. Playing along, NORAD began to track Santa on their radars, updating kids with St. Nick’s progress throughout the night.

Lately, Google’s been in on the festivities, tracking the Jolly One on Google Earth and Google Maps. This year, Santa gets into social networking in a big way. Go to m.noradsanta.org on your mobile phone, or just pick your favorite: Facebook or Twitter. You can also check out his gallery on Picasa.

Who knew Santa was so cool? I’ll bet Rudolph knew.

Via NORAD

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You may notice a lower level of posting than normal over the next few days. The DVICE editorial team is taking a few days off from the gadget world to study up on emerging technology and prepare for CES 2010… ah, who are we kidding? — we’re taking a break to goof around with all the fun tech toys we got for Christmas. We heartily recommend you do, too. Have a great holiday, all! See you next week.

In the meantime, enjoy these standout stories from 2009:

Force Trainer duel: Jedi Master vs. Star Wars virgin

5 home theater technologies coming faster than you think

6 gadgets Japan loves (and the U.S. rejected)

The 10 most badass sci-fi battlesuits ever

NASA: Sucks or Rocks?

4 Star Trek technologies that are almost here (and 3 that are really far off)

8 awesome things you can implant into your body

10 fantastic green cities of the future

Talking Gadget Theater II: The Kindle 2 and iPod Shuffle perform Wrath of Khan

Kitchen porn: 8 of the most outrageous food gadgets money can buy

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Patent Lead In “ Origin of Computing ,” Martin Campbell-Kelly writes that the first digital computer was J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly’s ENIAC, finished in 1945 as part of the war effort. But the first person to build and operate an electronic digital computer was a physics professor, as noted in “Dr. Atanasoff’s Computer,” published in the August 1988 Scientific American . John Vincent Atanasoff’s first computer was a 12-bit, two-word machine running at 60-hertz wall-plug frequency and could add and subtract binary numbers stored in a logic unit built with seven triode tubes. This was 1937. There was no war, no Pearl Harbor, just a theoretical physicist trying to solve problems in quantum mechanics with his students at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa. [More]

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JANUARY 1960 ASTOUNDING TALES – “The press of the Soviet Union has been astounding its readers with accounts of a ‘revolution’ in science and a ‘miracle’ of technology. Nikolai A. Kozyrev, an astrophysicist, was said to have wrought the revolution, with his hypothesis that the passage of time is the source of cosmic energy. The miracle was the harnessing of a ‘concentration of energy.’ Speaking for the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, three distinguished physicists joined in a public rebuke to the press for ‘cheap sensationalism’ and for placing its pages ‘at the disposal of absolutely incompetent people.’ They declared: ‘We are not against bold hypotheses, provided they are given substantiation.’ However, ‘This is not a case of the concentration of energy but of the concentration of amazing ignorance.’”

[More]

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Klaus Diebel of Kiwidee concocted a Mac computer case mod that marries the practical geek need for coffee with the reverence of Apple hardware history. The iMac CS features a coffee maker housed in the space where the computer’s display was.

Hidden behind the coffee contraption is a JBL subwoofer and a Mac Mini, allowing users to actually use the device as a computer. If you’re in the market for a rather unique alter to the gods of Cupertino, Diebel has announced that he’ll custom build more to order if you contact him here.

Via Technabob

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Fresh from its takeover of Sanyo, Panasonic has unveiled plans for a Lithium storage battery that will be able to power the gizmos in your home for a whole week. As well as giving life to your gear if your wind turbine/solar panels/platoon of cycling gnomes in the basement packs out, the battery will allow you to monitor your electricity usage via your TV.

I am, however, assuming that when Panasonic says it can power a house for a week, it’s talking about a Japanese house, rather than one Stateside. The battery will be available in 2011, so keep those gnomes a-pedalling until then. That is, if they’re in your home for pedalling — they might be delivering presents.

Via Gizmodo

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Wishing all the happiest of holidays, members of the Cassini-Huygens team offer their views of Saturn and its moons as gifts to the universe. Cassini-Huygens, a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, is a mission that is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA. The Cassini orbiter (pictured at the bottom of this image) and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

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