And there have been some pretty great Doodles in 2011. Of course everyone has a different opinion on which Doodles are the best, just like folks have a difference of opinion on any sort of artwork. That obviously means that this “best of” list is nowhere near objective – these are definitely my opinions (and remember, I’m American!). Having said that, I think that the following list is a fairly comprehensive list of some of the better attempts this year.

So let’s get to it (in no particular order):

Google honored the 164th birthday of the great American inventor Thomas Edison. The Doodle was animated, featuring a telegraph machine that types out “G” in morse code as well as a glowing light bulb.

The 183rd birthday of the author Jules Verne was celebrated with an interactive Doodle that allowed users to navigate 20,000 leagues under the sea. You can play around with it in full view HD here.

Charlie Chaplin’s birthday got some special treatment, as Google unveiled a short video of a Chaplin-lookalike interacting with a Google logo.

Google honored the 226th birthday of “Birds of America” author John James Audubon with one of the prettier Doodles of the year. It was also one of the most abstract, as much of the lettering is a little tough to make out.

One of my favorite offerings of 2011 was the set of Roger Hargreaves Doodles. The “Mr. Happy” and “Little Miss Sunshine” author received 16 different Doodles, portraying various characters from his beloved children’s books. See them all in the video below:

The now famous Les Paul Google Doodle allowed you to not only interact with a guitar, but record your songs as well. This led to numerous YouTube videos of people playing famous songs using the playable Doodle, and it turned out to be a major productivity killer. This Doodle was probably the most popular one of the entire year.

Legendary humorist Mark Twain received a massive Doodle fit for widescreen. The Doodle portrayed a few instances from a famous scene from his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Why do the work when you can trick other into doing it for you?

Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham received one of the most buzzed-about Doodles of the year. The animated Doodle takes us through five famous dances from her career – and is truly a pleasure to watch.

Another abstract Doodle comes from Turkey’s National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. Toys are aligned to form the subtle resemblance of the famous Google logo.

This Doodle for Jordan Independence Day is just beautiful:

The Freddie Mercury Google Doodle needs no description. Just pure, unadulterated awesome.

Another wonderful interactive Doodle celebrated Gumby creator Art Clokey. The Doodle featured all the favorite characters from The Gumby Show – The first “G” is a block, and the first “O” morphs into Gumby’s nemeses, the Blockheads. The second “O” turns into Prickle, the yellow dinosaur. The second “G” is Goo, a flying blue mermaid. The “L” is Gumby himself and the final “E” is his sidekick Pokey the pony.

A recent Doodle that ran in Switzerland, Austria and Germany honored the 83rd birthday of Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. His unmistakeable design is seen in the Doodle, which highlights some of his most famous architectural accomplishments.

What were your favorite Doodles of 2011? I’m sure I overlooked some great ones – so call me on it. Did I make any egregious omissions? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead image is the Jim Henson Doodle]

Most striking is the absence of social gaming powerhouse Zynga from the top two spots on the list. Zynga ends up taking the most spots (4) on the list, but the top two spots are held by Playdom and EA studios, respectively.

Here’s the list:

1. Gardens of Time (Playdom)
2. The Sims Social (EA)
3. Cityville (Zynga)
4. DoubleDown Casino (DoubleDown Interactive)
5. Indiana Jones Adventure World (Zynga)
6. Words With Friends (Zynga)
7. Bingo Blitz (Buffalo Studios)
8. Empires & Allies (Zynga)
9. Slotomania-Slot Machines (Playtika)
10. Diamond Dash (wooga)

As All Things D points out, this list looks a bit different from those frequent AppData lists that put Zynga in the top spots.

Facebook explains:

This list was compiled by looking at the top games on Facebook with more than 100,000 monthly active users and giving priority to those games with the highest user satisfaction scores. The result is a list of the games that received the most user recommendations in 2011.

The winners in the individual categories look like this:

• Top up-and-comer: Battle Pirates (Kixeye)
• Top game with 50K-100K users: Super Slot Machines (Campano, Kirby, & Campano)
• Top casino game: Zynga Poker (Zynga)
• Top sports game: TopEleven – Be a football manager (Nordeus)
• Top fashion game: Mall World (50 Cubes)

Facebook also revealed that the average Facebook gamer played more than three different games each month and they played a game over half the days that they logged on to the site.

eBay has issued their 3rd-annual “Top Shopped” report, where they analyze all of their sales data to come up with what pop culture forces captivated the nation throughout the year. The data was pulled from various eBay categories and solidified into a top 10 list featuring the most popular things of the year (at least in terms of $$$).

Strangely enough, the Top Shopped list does seem to reflect what was popular in 2011. People really do “vote” with their dollars:

1. NFL
2. Harry Potter
3. Twilight
4. Call of Duty
5. Green Bay Packers
6. iPad
7. Sade
8. Justin bieber
9. Glee
10. Charlie Sheen

eBay also dives deeper into the pop culture data with some more facts about the year-end sales figures. eBay shoppers bought 83,879 Lady Gaga-related items, as opposed to only 65,822 Katy Perry items. The Green Bay Packers had more related items sold that any other sport figure (234,089), but QB Aaron Rodgers couldn’t compete with Derek Jeter, who sold an athlete-most 131,250 related items.

“eBay sales are a direct indicator of what Americans are most fascinated by and uniquely reflects the cultural zeitgeist,” said Karen Bard Sayah, eBay Spokesperson. “From the latest video games and tech devices, to royal wedding memorabilia and ‘Winning’ t-shirts, shoppers know that whatever it is they’re coveting, they can find it on eBay.”

You could say that it was a pretty big year for YouTube. In a blog post, they announced over 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000 for effect) playbacks on the site as a whole. That’s around 140 playbacks for every person on planet Earth.

“To compile these lists, we looked at global view counts of popular videos uploaded throughout this year, and, in some instances, we aggregated views across multiple versions of the same video.”

Here’s what they came up with, the top ten videos of the year (in order)

1. Rebecca Black- “Friday”

2. Ultimate Dog Tease

3. Jack Sparrow (feat. Michael Bolton)

4. Talking Twin Babies (pt. 2)

5. Nyan Cat

6. Look At Me Now – Cover by @KarminMusic

7. The Creep (feat. Nicki Minaj & John Waters) (Hulu embed)

8. Maria Aragon – Born This Way Cover

9. The Force – Volkswagen Commercial

10. Cat mom hugs her baby kitten

Here’s their list for most viewed videos from major record labels:

Jennifer Lopez – On The Floor ft. Pitbull
LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock
Bruno Mars – The Lazy Song [Official Video]
Nicki Minaj – Super Bass
Pitbull – Give Me Everything ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack, Nayer
Pitbull – Rain Over Me ft. Marc Anthony
Jessie J – Price Tag ft. B.o.B.
LMFAO – Sexy and I Know It
Katy Perry – E.T. ft. Kanye West
Katy Perry – Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)

Over at the blog post, YouTube also links to playlists where you can find the most popular videos in specific categories like sports, travel, food, science and fashion.

For instance, here’s the most watched video of the year in the “sports” category:

The YouTube Rewind page features more year-end lists like “fastest rising search terms” organized by month, and a place to vote for the best videos of the year.

What was your favorite YouTube video of 2011? Let us know in the comments.

It had previously been announced that the Steve Jobs biography was the top selling print book of 2011, but of course that list didn’t take into account Kindle sales. According to Amazon, even when you factor in e-books, Isaacson’s book still takes the top spot.

“After the year of recommending books to our customers, it’s always fun to see what books really resonated with them,” said Chris Schluep, Senior Editor of Books, Amazon.com. “We chose ‘Steve Jobs’ as one of the Top 10 best books of the year, and even though it was published in October, the sales have been phenomenal in both formats. And we’re really excited that Kindle Direct Publishing authors have taken two of the top spots this year for book sales overall.”

Those “Kindle Direct Publishing” books that he mentions are “The Mill River Recluse” and “The Abbey,” which were able to crack the top 10 overall bestseller list without any print sales – only Kindle sales.

Here’s the complete list:

1. “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson
2. “Bossypants” by Tina Fey
3. “A Stolen Life” by Jaycee Dugard
4. “The Mill River Recluse” by Darcie Chan
5. “In the Garden of the Beasts” by Erik Larson
6. “A Dance with Dragons” by George R.R. Martin
7. “The Paris Wife” by Paula McLain
8. “The Litigators” by John Grisham
9. “The Abbey” by Chris Culver
10. “Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle)” by Christopher Paolini

Amazon also has most in-depth best-of lists including the 100 best-selling print books of the year and the 100 best-selling Kindle books of the year.

Amazon has also released an editorial list of the “best” books of the year. Topping that list in “The Art of Fielding” by Chad Harbach. They describe it as “confident, intimate, unpredictable, and wholly memorable.”

“Steve Jobs” released on October 24th. It is currently the second best-selling print book and 14th best-selling Kindle book in the month of December. It has been in the Amazon top 100 for 94 days.

This last (so far) leg of the Year In Review is the Golden Tweet Award, which is awarded to a tweet that was not only the most retweeted, but also had an impact in terms of social good.

The award goes to a tweet from Wendy’s, which asked users to retweet for a good cause. Each retweet sent 50 cents to the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. It looks like helping foster kids is a great motivation to get people to retweet, because the tweet helped raise $50,000 for the charity. By my math, that’s at least 100,000 retweets.

Wendy’s acknowledged their award accordingly:

The promotion is not just a Twitter thing, it is actually part of an annual Father’s Day initiative by Wendy’s. This year, including the retweet contributions, they raised $1.8 million for Dave’s charity.

Although this year’s most retweeted tweet did more to help children, it’s definitely not as funny as last year’s top tweet. That honor went to Stephen Colbert with this oil-spill themed gem:

Did you see Wendy’s Golden tweet out there in the Twitterverse? Did you retweet it? Let us know in the comments.

The App Store Rewind breaks down the year’s top performers into categories which include Music, Movies, TV, Apps, Books and Podcasts. In each category, Apple not only lists the top sellers from 2011, but also makes some editorial picks in the form of “best” this and “______ of the year.”

According to Apple, this best entertainment this year came from boy wizards, meth cooks, photo filtering, and painful breakups.

Music:

Artist of the Year: Adele

Album of the Year: Wasting Light, Foo Fighters

Song of the Year: Pumped Up Kicks, Foster the People

Breakthrough Artist of the Year: Nicki Minaj

Top Sellers (Songs):

1. Rolling in the Deep, Adele
2. Party Rock Anthem, LMFAO
3. Firework, Katy Perry
4. Grenade, Bruno Mars
5. Forget You, Cee Lo Green
6. Give Me Everything, Pitbull
7. E.T., Katy Perry
8. Moves Like Jagger, Maroon 5
9. Pumped Up Kicks, Foster The People
10. Super Bass, Nicki Minaj

Top Sellers (Albums):

1. 21, Adele
2. Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons
3. Tha Carter IV, Lil Wayne
4. Watch The Throne, Jay-Z and Kanye West
5. Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay
6. Born This Way, Lady Gaga
7. Loud, Rihanna
8. Take Care, Drake
9. Teenage Dream, Katy Perry
10. Doo-Waps & Hooligans, Bruno Mars

BONUS – The wonderful self titled Bon Iver album won best Indie Album of the Year.

Movies:

Best Blockbuster: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2

Best Comedy: Bridesmaids

Best Indie: Midnight in Paris

Best Romance: Beginners

Top Sellers (Sales + Rentals):

1. The Social Network
2. Limitless
3. No Strings Attached
4. Just Go With It
5. The Lincoln Lawyer
6. Bridesmaids
7. Source Code
8. Tangled
9. The King’s Speech
10. Red

BONUS: Unsurprisingly, The Tree of Life took home the “most debated” prize.

TV Shows:

Best Half Hour: Modern Family

Best Drama: Breaking Bad (duh)

Best Discovery: Masterpiece: Downton Abbey

Best Breakout Comedy: Parks and Recreation

Top Sellers (episodes):

1. What Lies Ahead, The Walking Dead
2. Original Song, Glee
3. Box Cutter, Breaking Bad
4. Out, Sons of Anarchy
5. The Kids Are Not Alright, Gossip Girl

Top Sellers (seasons):

1. Doctor Who
2. Modern Family
3. Dexter
4. Breaking Bad
5. True Blood

BONUS: The brilliant Louie won “Most Realistic Non-Reality Show,” which is an apt description.

Apps:

App of the Year: Instagram

Game of the Year: Tiny Tower

Top Paid Apps:

1. Angry Birds
2. Fruit Ninja
3. Angry Birds Seasons
4. Cut The Rope
5. Tiny Wings
6. Angry Birds Rio
7. Words With Friends
8. Camera+
9. Doodle Jump
10. Plants vs. Zombies

Top Free Apps:

1. Facebook
2. Pandora
3. Word With Friends Free
4. Angry Birds Free
5. Skype
6. Netflix
7. Angry Birds Rio Free
8. Groupon
9. Fruit Ninja Lite
10. Twitter

BONUS: Unsurprisingly, the popular app Flipboard ruled the “news apps” subcategory.

Books:

Best Novel: The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

Best Nonfiction: Boomerang by Michael Lewis

Best Teen Novel: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Top Sellers (Fiction):

1. The Help
2. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
3. A Game of Thrones
4. Water for Elephants
5. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
6. The Litigators
7. Now You See Her
8. The Paris Wife
9. Breaking Dawn
10. Something Borrowed

Top Sellers (Nonfiction):

1. Steve Jobs
2. Heaven Is For Real
3. A Stolen Life
4. Unbroken
5. Shit My Dad Says
6. Bossypants
7. Bossypants (enhanced edition)
8. In The Garden Of Beasts
9. SEAL Team Six
10. Killing Lincoln

BONUS: Roger Ebert gets a spot on the top Bios list with his book Life Itself.

Podcasts:

Best Audio Podcast: NPR’s Fresh Air

Best Video Podcast: TEDTalks

Best New Audio Podcast: The Jillian Michaels Show

Best New Video Podcast: Epic Meal Time

BONUS: The top comedy podcasts come from Adam Carolla, The Onion, and Ricky Gervais.

Does anything strike you about these lists?  Any glaring omissions?  Surprised by anything?  Let us know in the comments.

That’s because it has to do with Twitter Stories, Twitter’s initiative to showcase the more human element of Twitter by highlighting various interest stories about how Twitter has impacted the real world. For instance, one of the top “Twitter Stories” from November told how a man saved his mom’s independent bookstore from going under with a single tweet.

Part one of Twitter’s year-in review doubles as December’s best of Twitter Stories, and they are choosing to highlight one story about a homeless man who used Twitter to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

Oh yeah, and he meets his grandchildren for the first time. It’s sappy and such but dammit, it’s the holiday season!

A New York-based group that helps the homeless connect through social media provided a man named Daniel with the tools to get started on Twitter. One thing led to another, and his daughter found out about his attempts to contact her through the site. Check out their story below:

The December edition of Twitter Stories highlights ten remarkable moments of 2011. From the man who inadvertently live-tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound to the homeless dad who was reunited with his daughter after years of separation, this list, which doubles as the annual “Year in Stories,” chronicles how people use Twitter to make a difference in ways that are both personal and universal.

You can check the rest of the stories out here.

There will be four more parts to Twitter’s year-in-review, all to be unveiled at undisclosed times throughout December.

There were lawsuits, mysteries, legal abuses, policy shifts, embarrassments, scandals, oppressions, miscalculations, bubble discussions, and significant innovations. All and all, 2007 was a big year for anybody with a stake on the Net.

So, without further ado, we present the Most, the Biggest, the Best, and the Worst of 2007.

Biggest Winner: Apple and the Jesus Phone

You know your product’s hit a nerve when people pair it up with the savior of the world. Apple CEO Steve Jobs induced a Web-and-media-wide paroxysm by introducing the iPhone last January, which lasted until the mob turned on him over steep price cuts in advance of the holiday season. Pair that with a wildly successful ad campaign, surging stock prices, and increasing comparisons to Microsoft (gasp!), and you’ve got an all around winner.

Biggest Losers: Apple TV, Kevin Martin, Second Life, and the RIAA

Launch of Apple TV, which promised to link Web content to television sets, was overshadowed by the aforementioned Jesus phone. Not that it mattered much; once bloggers got around to it, they were less than enthused.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin proved himself to be such a telco-industry flunkie in regard to Net Neutrality, cable regulation, 700 MHz auction rules, and spectrum use that his year ends with threats of a Congressional investigation for abuse of power. Well done, Kevin. Or at least you will be when the grilling’s finished. 

Even though Second Life lit up 2006 with the possibilities and issues virtual worlds presented to marketers and lawyers, and even influenced philosophies regarding virtual goods and currencies in 2007, those accumulated Linden dollars may soon be doing as poorly as the real dollar, or worse. Recent reports show Second Life has become a bit of a ghost town.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) bullied, fought, and sued its way to infamous villainy in both 2006 and 2007 by targeting not just file-sharing networks but also file-sharers themselves. But 2007 marked the year the recording industry began to walk away from DRM (digital rights management). EMI, Universal, and Warner Music Group all opened their hearts to DRM-free digital format, leaving only Sony BMG to fight the losing battle.

Most Influential: Google

No company has shaken things up or put fear into the hearts of the established industry players than Google. Viacom slapped the company with a billion-dollar lawsuit in March for fear of losses to Google-owned YouTube. Microsoft ironically cried antitrust when Google bought online ad company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. And Google’s presence in the federal 700 MHz spectrum auction pushed behemoths like AT&T and Verizon to reevaluate their strategies and open up their networks. As Google stock continues to scrape the ceiling, every parallel industry is scared of Google, and knows that Google is leading the dance.

Biggest Hypocrites: Viacom, Microsoft, and Maybe Google

Though Viacom is claiming a billion dollars in losses due to YouTube, the company acts as though there is no money to be made online when negotiating with striking writers looking for a piece of the Internet pie.

It’s hard not to laugh when Microsoft complains to the government that another company will have an unfair advantage in the marketplace. It’s even harder to keep that laughter in when very soon after Microsoft complains about Google’s purchase of DoubleClick and lack of competition in the online ad space, Microsoft turns around and buys aQuantive for $6 billion, twice what Google will pay for DoubleClick.  Microsoft’s complaint appears to be more strategic than legitimate.

Google rocked the webmaster world by dropping webpages with paid links from its index. There has been a debate about whether or not that is justified, especially in regard to online directories. Many feel Google is not only dictating to webmasters what they can and cannot do with their websites, but also is being hypocritical considering Google’s entire business model is based on selling links.

Least Graceful Exits: Blognation and Terry Semel

What many thought was a concept to rival Reuters or the Associated Press – a worldwide network of tech bloggers called Blognation – became one scandalized mess. Blognation Founder and CEO Sam Sethi admitted to lying to bloggers about funding and impending payment, but also accused TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington of sabotaging Blognation’s efforts with investors. As Blognation spiraled toward non-existence, Arrington shot back by implying Sethi’s dishonesty contributed to the sudden death of a Blognation editor.

Dissatisfied with the company’s growth, Yahoo shareholders booted CEO Terry Semel at the beginning of the year and put Jerry Yang and Susan Decker at the helm. Either new policies are slow to take hold or that was a bad decision, as the company continues to lose market share to Google.
 

Biggest Scandals: Facebook Beacon, Yahoo and China, Comcast and p2p

Though some would argue Facebook had the best year ever – crazy valuations, Microsoft investment, substantial growth as a result of an open platform, and constant media attention – it wasn’t without its share of major problems. In addition to the yonker CEO Mark Zuckerberg having to face old classmates over accusations of stealing their idea, he was also forced to apologize for and revamp Facebook’s marketing service, Beacon, which broadcasted what Facebook users were buying at partner sites. Privacy advocates, led by MoveOn.org, went ballistic.

Yahoo found itself in a mess when it was revealed that an executive had not been truthful when a Congressional committee grilled him about Yahoo’s knowledge of Chinese authority’s reason for requesting information about a Yahoo Mail user. Yahoo assistance to the Chinese government resulted in the jailing of two journalistic dissidents.

Comcast raised Network Neutrality alarms and, in effect, provided a proof of concept, when the company was discovered to be interfering with peer-to-peer traffic in order to prioritize traffic. The incident provided nice fodder for Net Neutrality advocates.

Best Snooping Device: WikiScanner

A 24-year-old hacker developed a way to peek in on whom was editing Wikipedia articles based on IP address tracking. The results were stunning, with questionable edits coming from government agencies, major corporations, and media entities all looking to control their messages.

Most Abused: the DMCA

Don’t like what someone’s saying about you online? Lawyer up and send out a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice in order to bully their comments offline. This practice become more and more common in 2007, and at the pinnacle of abuse was one lawyer copyrighting the notice itself in order to sue when a blogger posted it on his blog.

Best Marketing Move: Radiohead

Popular rock group Radiohead dropped a bomb of an experiment online this year. Instead of letting record labels dictate the distribution of their music, Radiohead made their entire album "In Rainbows" available online free of charge for a limited time, and accepted donations from fans based on what they thought the album was worth. In addition, the band sold box sets, concert tickets, and t-shirts, proving that giving away their music could generate interest and sales.

Biggest Social Media Breakthrough: YouTube/CNN Debates

Another step toward a more populist democracy, YouTube broke new ground for Web 2.0 as the public was given unprecedented access to Presidential candidates. Both Democrat and Republican candidates were subjected to questions from everyday people, rather than just the media elite.

Best Online Mystery: Fake Steve Jobs

LonelyGirl is so 2006. This year, the favorite mystery to be solved was the unmasking of Fake Steve Jobs. They tried to trick him and to track him. They accused the wrong people. Finally, the New York Times discovered Fake Steve Jobs was actually Forbes editor Daniel Lyons.

Startup Having the Best Year Ever: Twitter

Expanding from micro-blogging curiosity, Twitter has become a social media must, being used in times of emergency like earthquakes and collapsed bridges, and for starting up charitable causes like the Frozen Pea Fund. Expect Twitter to be acquired in 2008.