This Week at Neatorama

This will be the last weekend update at Neatorama …this year. The end of the year is a time that many blogs and websites look back and give a report on how they did for the year, and what their biggest articles and posts were. To be honest, that seems like an awful lot of work to me. However, without even looking, I can tell you that the biggest post of the past year here at Neatorama was Three Exotic Necktie Knots to Try: The Eldredge Knot, The Trinity Knot, and The Cape Knot. Not a day goes by that someone, somewhere on the internet isn't passing that one around. If I were to hazard a wild guess at number two, it would be The Forbidden Island. I might be wrong, but I can't think of any other posts from 2013 that continue to pop up in our daily stats as much. Otherwise, we've brought you over 10,000 posts, including more than 300 feature articles, in 2013. Whew!

We unveiled a new daily feature just yesterday: Neatolinks. See, as many posts as we put up to bring you the best of the web, we figured even more would be better, so Jill is rounding up a daily list of links to aid in your enjoyment of the internet. When you see the word Neatolinks in your RSS reader, it will be followed by a title from one of the links, but rest assured there is a variety of subjects inside.

We celebrated Christmas in a big way. Thank you for contributing your holiday pictures to Reader Holiday Photos. We love seeing your pictures!    

Jill Harness brought us 14 Hilarious Family Christmas Photos and 12 Crazy Christmas Foods.

We also have a compilation post of Awesome Christmas Video Greetings 2013.

Eddie Deezen gave us Who Framed Roger Rabbit: The Inside Story.

Two Body Interactions: A Longitudinal Study came from The Annals of Improbable Research.

In this week's What Is It? game,  the mystery object is a cork borer sharpener. "A cork borer, often used in a chemistry or biology laboratory, is a metal tool for cutting a hole in a cork or rubber stopper to insert glass tubing." And this thing sharpens it. That was weird, but y'all came up with even weirder answers. A t-shirt goes to Kevin George, who said it is a "Radial doughnut cutter." Makes perfect sense. Another t-shirt goes to Jaguarfeather, who said "Tis a lawless switchblade peg-leg belongin' ter Captain Kidd's Kid. He were so short, nobody ere noticed him much, but iff'n ever a pirate be less than kind to the little bilge rat, the Kid took 'is satisfaction direct out of 'is ankle, he did!" Congratulations to the winners, and a big thank you to the What Is It blog, where you can find the answers to all this week's mystery items.

Our Conceptis puzzle this week was Skyscraper Light Puzzle. The Pzzler was Santa's Reindeer. And the Whodunit was called The Genie, the Movie Star, and the Hobo.

The most popular post this week was Google's Santa Tracker, which was fun and useful. Coming in second was 14 Hilarious Family Christmas Photos, and Nutella Liqueur Is the Most Delicious Booze Ever got third place.

The most-♥ed post was a tie between I Liked You Better Deaf and Belka Learns to Howl, followed by a tie between Dog Won't Let Her Owner Take A Drink and Introducing Quirky the Blind Kitten. Thanks for all the ♥s!

The most-emailed post was The Christmas Can Can.

On social media this week, Nutella Liqueur Is the Most Delicious Booze Ever was our most-liked post on Facebook, Reindeer Games got the most Tweets, The Legend of The Oregon Trail was the most-pinned post on Pinterest, and 12 Crazy Christmas Foods had the biggest number of shares on Google+.

We also have our own social networking sites. You need to check in at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page often, where you'll find discussions, links, and images that aren't here on the main page. Like this Storm Trooper joke. It was our most popular Facebook entry for the week! A funny cat picture got the most comments. Why don't you join in the fun?

Welcome back to Neatorama founder Alex Santoso, who spend the weeks leading up to Christmas playing Santa Claus: meaning he was mailing out gifts from the NeatoShop fast and furiously with a short staff. We missed him here, but all that work at the NeatoShop helps to keep this site going for another year. Give him a couple of days to catch his breath (and maybe even read the blog), and he'll be putting up an after-Christmas sale for you to find serious bargains!

We ran a lighter schedule of posts through the week of Christmas, but we'll be back to full-time posting this coming week, gearing up for the New Year and making plans to bring you the best stuff ever in 2014! Thank you all for joining us in 2013, for your tips, comments, shares, and support. We couldn't have done it without you! Make your plans carefully for a safe and happy New Year celebration. We want to see you back here in 2014!