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In preparation for the coming December holidays, Inhabitat just launched its annual green holiday gift guide, offering tips for everything ranging from green gadgets to DIY gifts. Got a hideous Christmas sweater that you wish you could un-knit? No problem: London-based product and furniture designer Imogen Hedges developed an amazing pedal-powered "un-knitting" machine that unravels sweaters so the yarn can be recycled. That's just one of the many great green inventions featured on Inhabitat this week.

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If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This past week, we discovered an abundance of special edition smartphones and T-Mobile gave ten new reasons for owners of unlocked iPhones to smile. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of November 19th, 2012.

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Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

This week, it's all about the hard stuff. Science, that is. Whatever you were thinking of, forget it. Anyhoo, NASA has peeked a galaxy far, far away, quantum foam might be proven with a fridge and a laser, self-filling water bottles could be in our future and we could see 3D printed Xbox controllers in our lifetime. This, friends, is alt-week.

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Welcome to the Engadget holiday gift guide! Picking presents for friends and loved ones is never a simple task, and with thousands of options for each category, buying technology can be an especially frustrating experience. We're here to help. Below you'll find today's bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to our hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season. And don't forget to enter our giveaway -- leave a comment for a chance to nab AT&T's LG Optimus G.

Sure, Ultrabooks and Windows 8 tablets are flashy gift options, but it's extras like the ones found here that really make 'em sing. Whether it's a desktop or portable storage solution, a smart thermostat or a secondary camera for those more experimental shots, we've got you covered. This collection of high-tech add-ons will surely snag the attention of anyone on your holiday shopping list, so mosey on past the break to start perusing.

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Welcome to the Engadget holiday gift guide! Picking presents for friends and loved ones is never a simple task, and with thousands of options for each category, buying technology can be an especially frustrating experience. We're here to help. Below you'll find today's bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to our hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season. And don't forget to enter our giveaway -- leave a comment for a chance to nab AT&T's LG Optimus G.

If you have any gadget junkies in your life, there's a good chance they're craving a new smartphone. Whether you're on a tight budget or have a fat wallet, simply look to our surefire list of the best and most unique mobile devices to place under the tree. But enough with the chatter... let's start shopping!

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We've seen tablets used as skateboards, tablets used as car dashboards and many, many tablets hacked to do things they weren't intended to do. This, dear readers, might be the greatest hack of all: modifying a tablet to make it bulletproof.

When VestGuard UK announced its £49.99 (about $80) Ballistic iPad panel we wasted no time in requesting a unit to sample. The company was kind enough to send us one across the pond and we did what any gadget- and firearm-loving nerds would do: put it squarely in the crosshairs. Can the iPad really stop small arms fire when augmented with a tiny little sheet and what does that iPad look like after being on the receiving end of both 9mm and .357 Magnum rounds? Trust us, you'll want to click through and see for yourself.

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You'll likely miss 3D Robotics on first pass. The company's San Diego R&D facility is headquartered in an unassuming building amongst similarly nondescript offices in a maze of a business park. Enter through the back and you'll find yourself in the middle of a small manufacturing assembly, where industrial Pick and Place machines buzz loudly and a handful of women are QAing finished product. Until earlier this month, the site was mostly off the radar, save for a devoted group of online enthusiasts. Then, Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson announced he was leaving the magazine in order to head up the company.

Anderson's off grabbing lunch as we arrive -- like us, just off a flight from the East Coast for a brief visit before jumping on yet another plane. He's in transition at the moment, as the head of both Wired and 3D Robotics, trying out his keycard for the first time as we set up our film equipment to interview the newly minted executive for an upcoming Engadget Show segment. Anderson's ties to the company go back to its inception, however, co-founding 3D Robotics with Jordi Muñoz, a 19-year-old living in Tijuana when the two first met through Anderson's DIY Drones online community.

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Welcome to the Engadget holiday gift guide! Picking presents for friends and loved ones is never a simple task, and with thousands of options for each category, buying technology can be an especially frustrating experience. We're here to help. Below you'll find today's bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to our hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season.

Nothing quite says "holidays" like snuggling up with your favorite gaming device and putting some serious time into the backlog of games piling up next to the TV. But 2012 is a year of change when it comes to gaming devices -- PC graphics cards are dropping in price and easily outclassing console competition, and new entrants like the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Wii U offer novel ways to interact with classic characters. So, what should you get for the gaming-inclined people in your life? Read on to find out what will fit best into your budget this year.

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When we visited BeatBots' San Francisco headquarters a few days back, the company's co-founder Marek Michalowski was a bit hush-hush when it came to discussing the future of Keepon, not saying much beyond alluding to upcoming updates for the move-busting little 'bot. He was, however, more than happy to talk about hacking the beat-monitoring toy, something the company had in mind when it first designed the consumer-friendly toy. "We felt it was important to allow people to hack it and be able to do more things with the toy than it can do out of the box," Michalowski told us.

The company left the toy's I2C bus open, so interested parties can easily manipulate My Keepon by way of microcontrollers like Arduino and its ilk. We've already seen some crafty individuals get the robot to do their bidding, something that's only likely to increase when Michalowski releases a guide for hacking My Keepon in the very near future. In the meantime, click through after the break to see the robotics PhD discuss Keepon hacks. A YouTube full of choreographed "Thriller" Keepon videos surely can't be that far off.

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The planet is in rough shape. A new report from the Renewable Energy Industry Institute found that total levels of global greenhouse gas emissions reached a record high last year. And we're starting to feel the consequences of all that carbon output as climate change leads to freakish superstorms like Hurricane Sandy. As New York City prepares for more large, destructive storms, many urban planners have raised the possibility of installing giant Rotterdam-style floodgates to protect the city. There are no current plans to install floodgates around NYC, but given the increasingly unpredictable weather in the region, it might be a good idea. In a different answer to rising sea levels, Dutch studio Whim Architects produced plans for floating, self-sustaining homes made from plastic waste from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists also found that climate change is actually affecting satellites that are orbiting the planet, and a separate study warned that climate change could wipe out coffee production by 2080.

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If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This past week, we found new smartphones at Virgin Mobile, Fido and Wind, along with a hefty new round of LTE expansion from AT&T. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of November 12th, 2012.

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