In our annual "Cool Yule Tools" holiday gift guide, we present our favorite tech gift ideas for the holiday season. For nine years, I've coordinated the production of the guide, which involves many hours of testing products to make sure it has the Network World Cool Yule Elves seal of approval. Here are five things I learned this year:

Analog-to-digital conversion is hot. This seems to be the year of taking old media formats (vinyl albums, cassette tapes, old VCR tapes) and converting them to digital. If you've got a bunch of the "older" media sitting in boxes, there are several different gadgets that let you digitize them into electronic bits.

The iPhone still rocks. I'm a big fan of the iPhone 3G, but an even bigger fan of the App Store and the multitudes of applications being developed that turn this mobile device into an even more valuable tool. In addition, the number of iPhone and iPod-related accessories continue to astound me, with great devices like the Griffin AirCurve and Belkin RockStar devices.

Simple really is better. I was much more impressed and encouraged by products that did one or two things really well, rather than try to tackle a bunch of complicated features and bundle it into one big package (other than the fine multifunction Artisan 800 printer from Epson). I'm always happy to see manufacturers that think about ease of use in their products, because it means that my nontechie friends won't be bothering me for tech support when I give them a tech gift.

I always bite off more than I can chew. The goal of our gift guide is to span the universe of technology products to try to present the best of the best. I always end up with more products than I can test and write about (until I perfect either the cloning device or time machine). Fortunately, we have a few more weeks before the holidays, so stay tuned in this space and online for more reviews and gift ideas as I catch up from the onslaught of product submissions.

Don't let your art department talk you into posing as rock stars. OK, I'll admit, it was fun getting dressed up as Slash from Guns and Roses for the photo shoot. The Elvis costume, on the other hand, was a bit snug. Looks like I'll have to break out my Wii Fit again.