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1. Naval tech guy
It takes a rare breed to work in the armed forces, as a recent recruitment advert proved. Espousing its usual secrecy, the Royal Navy took us deep into the bowels of one of its submarines to show us the technical wizardry that keeps our boats afloat.

"If the server goes down, I can't just call in some bloke to fix it," explains a young IT technician, sporting a wrench and a dangerously vacant smile. "But to be honest, sometimes I just switch it off and on again."

You couldn't make it up.

2. Tristan Nitot
Given the sheer wealth of marketing rubbish, PR blurb and pseudo-tech speak we have to wade though during the course of the year, it always brings a smile to our cynical faces to hear an executive speak from the heart. Which is exactly what happened when we interviewed Mozilla Europe president Tristan Nitot on the reasons for Firefox's success.

"Browsers hadn't been evolving for close to six years, but the web was. The browser had been dead while Microsoft was asleep at the wheel."

Don't hold back, Tristan.

"The beta [of Firefox 3] shouldn't be too long, probably by the end of the year. We want it to be stable, usable. It will be, it's not going to format your hard drive or anything."

Good news all round, then.

3. Nicolas Negroponte
Starting an organisation that aims to provide every child in every developing nation with their own laptop is a goal that even the ancient Egyptians might have described as a bit ambitious, but despite manufacturing delays and political setbacks galore, One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte has kept eerily cheerful, even raising a few smiles along the way.

"AMD is our partner, which means Intel is pissing on me. Bill Gates is not pleased either, but if I am annoying Microsoft and Intel then I figure I am doing something right."

Yes you are, Nicholas, yes you are.

4. Stephen Fry
The closest most comedians come to technology is the widget in beer cans. Thankfully though, everyone's favourite sophisticate, Stephen Fry, revealed his techy side earlier in the year, and swiftly gave Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 platform the sort of silk-tongued ear-bashing we could only dream of.

"The feeling, as with all things Microsoft, is that all design features and functions are there to suit MS rather than to delight, enthuse and compel the user. Compromise, short-cuts, inconveniences, vestigial residues - no one responsible is likely to pat themselves on the back for the design."

5. Linus Torvalds
We're not entirely sure what it is about Microsoft that brings out the quips in people, but God bless it. Take this corker from Linux guru Linus Torvalds, responding to the patents row between the software giant and open-source community earlier in the year, when Microsoft claimed open-source had infringed hundreds of its patents, but wouldn't

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reveal which ones.

"So the whole, 'We have a list and we're not telling you', itself should tell you something. Don't you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they'd just tell us and go, "nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!"

Erm, not really, but we would really love to see Steve Ballmer try.

6. Steve Ballmer
Speaking of Steve, Microsoft's CEO has had a cracking year, essentially taking a pop at anything that happened to meander into his peripheral vision. Among his growls he saved one of his best for Google, somehow spinning an admission of failure into a swipe at its rival.

"Our Windows Live Hotmail doesn't generate much ad revenue, so we've had to put a portal around it, because the traffic it brings is very valuable, but it's not very easily monetised. Google's had the same experience, even though it reads your email and we don't."

Subtle, Steve.

7. Steve Ballmer... again
After Ballmer's previous criticism of Google, the following admission seems even stranger. After stating Microsoft's intention to establish a smallish country, print stamps will Bill Gates' head on and eventually dominate internet search, he then promptly admitted it was loitering somewhere in third place.

"There's the world of search and advertising, where Google is the leader and we are an aspirant, we're number three."

Full marks for frankness, Steve, but research at the time showed that you were actually fourth.

8. Mike Davidson
When US presidential hopeful, Senator John McCain, decided to bring his campaign bang up-to-date with a MySpace profile, he naively borrowed some images hosted on someone else's server to bulk it out. Irked by this, the owner of the images took a rather novel revenge and made one or two... alterations.

"Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage... particularly marriage between passionate females," the image said.

The man behind the alteration, Mike Davidson, would later describe the jape as "the immaculate hack."

9. John Hemming MP
The loss of 25 million child benefit records on a couple of CDs was an open-goal for opposition politicians. But hand the match ball to Liberal MP, John Hemming, who said the government couldn't even be trusted with CD burners and warned of worse to come.

"Normally what happens is that we close the door after the horse has bolted, but in this case we're leaving the door open for more horses to bolt."

He wasn't wrong, was he?

10. BBC
And we conclude with a festive shorty. The much maligned iPlayer is coming out of beta on Christmas day, and while anybody else might worry about the potential chaos caused by millions of people with shiny new laptops trying to download reruns of "Delia Does Christmas", all at once, the BBC isn't concerned at all. Because it's Christmas you see, the most wonderful time of the year and all that. And what did the BBC tell us when we asked if its support staff would be foregoing their turkey in case of a Christmas rush?

"[The BBC] is confident it will be OK."

Fingers crossed, in other words.