It's traditional among both consumer and technical media sources (sometimes called "publications") to close out one year and begin another with various "top" lists, and we certainly want to be part of that tradition. Unlike subjective lists such as "best movies", "best ads", or "most newsworthy items", we can use an objective measure here at Planet Analog: page views. And while consumer publications find that such lists should use prime numbers to catch your attention ("13 Ways to Lose Weight Now", "17 Tips for Success"), we're sticking with a basic Top 20.

Of course, as with any lists or data, you have to think about what they indicate and how they were compiled. While have absolute precision in measuring the page views, of course, we still faced some choices. For example, do we segregate items which were published prior to 2009, or include them in the list? What about multipart articles: do we add up their individual page views for a single aggregate score, or leave them as is? What about items which were published late in the year, and so have had much less time to garner attention?

In the end, we followed the time-honored engineering principle: keep it simple. Rather than try to be smarter than the raw data, we are presenting using the data "as is." The list below shows the twenty most-viewed features published at Planet Analog, along with the author and year of publication (and see the links below the top-20 list for the corresponding items for our sibling sites, RF DesignLine and Power Management DesignLine). Looking at the list, you'll also get a good sense of both the new and long-term topics which most interested analog-centric electronic engineers in 2009:

1. "The art of capacitive touch sensing", Mark Lee, Cypress Semiconductor Corp., 2006
2. "How compact fluorescent lamps work--and how to dim them", Tom Ribarich, International Rectifier Corporation, 2009
3. "An introduction to analog circuit design, Part 1: Transistors and Elementary Circuits", Reno Rossetti, Fairchild Semiconductor Inc., 2005
4. "Building a reliable capacitive-sensor interface ", Wayne Palmer, Analog Devices, Inc., 2006
5. "Choosing and Using Bypass Capacitors (Part 1 of 3)", Tamara Schmitz and Mike Wong, Intersil Corp., 2007
6. "Choosing and Using Bypass Capacitors (Part 2 of 3)", Tamara Schmitz and Mike Wong, Intersil Corp., 2007
7. "Understand and apply the transimpedance amplifier (Part 2 of 2) ", David Westerman, National Semiconductor Corp., 2007
8. "GaN-based power devices offer game-changing potential in power-conversion electronics", Michael A. Briere, ACOO Enterprises LLC, 2008
9. "Second-order IIR Filters will support cascade implementations - 5 Part digital audio application tutorial", Rusty Allred, Texas Instruments, 2003
10. "Understanding noise optimization in sensor signal-conditioning circuits (Part 1a of 4 parts)", Reza Moghimi, Analog Devices, Inc., 208
11. "SIGNAL CHAIN BASICS: Operational Amplifier--The Basic Building Block", Bill Klein, Texas Instruments, 2007
12. "Transmitting video over CAT5 cable", Mike Wong, Intersil Corp, 2005
13. "Design considerations for three-phase power factor correction", John Bottrill, Texas Instruments, 2007
14. "Hands-on: Get started in analog IC design and fab (Part 1 of 3)", Stephen H. Lafferty, 2009
15. "SIGNAL CHAIN BASICS (Part 32): Digital interfaces (con't)--The I2C Bus", Thomas Kugelstadt, Texas Instruments, 2009
16. "Choosing and Using Bypass Capacitors (Part 3 of 3)", Tamara Schmitz and Mike Wong, Intersil Corp., 2007
17. "A primer on high-side FET load switches (Part 2 of 2)", Qi Deng, Micrel, Inc., 2007
18. "True engineers solve problems using the tools at hand: building a bandgap reference", Dave Ritter and Tamara Schmitz, Intersil Corp., 2009
19. "SIGNAL CHAIN BASICS (Part 29): Digital interfaces - Single-ended versus differential interfaces", Thomas Kugelstadt, Texas Instruments, 2009
20. "Understand and apply the transimpedance amplifier (Part 1 of 2)", David Westerman, National Semiconductor Corp., 2007

At our sibling sites:

• You're the Top: Most viewed "RF DesignLine" articles of 2009
• You're the Top: Most viewed "Power Management DesignLine" articles of 2009