Year In Review: The Best of 2009’s Technology Trends and Downloads

by Melanie Nelson on December 21, 2009 · 1 comment

Growing up, I *loved* the end-of-year wrap-ups on various news shows. I enjoyed looking back at everything that happened with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Of course, now, I rarely turn on the television and I find most of my news and recaps via the Web — including my end-of-year recaps. I’ve seen so many Best Of lists over the past week, I decided I’d like to share some of them with you. A sort of Best of 2009 link round up for techies.

Twitter Trends for 2009

If you weren’t on Twitter this year, you weren’t getting your breaking news. Here are two articles that look back at what happened on the second-biggest social network this year:

Twitter Reveals Most Discussed Topics of 2009 by Ben Parr via Mashable. This list provides a break down of what we Twittered this year. From Michael Jackson to Google Wave to Harry Potter, Twitter was the way news broke and was dissected and discussed.
Twitter’s Top 10 Tech Trends of 2009 by Jolie O’Dell via Read Write Web. Not surprisingly, Google Wave is number one. As techies, you’ll be interested to see what the other nine most talked about topics were. It was interesting to me that conferences made the list. If you’ve had any doubt that your hashtags are important, worry no more.

Most Popular Downloads for 2009

I love efficiency. This year iPhone apps, Mac apps, and even Windows apps enabled me to achieve a higher level of efficiency. Oh my word, I love technology and it’s ability to make my life faster and easier.

The App Store’s Biggest (Official) Hits of 2009 by John Herrman via Gizmodo. Mr. Herrman provides Apple’s official list of what’s hot and what’s not this year in the App Store. The lists include apps and games divided into best sellers and top rated. I was surprised there weren’t more free apps included in the lists. I’d love to know what your favorites were this year. Will you leave me a comment and let me know what apps or games you can’t live without? (If you happen to remember the cost, please include that as well.)
Most Popular Free Mac Downloads of 2009 by Adam Pash via Lifehacker. Two things in my life that I love? My Mac and efficiency. So many times those two things go together. This list provides some of the most fun and efficient tools you can download for your Mac.
Most Popular Free Mac Downloads of 2009 by Adam Pash via Lifehacker. Although I love my Mac, my family also has a PC running Windows. This article lists some of the most popular downloads for that OS.

More Best of 2009 Lists

Check out Lifehackers entire Best Of series. It includes lists for Linux, photography, how-tos, and more.
Jennifer Wagner links to 15 Best of 2009 lists including The Best TV Lines of 2009
2009 Best of What’s New via Popsci is broken into categories like Engineering, Home Tech, Gadgets, Health, Green Tech, and more.
Gina Trapani breaks down why Google had a banner year in 2009 in her article This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition. She says, “When technologists of the future look back in time, they’ll remember 2009 as the year Google got serious about an internet operating system, speeding up the web, and indexing EVERYTHING in sight. Take a look at the year 2009 in Google.”
AdWeek Media has their picks for the best of marketing and media Best of the 2000s.
Mashable has several lists, but I found The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads of 2009 to be quite entertaining.

This article is cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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