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According to our sources at Citysearch, Twitter is opening a new Sign-Up API.

Citysearch wrote us to say that the API will "allow local businesses to integrate their existing Twitter presence or create a new account directly from the Citysearch business profile and tweet from their Citysearch profile page." How does this new API relate to Twitter's OAuth feature? What can a Sign-Up API do that OAuth doesn't? Also, how did Citysearch get wind of this development before a general announcement was made?

Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to explore the latest Web technology products and trends. We're fortunate to have a great group of sponsors who support this goal. So, once a week, we write a post about them; about who they are, what they do, and what they've been up to lately. Pay them a visit or tweet them a "Thank you" (see link below each sponsor) to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site. Or you can follow all of our sponsors at once using our Twitter list.

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Favrd, a site which aggregated the most popular starred tweets, has closed down. The site was a favorite of Twitter humorists, people who use Twitter mainly to express their wit. Favrd was the first of its kind to repurpose Twitter favorites (stars) into an aggregation site, where users could see who had "faved" their tweets, view tweets with 3 or more faves as a real-time feed, and check the most faved tweets in a 24-hour period on the Leaderboard. It was kind of like the Techmeme of funny tweets.

You have to wonder how often this happens these days. High-speed coverage (or at least coverage that's advertised that way) is now widespread, and there have to be times when a solid 3G connection can beat an understaffed checkout line hands-down.

Which means customers are bringing the competition into the bricks-and-mortar stores with them -- and they can switch allegiance as easily as point, click, swipe, call up the keyboard, tap tap tap, dammit, backspace, no, that wasn't it, tap tap (repeat eight or nine times)... submit.

We hope you're enjoying these weekly events guide. As always, you can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - the first and still the best weekly newsletter for tech news and reviews - we present our end-of-year series profiling the best web products of 2009. We tell you our picks for Best Mobile Apps, Best Consumer Apps, Best Semantic Web Apps, and more. Also in this weekly wrapup, we take a look at Facebook's new privacy controls, and ask whether Google and Yahoo! are giving away too much control over user identities to Facebook and Twitter. As well, we check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

Plus: this week we released our new premium report, about the Real-Time Web!

The web isn't about pages any more. Now it's about streams, feeds and syndication. As part of our annual Best of Series, below are our picks for the most important RSS and Syndication Technologies of 2009.

You can see last year's list here and most of those remain important services. Only one service makes a repeat appearance this year. It was a very big year for this class of technologies, after a long, sleepy period the Real-Time Web began to cause substantial disruptions over the last 12 months. Check out our list below and let us know if we've missed anything important or who your picks might be for next year.

International courier giant Fedex has just released a new tracking device and web service for packages. Called SenseAware, it keeps tabs on the temperature, location and other vital signs of a package - including when it's opened and whether it was tampered with along the way. Fedex is running a trial period of about a year with 50 health care and life science companies, for tracking delivery of surgery kits, medical equipment - and even live organs.

We spoke with FedEx head of innovation, Mark Hamm, about SenseAware and how Fedex is tapping into the emerging trend called Internet of Things.

Innovative real-time document collaboration software company AppJet, makers of Etherpad, has been acquired by Google. TechCrunch broke the news and AppJet promptly confirmed it. AppJet was started by ex-Googlers, got a YCombinator investment (you know, that firm that invests in anonymous college kids from around the country) and will now close down its own product to work on Google Wave.

What a cynical bore. Here's the new formula, meant only to tease users with innovation and ultimately enrich a select few Valley darlings:

What are you going to buy this holiday season? Gift cards aren't very personal, but friends' recommendations can be.

Richard MacManus recently covered the trends in e-commerce over the past decade. He noted that Amazon and eBay have dominated the online retail market with their model of using implicit user data to generate recommendations for others. Although this model will surely remain a centerpiece of the online retail experience, it may soon face competition as "social shopping" takes off.