ReadWriteWeb

The big news from earlier this week was the announcement that Google would be acquiring online photo editing service Picnik for an undisclosed amount. This marks Google's third acquisition of 2010 after buying Aardvark and reMail in February suggesting that the company could be going on an extended shopping spree much like in 2007 when it picked up 16 separate companies. Merger and acquisition (M&A) spending has floundered among tech companies in the last few years, but Google's early purchases this year could signal a return of this kind of spending.

One day in December I was visiting family and picked up my niece Xander from daycare. We had to leave before her balloon got turned into an animal. It was disappointing. So when we got back to her house, I pulled out my iPhone and showed her an app called Aardvark. We asked Aardvark how we could turn one long balloon into a balloon animal. My niece jumped up and down with excitement every time we got an iPhone push notification that someone out on the internet had an answer to offer. The first 3 people said "draw eyes on it and call it a snake." That was funny the first time. Then, someone came through with a great link to good instructions for making a balloon animal. We made one, we were happy and proud, and we'd become the kind of people who knew how to make balloon animals.

A month later, Xander was visiting my house and we gave her a package of balloons. She whipped up a giraffe, a horse and a princess crown in minutes. Her mom asked her how she did it and you know what she said? "The Aardvark taught me how to do it!" Google announced today that it bought the company that made that iPhone app. It feels like some closure on my past year of hunting the story of the Aardvark, both personally and professionally.

Earlier this morning, we heard rumors that Google was in the process of acquiring Q&A service Aardvark for around $50 million. Aardvark, which was founded by ex-Google employees, was one of our favorite Web services of 2010, but the company still remains relatively small.

It's been almost a year since I last worked with DIY repair site FixYa but I still remember the traffic spike we'd see every Christmas. While families would be thrilled to unwrap smart phones, netbooks and flat screen monitors in the early morning, they'd find themselves lost in a sea of instructions by noon. There is nothing worse than having a new shiny toy and not being able to play with it. In addition to FixYa, below are a few resources you can use to help set up your new gadgets.

There were a ton of great products launched in 2009 by big companies and startups alike, but in this post we focus on the best products released by startups.

The easiest way to become a leading product in your industry is to meet a need better than anyone else. The following 10 have proven themselves with great features, substantial marketplace momentum and, most importantly, a game-changing approach to solving a problem.

The real-time web was hot this year and it's likely to become a standard expectation on sites all around the world next year. We've tracked this trend extensively with a face-to-face summit of industry leaders and an 84-page research report on The Real-Time Web and Its Future.

Who were the big movers and shakers in real time this year? Check out our list of the top 10 below and let us know if there are any important ones we missed.

Every year at ReadWriteWeb, we look at hundreds of new web apps aimed at everyday users. Occasionally, we come across a service that stands out from the pack because it offers a novel solution, disrupts the way incumbent market leaders do business or changes the way we experience the Web.

Here is our list of the top 10 consumer web apps of 2009. These are apps and services that helped consumers use the web in new ways this year; and brought technologies that were previously only geared towards advanced users to a mainstream audience.

We test a lot of software around here, on the web, on our desktop and on our phones. It's a great job to have, but only so much of what we test really sticks and becomes a part of our daily routines. Every once in awhile we like to compare lists in our team chat room and then share them with you.

Here are the latest tools and services we've come to love, maybe you'd like to give them a try too.

When so many conferences feature CEOs rehashing their past successes, FailCon does exactly the opposite. The event asks successful founders, investors and developers to discuss their past blunders and what they've learned from them. While this may seem like a series of sob stories, the result is actually a list of practical tips on how to reduce risk, manage teams and recover from adversity. In today's afternoon sessions several panelists shared their war stories and set the stage for lessons.

One of the sessions at today's RWW Real-Time Web Summit examined how we can use the real-time Web to connect people. This session, led by Aardvark's Damon Horowitz, delved into some of the questions that remain to be answered about this aspect of the move towards the real-time Web. One of the most interesting aspects of this discussion focused on how companies can connect the right people to each other in real time.

The phrase "real-time web" may make you think about Twitter, Facebook, or perhaps real-time stock market trading, but there are actually hundreds of companies all around the world working on building and leveraging different types of real-time delivery of data online. In preparation for this week's ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit and a forthcoming research report on the topic, we've now had extended conversations with nearly 50 companies in this space. The breadth of offerings, technologies and strategies is amazing.

We offer below one way to think about this broad market. We hope it's useful and interesting.

Aardvark is a very nifty service that allows you to ask other users any question. These questions can be about local restaurants or JavaScript - Aardvark will simply find the best person to answer your question and give you an answer within minutes. Aardvark launched at SXSW last year and today, the company also finally launched its iPhone app. The app gives users access to all of Aardvark's features, including the ability to ask and answer questions and make changes to your user profile. In addition, the app also taps into the iPhone's own services and allows users to automatically geotag questions and receive push notifications when a question was answered by another user.

The following post was originally titled The Robot Made Me Do It: Comparing Three New Cyborg Q&A Services and ran a week and a half ago. It's a slow morning around here and we thought readers who missed this the first time might appreciate a chance to see it now.

One part people, one part machine. Is that a formula for more effective decision making? A number of high-profile entrepreneurs believe it is, and they are starting companies based on the idea.

One part people, one part machine. Is that a formula for more effective decision making? A number of high-profile entrepreneurs believe it is, and they are starting companies based on the idea.

In the following post we take a look at three of the most exciting startups entering this emerging market. The movement is a logical development now that millions of people are comfortable posting information online. The web's next step is to leverage machine learning. These are three companies to watch who are doing just that - combining user input with technology that improves its performance by gathering and processing data. In this case they are doing it in order to help people make better decisions, but these are just some of the first consumer technologies that will enter the cyborg-like space that combines people and machines in order to better serve people.

Aardvark is a neat new service that lives in your IM client and which routes any question you might have to an Aardvark user who has the right expertise to answer your query. In return, Aardvark will also send you a few questions every day that fit your profile. You then decide to either answer the question or refer it to another friend. Of course, you can also always pass if you don't know the answer.

Aardvark will come out of its private beta during SXSW, but we have a few invites for you if you want to try it out now.