ReadWriteWeb

Much of this blog's coverage centers on technology and companies based in the U.S, particularly in Silicon Valley.

However, thriving tech communities exist around the globe, from Toronto to Tel Aviv, and the success of internationally-based web products serve as a reminder to all of us that innovation knows no borders. Check out our picks for the top 10 international web products of 2009 and let us know your favorite international apps in the comments.

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.

Meetings suck. But if there's one thing worse than meetings, it's playing email tag to schedule them. Is your company still sending out mass emails to ask for preferred meeting times? It's the pits, isn't it? Yes, Outlook has a hack whereby you can solicit responses for scheduling, but it's not much of an improvement. There's a better way, and it's a ridiculously simple concept. A Web app lets you pick a range of dates on a calendar and then notify your colleagues so they can pick the times and dates that work for them. You then view the responses and you're done.

One year ago today we first asked that question, so now is a good time to ask it again. What 3 web apps or services do you find the most exciting right now? Note that 'exciting' is the keyword, so they won't necessarily be your 3 favorite or most used web apps or services. For example Facebook would make many people's list of 3 favorite sites, but does it get you all tingly with excitement these days? So, what we want to know is: what 3 apps get your juices flowing right now.

We did an informal poll at the ReadWriteWeb office (actually a Skype room) and our picks are below. We'd love to know yours as well, so please leave a comment telling us the 3 web apps or services that excite you the most.

Today, competing services hellotxt and Ping.fm both introduced features that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages. The pages, which also include the new Public Profiles introduced after the latest Facebook revamp, let companies or individuals promote businesses, products, or even public personas using a page that's similar to the standard user profiles.

Tweecious is a new Firefox plugin that automates the conversion of Twitter links to Delicious bookmarks. Once installed, the plugin checks to make sure you're logged into both services and then parses your tweets in order to post the links you tweet to your Delicious account. What's great about this particular add-on is not only how well it works, but that it doesn't require your passwords in order to do so.

Zotero, the popular open-source research and bibliography tool, just announced the latest version of its Firefox plugin (1.5b1), which now allows users to synchronize their databases between different machines, as well as a number of smaller updates that will make it even easier to create and curate bibliographies with Zotero.

Zotero also announced a new online component to its plugin, which, in conjunction with the new synchronization features, automatically creates an online backup of your database on Zotero.org.

Cloud computing may have been one of the biggest "buzzwords" (buzz phrases?) of this past year. From webmail to storage sites to web-based applications, everything online was sold under a new moniker in 2008: they're all "cloud" services now. Yet even though millions of internet users make use of these online services in some way, it seems that we haven't been completely sold on the cloud being any more safe or stable than data stored on our own computers.

Over December we've published ten top 10 lists of the top products of 2008. We intend to open these lists up for public voting in 2009, to tap into the wisdom of the intelligent crowd that reads our site. But for now, you'll have to make do with the choices of us here at ReadWriteWeb. In this post we've done a megalist, the top 100 products of 2008. Come join us on RWW Live - our live podcast show - at 3pm PST today, as we discuss these products and the big trends of 2008.

Of course there are far more than 100 great Web products out there, so there are some excellent ones not included in our megalist. Please leave a comment here and tell us what we've missed!

In the world of enterprise I.T., everything is a security risk: your insecure password, an unexpected email attachment, a careless web surfer clicking through to a malicious URL, or the unapproved software you installed on your computer. Today's I.T. has plenty of tools to handle most of these threats, ranging from firewalls and spam filters to malware fighting software and application control mechanisms. Now, they will soon have something more: a new Application Control Engine that specifically goes after and shuts down Web 2.0 apps and social network widgets.

If you work on your own or for a small company, every minute counts - especially if you're getting paid by the hour. But still, there's likely one task that you dread doing every day: tracking those minutes. It's not fun. Necessary, yes, but fun? Freckle - a thoughtful and beautiful new time tracking app - would like to change that.

Another Web-based time tracking app? Why would we focus on that? There are a number of features that make Freckle worth a look, but the primary reason for considering Freckle is that the team behind it is rethinking the time tracking problem. And it could be that approach which differentiates the product in a crowded market.

Admit it. You don't always read the EULAs when you install software on your computer. You just click "I Agree." The same goes for the web. Most of us don't read the privacy policies that accompany our favorite web sites and services (myself included, apparently). But our failure to do so has some researchers suggesting that it's time the Federal Government got involved. According to these researchers, today's privacy policies are long and hard to read. Instead, they think it may be time for the FTC to step in and read the privacy policies for us.

If you were interviewing someone for a position with your company and they admitted that they didn't know anything about the new trends and innovations taking place in their field, what would you think? Likely, what you would think is "next candidate, please." In today's business world, job-seekers are expected to stay current with the happenings taking place in their area of interest. There was a time when those happenings were very much job-specific and anything having to do with technology fell squarely on the shoulders of I.T. That time has passed. Web 2.0 technologies lifted the veil of mystery surrounding computing technology and made it accessible to everyone. Today, if you're not staying current with Web 2.0 technologies' impact on business, then you're just not staying current. Period.

For a lot of college students, the new semester is just around the corner. Last year, we created a long list of great Web 2.0 tools that we thought would be helpful for college students.

But given how fast things develop on the web, we thought we would revisit this topic again this year and look at some of the most useful Web 2.0 tools that have the potential to help students do better in school, collaborate with their fellow students, and save them time.

When Mint.com launched, they were taking a big risk - would people trust a web app to manage their finances online? Web 2.0 apps don't necessarily have a reputation as offering hardened security. However, Mint's efforts to prove they were safe and trustworthy won people over as did their easy-to-use personal finance tools. Today, Mint.com serves nearly 400,000 users, manages over $12 billion in transactions, and has saved $100 million+ for its users. However, one problem the site has struggled with was keeping its users informed as to all the new features of its product. Today, the Mint.com site gets an overhaul to specifically address this issue.

Do you need to pick out a new color scheme, but don't know where to begin? If you're designing a web site or blog theme, finding just the right color palette is nearly as important as writing good code, but it can be a challenge for those of us who don't have any innate design skills. When looking for inspiration today, it's easy to become overwhelmed with the number of choices available for generating color schemes, but here are five apps we find truly inspiring.

For anyone who uses multiple calendars, you know that one of the big issues that's being addressed by numerous applications is getting your calendars to sync up with each other. We've covered some solutions to this problem before, but we had not seen a truly integrated offering that allowed you to sync up a work calendar in desktop software with an onlne calendar without need of a third-party app of some sort...that is, until yesterday. It seems that Microsoft has finally given the people what they want and have provided a calendar sync tool that actually makes all of Microsoft's calendaring programs work together.

Recently, we've seen a couple of our favorite web apps go open source. The code for FF To Go, the popular mobile client for FriendFeed developed by RSSMeme creator Benjamin Golub, is now available under the MIT license and Snackr, the RSS AIR app we adore has posted their source code on Google Code. Is this the start of a new trend for niche web apps? And what does this mean for the future of their development?

For any blogger, your first chicklet was probably your RSS subscriber stats via FeedBurner. For some, this chicklet marked the beginning of a long journey ahead. It was a sign that your blog was prospering and someone out there was listening. Now, your prosperity and popularity doesn't have to be limited to just your blog. Here are a few chicklets from popular sites and services to show off on your blog.

There was a time when only technically-savvy people knew how to create content and publish it to the internet, but the rise of easy-to-use blogging and CMS systems changed that. Today, everyone can be a publisher. Now, Iceberg wants to bring that same democratization to programming. In fact, that's their vision for Web 3.0 - the web where everyone is a programmer.