So, last year I put together a post outlining the top web stories for the year… Read it here. I thought I’d spend some time doing the same here for 2010. There certainly were a lot of big things that happened.

• Google’s continued dominance. Google is really showing just how weak the rest of the web search and portal companies are. Bing, Yahoo! and others just can’t keep up, let alone compete. Yahoo! is shuttering projects, Ask is all but a ghost and the list goes on and on. Where will it stop?
• Apple Deprecates Java, Oracle sues Google over using Java in Android, and a ton of other Java related news certainly makes the future of the venerable write-once deploy anywhere language murkier. It’s definitely not enough to really hurt the language, but when you aren’t sure who is going to maintain the source or the runtime, things could be looking better for this stalwart.
• HTML5 buzz continues. Real world implementations are coming, but mostly revlove around slick tech demos and not to much real world usable software. Yes, the tech is cool, but when a majority of the browsers out there don’t work with it, what are you going to do? Does your browser support the HTML5 awesomeness parade? Check here to find out. For a good comparision matrix on the support status of most browsers, check this out.
• Mobile Web gains major traction. This makes a lot of sense as smartphones continue to grow in sales numbers by leaps and bounds (Seemingly due to a raft of new Android devices). What’s really intersting is that while desktop based traffic tends to be highly affected by time of day and seasonal things (nice weather usually signals a dip in traffic, for example), mobile traffic is not subject to this kind of traffic loss. The mobile device is pervasive and ubiquitous. With us when we work and when we play.

Those are some of the biggest ones in my opinion. Some other notable things that took place in 2010 were the launch of the iPad and the subsequent launch of Flipboard, Tumblr’s growth even while plagued with outages, Chrome OS’s continued bumbling (yes, i have seen the new devices and I just don’t how the fill a gap) and the ongoing upward climb of Facebook.

What are some of the other news stories you liked in 2010? I’d love to hear em.

This post isn’t code or web related… but here we go… the twenty must buy albums for 2010 from my point of view. It’s been a while since I pulled a list like this together. It was fun. I judged it on play count in my iTunes and iPod and the likelihood that come 2011-12, I’ll still be spinning the tracks from the album. The XX nearly made the list for me, but I realized while making the list that the album actually came out in ’09. Black Meteoric Star also nearly made the list, but really that was just because I never noticed the album last year.

1. Sleigh Bells – Treats
2. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
3. Crystal Castles – II
4. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
5. Hot Chip – One Life Stand
6. The Black Keys – Brothers
7. Social Network – Trent Reznor
8. Massive Attack – Heligoland
9. Underworld – Barking
10. Chemical Brothers – Further
11. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy [Explicit]
12. Broken Bells
13. Tron Legacy Soundtrack – Daft Punk
14. Mathew Dear – Black City
15. M.I.A. – Maya
16. Interpol – Interpol
17. Yeasayer – Odd Blood
18. The Bird and the Bee – Interpreting the Masters Vol. 1 – A Tribute to Daryl Hall & John Oates
19. Scissor Sisters – Night Work
20. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Round and Round

Anyone thinking RIM is standing still, wel… look no further. This Swedish outfit, TAT, just go picked up by the Blackberry maker. This should give them a much needed shot in the arm in the UI department from a creativity standpoint.

via Wired.