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Barely two days after launching Buzz, the social networking feature for Gmail, Google bought the social search engine Aardvark for $50 million on February 11.

This acquisition is part of Google’s strategy of going social in order to compete with Facebook and Twitter.

Aardvark is a social search engine founded in July 2007 by former Google employees. The San Francisco startup, which launched its service in private beta in 2008, allows web users to ask questions which are then distributed through their social network and sent to someone who can answer them.

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So it’s official. The Apple tablet rumors have ended.

At this morning’s Apple event in San Francisco, Steve Jobs unveiled what Silicon Valley has been whispering about for years. Dubbed the ‘iPad,’ Apple’s tablet could be just the thing to launch smartphone-notebook hybrids into the mainstream.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary new product,” Jobs said at the event.

The iPad is fundamentally a netbook-sized iPhone. Outside of the design, the most impressive thing about the iPad is its 10-hour battery life, which is pretty representative of what we should expect from the category. Also impressive is the weight – 1.5 pounds.

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Google’s Android OS will be the second biggest operating system in the smartphone market by 2013, IDC predicts.

The research company forecasts that global smartphone sales will surpass 390 million units by that time, a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 20.9 percent between 2009 and 2013.

“In a market that was once dominated by a handful of pioneers, such as BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, newcomers touting open standards (Android) and intuitive design and navigation (Mac OS X and webOS) have garnered strong end-user and handset vendor interest,” according to the company press release.

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Application developers are switching from the social network platform to mobile platforms in 2010, as an extensive survey DM2Pro and Quattro projects. Of the responding developers, some work for advertisers and agencies while others publish or develop apps as a business. For marketers and advertisers, trends are shifting for mobile operating systems and budgeting.

The advertisers that responded to “State of the Industry: APPS,” or the brands that the agency represents, were mostly from the consumer packaged goods, retail and automotive categories.

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Update on 01.12.10 4:01pm: Video demo of Parrot’s ARDrone after the fold.

The big news at this year’s CES last week in Las Vegas were tablets and 3D TV.

Tablets have been one of the main topics of dialogue for the last few months, as Apple’s tablet has been gossiped about incessantly, really heating up around September and doing its best to outlive the Energizer Bunny.

At CES that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer . . . talked about tablets. As if there hadn’t been enough ‘just talk’ already. The consensus in the tech press is that Ballmer wasted an opportunity here, especially since the next big show is MacWorld 2010 in San Francisco next month.

3D TV is the technology that seems to only come out at CES. Last year this technology was the big story coming out the event — along with the Palm Pre, which has generally disappointed since. But this year we are ready for adoption — even if our wallets aren’t — especially after the mainstream success of Avatar and Up.

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Mobile augmented reality (AR) revenue will reach $732 million in 2014, according to Juniper Research (PDF), but there are some technological hurdles that need to be passed first.

One of the obstacles to augmented reality consumer adoption is that not all devices have the requisite camera, GPS, accelerometer, broadband connectivity and digital compass. For vendors, there is also the problem of monetization.

The fact that there are not a lot of AR-capable smartphones on the market right now means that adoption will be slow. Juniper predicts that the market’s 2010 revenue will be only $2 million.

The increased adoption of Android handsets and iPhones will accelerate AR adoption in the medium term. The first real bumps in AR revenue will not come until 2012-13, when Juniper predicts a dramatic spike.

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While m-commerce is growing, the biggest turn-off to potential customers is poor site design, according to Compete’s quarterly Smartphone Intelligence survey.

Thirty-seven percent of smartphone users have purchased something non-mobile in the last six months. The major obstacle to upping this number is that many sites are broken.

Eight percent of customers who tried to make a mobile purchase were unable to do so. That’s almost one-in-ten potential purchases failing at POS.

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Writes Adweek’s Noreen O’Leary:

In terms of politics and world events, this has been a wild decade, but on the marketing front, one thing has remained constant: Apple’s emotional connection to consumers, who reward it with an almost cult-like loyalty. Though the brand almost petered out in the ’90s, last year consumers told Interbrand that Apple was the thing they couldn’t live without and the one they found most inspiring. Why? Perhaps it’s Apple’s vaguely antiauthoritarian stance (epitomized in its iconic “1984″ ad). A true-in-practice focus on relentlessly improving its products also helps. But maybe it comes down to this: Most brands are run by committee, but this one is the embodiment of a living, breathing person. Steve Jobs is Apple in the way that Richard Branson is Virgin. Of course it helps when you’re a brilliant marketer who happens to be the CEO.

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Last week, the Webby Awards named the top ten Internet moments of the decade.

Each of the winners represents how the internet has triumphed over old technologies and practices.

“The Internet is the story of the decade because it was the catalyst for change in not just every aspect of our everyday lives, but in everything from commerce and communication to politics and pop culture,” said David-Michel Davies, the executive director of the Webby Awards.

“The recurring theme among all of the milestones on our list is the Internet’s capacity to circumvent old systems and put more power into the hands of ordinary people,” he said.

The Webby Award’s top ten are:

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There’s an old concept in religious mysticism called bilocation, literally the ability to be in two places at once. While once a way to be canonized as a saint or burned as a witch, a sort of bilocation is being made increasingly possible with technology.

A great example of technology allowing us to virtually be in two places at once are services like Alarm.com, which allow you to monitor your home security from anywhere online, via computer, PDA or phone (there’s even an iPhone app).

Through the website or app, users can monitor the status of their home – whether doors are locked, when they (or windows or cabinets) are opened, when somebody enters a specific room – as well as control the home’s environment, for example turning lights on or off.

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