After reading Michael Arrington’s “When will Yahoo acquire Technorati?” post on Tech Crunch I started thinking - What other emerging technologies or companies will be prime candidates for purchase by a big media company in the coming year? Then just yesterday Sharron Rush sent an e-mail saying that the SXSW organizers are considering adding another panel to the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival lineup that will focus on the most interesting, most innovative or most creative web applications of the last few months, and asked for suggestions. Here is my hybrid list. Some of these have already been acquired, but all had an impact in 2005.

Technorati

OK, I left Technorati off my list for SXSW only because it’s not really that new. Even though Google’s has gotten into the blog search market, it is still the best blog search engine available. I think that Technorati might also be a good target for acquisition by Microsoft. They have been amazingly quiet for a while now.

37 Signals

In case your haven’t heard 37 Signals is the best little web company out there right now after releasing Basecamp, Tada List, Backpack and Writeboard in the last year. Oh, yeah did I mention they created the Ruby on Rails phenomenon?

Google Maps

This is a Google property so it’s not a candidate for acquisition. It did get people to thinking about mapping software differently, but that might have more to do with its use of Ajax.

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is an open source web development framework created by 37Signals partner David Heinemeier Hansson that allows for rapid development based on the same MVC model that Java programmers are familiar with. I am a big time ASP.NET guy, but Ruby on Rails kicks butt. The only bad part is that it is one of those things you really have to play with to really get.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is the wildly popular social bookmarking service that was recently purchased by Yahoo. If you visit The Moleskin often you already know that you can bookmark the posts here using Del.icio.us. Very useful service.

Basecamp

Basecamp, a web based project management application, is the flagship product for the aforementioned 37 Signals. Basecamp was also the application that birthed the web development framework known as Ruby on Rails.

Digg

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. Users submit stories for review, and decide which stories go on the homepage.

Flickr

Already acquired by Yahoo, Flickr is the best online photo management and sharing application out there. Photos are organized by tagging.

Openomy

Openomy is an online file sharing application that has open APIs that anyone can use to write applications which store/retrieve/use a user’s files. Instead of using folders to describe where files belong, Openomy uses tags. This allows users to hold one file in many locations.

Blinksale

Created by Texas based Firewheel Design, Blinksale is an online invoicing system designed industries in mind

Measure Map

Created by Adaptive Path Measure Map, is web analytics for your blog. With in you can get a better understanding of what people do at your blog.

Writely

Web based word processor with a social computing twist. Writely allows you to edit documents online with whomever you choose, and then publish and blog them online.

Ajax

Not on my SXSW list because it’s not really an application. There is no doubt that nothing in 2005 caused more debate than the terms “Web 2.0″ and “Ajax”. This is largely because some people don’t like it when technologies get a marketing term attached to them. But here is a question - Would Ajax based applications have been given a chance without if Jesse James Garrett hadn’t coined this term?