A report published today by data analysis service Postrank concludes that legacy-hosted blog platforms are still far ahead of much-hyped microblogging services like Tumblr and Posterous in terms of reader engagement. This despite the fact that you don't hear about people using Blogger and Typepad much anymore in early-adopter circles.

Earlier this month Amy Sample Ward interviewed ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick about our report on the real-time Web and how real time impacts the world of nonprofit organizations. Sample Ward helps nonprofits, community groups and those in the social change sector use new technologies, and is the co-author of Social by Social, a handbook in using social technologies for social impact.

Her conversation with Kirkpatrick started with the basics of what real time is, and then moved to the big question: How can nonprofits or social impact groups take advantage of the real-time Web?

Twitter's Director of Platform Ryan Sarver followed up on earlier public announcements this weekend with an email to developers explaining plans to raise the limit on the number of times an application can request information from Twitter for a single user to 10 times what it is today (from 150 req/hr to 1500/hr) and to offer everyone the same kind of paid access to the full "fire hose" of user updates that Google and Bing enjoy. People who build cool Twitter apps say this is very big news.

The web isn't about pages any more. Now it's about streams, feeds and syndication. As part of our annual Best of Series, below are our picks for the most important RSS and Syndication Technologies of 2009.

I just set up an automatic backup of all 3000 of my friends' Twitter messages and became able to search through their Twitter history two years into the past with just five minutes of easy clicking. Only two things are required: Dave Winer's new Twitter OPML tool and a Google Reader account.

For each of the 5 big topical trends described below, I've assembled some resources I think will be useful for anyone who wants to keep up with cutting edge developments in these fields in the next year.

searches 9 sites, including: http://www.instructables.com/, http://www.sutree.com/, http://www.tricklife.com/, http://www.videojug.com/, http://www.expertvillage.com/