In our yearly wrap-ups of the best products of 2009, we cannot but notice the shadow that falls over the editorial desk.

We are chilled and saddened by the ghosts of the past year - the apps that should have been, the startups that failed to launch, the brilliant ideas that were throttled, the great minds that were fired, the tech heroes that committed tragic gaffes. But some failures were so monumental that they require specific enumeration and commentary. Here are the 10 worst tech failures of 2009.

Google Wave Sucked

This is one case where the hype was as noisy as the app - and both were deafening. We have to hand it to Google's publicity team; we don't know one geek who wasn't positively salivating for a Wave invite. The ReadWriteWeb back channel was a complete melee when the first invites were rolled out to team members. But once we got there and saw the new tech tricks, like watching one another type, we started thinking about use cases. And the more we struggled to understand and use this product, the more frustrated and bored we became. Blame it on the steep learning curve. Blame it on our misunderstanding the product. Mount whatever feeble defense you like, but techies know Wave was a flop.

The TabletPads Went to the Deadpool

All we wanted was a $200-500 flat piece of glass and plastic with some fancy gizmodgery inside so we could look at the Internet from the comfort of our couches. And what did we get? Rumors, Photoshopped gadget porn, promises - lies, all lies. We'd have been better off if we'd spent those months drawing the Yahoo! home page on an Etch-A-Sketch. Although the Crunchpad has resurfaced as the JooJoo, the price has been marked up considerably, and the whole project just seems wrong to us now. Moreover, five will get you ten that Michael Arrington, father of the Crunchpad and a former attorney, is fixing to get litigious right about now, which might significantly delay the product's appearance on the market.

Powerset Resurfaced as Bing

In 2008, Powerset was one of the stealthiest, sexiest startups on the Silicon Valley block. About five minutes after launching, Powerset got snatched up by Microsoft to the tune of $100 million. When everyone had retrieved their dentures from the ground and changed their pants, they noticed that Powerset's ever-so-sexy tech had been folded quietly into the Borg for assimilation. And about a year later, Bing was born, reportedly from the tech that Microsoft scraped off the infant carcass of Powerset. And Bing sucked. We had such high hopes.

Twitter Failed to Innovate

While some of us had our money on a Twitter sale in 2009, others were simply waiting for the company to debut a radical, interesting, mutually beneficial revenue model. At the very least, most users were hoping that the scalability issues and downtime that made Twitter the tragic heroine of 2008 would be put to rest.

Twitter's failures this year were less about the headlines they made than the ones they didn't make. Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, Twitter didn't capitalize on their massive adoption increase (a.k.a., their Oprahtization) and sell. Worse yet, they didn't buy. When one recalls the purchase of Summize and then contrasts it with this year's explosion of excellent Twitter apps, one wonders why none of these small startups or one-off side projects were acquired. Perhaps this was a case of "Hey, we can do that!" as Twitter certainly seemed intent on pilfering features (such as lists and retweets) from third-party developers. Too bad the "official" Twitter features suck a lot more than the original third-party designs.

But worst of all, we are still consistently experiencing downtime at a level that is unacceptable for any major web app. Google couldn't get away with this kind of failure; why should Twitter be allowed to do so?