Microsoft Office 2010

We've been rounding up the best that 2010 had to offer, and you still have time to do the same in our Best of 2010 community group! I've been a big fan of Amazon Prime (especially after this holiday season — I got all of my last-minute shopping done from my desk), and I'm sure all of you have used the online shopping retailer a time or two this year.

The company released its list of most wished-for and best-selling gadgets, games, and goods of 2010 this morning, and the top sellers don't really come as a shock. In the most wished-for category, the third-generation Kindle, 13.3-inch MacBook Pro, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and the LG KP500 Cookie take top billing, while the Microsoft Office 2010 suite was on everyone's holiday list.

Want to know what shoppers actually bought in 2010? It may not come as a surprise. Find out after the break.

A messy inbox can lead to big-time stress, especially when you're short on time and can't wade through every unread. Although there are plenty of ways to keep your email's inbox in check on your own, Microsoft is picking up some of the slack for you with its updated version of Hotmail, making things easier than ever to work directly from your inbox.

Hot on the heels of the revamped Microsoft Office, Hotmail is also undergoing a transformation of sorts, using some of the same features. Notably, the new Hotmail allows you to work in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word right from your inbox without having the programs installed on your computer, thanks to Microsoft's Office web apps (which work similarly to Google Docs). Another helpful feature is "Sweep," which allows you to focus on emails that are most important — messages from contacts and social networks — while the other clutter (newsletters, offers, and the like) can be automatically swept aside into a dedicated folder, keeping you from getting distracted and suffering from a frustrating case of inbox meltdown.

Send a lot of photos and video? Learn about what Hotmail lets you do with your favorite pics and see a demo of the new system after the break.

To keep up with the competition, Microsoft recently announced a newly revamped version of Microsoft Office, which will allow users to store and share their documents on the web, not just on their computers. The new Office 2010 software will include new versions of the popular programs Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint that users can save and share on the web, similar to Google Docs.

The new software will range in price from a free, ad-supported version to a full-blown, $500 version. Users will be able to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations without emailing the files back and forth and will be able to easily flip back and forth between the desktop and online versions. The upgrade is already available to businesses and will be available to consumers in June. So far, many analysts say that this product looks to be a success, since so many users (500 million, currently) are already comfortable with the Office suite of products.