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Normally we think of revolutionary products created by start-ups or entrepreneurial minds just out of college, but the most talked about new projects of 2009 are being produced by some of the best known companies in the world.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN): With its massive online presence and a truly efficient business model, Amazon has become the largest online retailer in the world. It is now taking on a new business, web services, namely cloud computing (learn more HERE), called the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). While hosting this infrastructure and presenting e-commerce with a reasonably affordable alternative with no up-front costs, Amazon has taken an early lead in this space, with some believing its cloud computing business will one day overtake retailing. "Amazon will be like a book store that sells cocaine out the back door. Books will be just a front to sell storage and cloud computing." says Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic.

Retailing behemoth Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) won't be aggressively rolling in health clinics into its retail stores in 2009, as it has scaled back its plan to 31 locations with clinics from the original estimate of about 400 stores in 2009. Wal-Mart even had as many as 77 locations with in-store clinics in 2008, so it has drastically rolled back its plans here. What happened?

The recession happened, that's what. The gap from the original 77 clinics to the present 33 occurred when venture capital-funded clinics had their funds dry up amid the credit crunch of late 2008 and they haven't returned yet. Although Wal-Mart sees health clinics as a still-untapped opportunity in its stores, they won't be coming to every possible Wal-Mart location any time soon. Indeed, former CEO Lee Scott said that it would take five to seven years to get 2,000 clinics inside Wal-Mart locations. Wonder where that estimate is now?

There's new boss at Chrysler, and his name is Sergio Marchionne. On the job just a few days, Mr. Marchionne has shown that he plans to run a tight ship at Chrysler. His first move was to appoint powerful divisional heads with profit and loss accountability.

He has initiated a top-to-bottom shake-up, naming 23 executives who will report directly to him. Some of the 23 are from Fiat and others were promoted within Chrysler.

Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 3G has admittedly caused problems for wireless partner AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T). Little did AT&T know that so many iPhones would be sold and so much data would be pumped over its wireless network.

What would happen if a newer iPhone was announced and released this year that featured front-facing camera videoconferencing? Would the millions of iPhone users start sending out even more bucketloads of data doing a ton of live video over their iPhones?

As soon as Sprint Nextel Corp. (NASDAQ: S) and Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) announced the Palm Pre back in January, Palm's stock has shot up from just over $3 to today's close of over $10. All this based on the announcement of an untested (albeit incredibly slick) new handset called the Pre. It debuts on Sprint's network on June 6 and is being billed by many as the "iPhone killer" that so many phones have tried to be but failed at.

Well, here's the thing: Migros has been a smashing success. How is that possible? Here's a tiny bank in a supermarket. Its primary role is to service store customers. The bank does not pay top bankers any bonuses. Nor does it engage in high-risk international investments.

Instead, it has a simple (some people might call it outmoded) business model. It collects deposits from customers and then turns them into low-risk loans. With this approach, Migros deposits surged SFr 2.6 billion to SFr 24 billion, even as customers, worried about fallout from the financial crisis, were pulling their money out of leading Swiss banks like UBS AG (NYSE: UBS).

On Sunday, the latest edition of Nintendo's (OTC: NTDOY) DS portable gaming system hit stores. In the aftermath of the release, questions are emerging about where the company is heading and what its platform will ultimately become.

There is little question that the DSi will be a big hit. One of the harsher reviewers, The LA Times' Pete Metzger, criticized the matte finish and stated that the machine's advances were "evolutionary," but not a must-have. Even so, he gave it a strong A-.

This attitude was echoed by another tough reviewer, The Globe and Mail's Chad Sapieha, who questioned whether the DSi was really worth the extra money, but seemed confident that the gaming system would be a resounding success.