Ah, December. The first real snow has fallen here in Boston, the malls are full of holiday shoppers and the blogosphere and pages of industry mags are full of annual summaries of the best and worst of the year in technology. We’ll be coming out with our own most notable word of the year, as you’d expect from an IT encyclopedia, so stay tuned. In the meantime, read on for a summary of some of the best (and worst) tech of 2007.

Around this time year, I laid out the top 20 IT buzzwords of 2006. To be fair, calling some of these technologies “buzzwords” now looks like a bit of a stretch, in terms of the strict definition for buzzword. Virtualization is everywhere now, in the network, server, desktop PC, storage hardware and data center. Web 2.0 may have been massively overhyped, but blogs, RSS, Ajax, wikis, podcasting and social bookmarking have all made an impact this year too, in a wave of adoption that many have now settled down to term “Enterprise 2.0.”

“2.0″ itself could be the word of the year, were it not for the discussions of Web 3.0 that led to some buzz fatigue and gentle reminders of the Semantic Web. (See this list of semantic apps for some insight into how this space is evolving).

SaaS applications from industry giants continue to be important for CRM. And at the end of every year, IT admins and CFOs alike can’t help but think of SOX compliance. Mash-ups, VoIP, BPM, 3G SOA, XML and data mining all continued to be relevant too, with nary a buzzword to be seen.

Anyone who creates, markets or sells content or services online know the value and importance of search engine optimization (SEO) by now as well.

While they didn’t make the number one spot (you’ll have to wait for that one) there’s no question that IT became greener, as tracked by the surge in spending, research — and hype. Green data centers , green computing, LEED certification, and, unfortunately, greenwashing all make the trend list.

Dealing with Vista is also right at the top of any trend list. Microsoft’s new OS has met with slow adoption and a slew of backwards compatibility headaches, and, as SearchWinIT’s Christina Torode reports, “Few Windows shops had plans for Windows Vista migrations in 2007, and it appears that there may also be little interest well into next year. Of more than 800 responses from IT managers to an online survey conducted by SearchWinIT.com, 37% said they had no plans whatsoever in place to install Vista, while 8% said they would begin adding the new desktop OS in the first quarter of 2008, and 9% expect to begin the upgrade in Q2 2008.”

So what else is new? What else mattered? If I just pulled from the words on WhatIs.com that received the most attention from you, our audience, you’d think it was dialectric materials, FUBAR , chaos theory, IEEE, heuristics, nanometers and compilers — but there’s more to the year that that!

I won’t aggregate every 2007 list here (after all, Fimoculous.com has, yet again, done a great job of pulling together 2007 lists) but following are some of the best that cover IT. You’ll find great new Websites, tools and services — exactly what we promise to provide you in this space from week to week.

Enjoy the lists — and, of course, don’t forget to subscribe to to our newsfeed for the best enterprise IT news or subscribe to our tipsfeed for the best enterprise IT tools and expert advice to help you work better and faster.

Jason Hiner takes aim at hardware and software in The 10 most important business technology products of 2007, noting the i-Mate, Sprint Xohm, Salesforce.com, Vista/Leopard, LinkedIn, Zoho Office, Cisco Telepresence, Microsoft Office 2007, OQO and the Apple iPhone.Personally, I agree with the commenters that the XO of the OLPC project should be in the conversation, though perhaps not on this list, as Jason says. I’d add OpenOffice, personally.

PCWorld misses that one too — though not many others — in this immense roundup of the Top 100 Products of 2007.

This list is a grab bag of hardware, software, Web sites and services. Techies will find plenty to quibble with — can you really compare the Intel Core 2 Duo with Pandora.com, Guitar Hero 2 and Netflix without segmenting them out — but if you’re looking for a good list of what mattered to techies and netizens alike to discover the best of the best, you could do much worse.

PCWorld also featured a terrific list of the top 100 undiscovered Web sites in August, if you missed it, along with their top 100 classic Web sites.

Some of my favorites (and now bookmarks) include Wink, Footnote, Wikisky, DZone, Programmable Web, VideoJug and Zoho and Meebo. Happy surfing!Time Magazine, in much the same vein, offers up their 50 Best Websites of 2007.

My favorites here have to be CellSwapper.com, Last.fm, Newsvine.com, Tumblr, Twitter, GrandCentral and, for some of the best laughs of the year, the outrageous FunnyOrDie.com.

If you didn’t see Will Ferrell’s “The Landlord,” you missed out. StumbleUpon is, for my money, the breakout Web site of the year, though YouTube and Facebook fans may disagree.

(Stumble this blog and find out what I mean).

I liked Mozy.com for online backup, too.

It isn’t quite a 2007 roundup but Esquire’s six ideas that will change the world offered such intriguing suggestions that I couldn’t help but mention them:

• a low energy method for getting rust nanoparticles to bind to arsenic for water purification in the developing world
• Internet “hacktivists” who use Psiphon to provide uncensored Net access to netizens stranded in regimes hostile to the free flow of information and ideas
• flexible circuits embedded in silicone skin that can be used for prostheses and wearable computers
• self-modeling robots who use the principles of natural selection found in evolutionary theory to arrive at the optimal model for a structure or mechanism
• CO2 sequestering in the deepest water of the oceans to force it to become a liquid heavier than water
• biodegradable plastic produced in an environmentally friendly way

For more in that vein, make sure to consult the pages of MIT’s Technology Review, where they list the following exciting emerging technologies:

• optical antennas and meta­materials
• peer-to-peer video,
• personalized medical monitors
• compressive sensing
• nanohealing and quantum-dot solar power
• single-cell analysis
• mobile augmented reality

On the other side of the coin, eWeek’s Brian Moore illustrated a list of technologies and services that flopped, floundered or aren’t quite ready for prime time in 2007’s Biggest Emerging Technology Disappointments. You’ll find virtual worlds, in the form of Second Life, ultramobile micro-PCs, home-based VoIP, mobile security for smartphones, IPv6, ebook reader (Hello, Kindle!), WiMax, BlueRay/HD DVD and MuniWiFi.

It’s hard to argue with the selections, though I do think that Kindle’s eInk technology offers the closest thing to a pleasant electronic reading experience yet.

Wired is calling for nominees for its 10th anniversary vaporware awards, too, if you want to get in on voting for what didn’t materialize this year.

Personally, and I know I’m burying the lede here, 2007 was the year that the network took a huge step towards being the computer, a trend acknowledged by Amazon, IBM and Microsoft in one form or another. (And yes, I’m talking about our word of the year again here.) Sun talked about that phenomenon ten years ago, though it missed an opportunity by not open sourcing Java. This model of Internet-based supercomputing, where vast stores of information and processing resources can be tapped into remotely by a laptop, PC, smartphone or other connected device is still building momentum..

2007 saw the introduction of more devices than ever before, including the gPC, iPhone and XO, that all move the user into this browser-based, Web application world, enabled and enobled by Ajax. Between open source operating systems, browsers, office productivity applications and inexpensive hardware, users and organizations can do more and create more than ever before, albeit in increasingly insecure environments.

We may take a stab at some predictions for the year ahead some time soon, once we finish digesting the year that was. Feel free to let me know what YOU think the most important trends and technologies for 2008 will be through email or in the comments.

Birds do it, bees do it… Well, ok — that wasn’t true. Birds and bees aren’t getting into wikis and social networking yet but almost everyone else is.

Even spies are all over it. Last year the feds launched a wiki for the 16 US intelligence agencies (Did you know there were that many? I didn’t.) Based on the Wikipedia model, Intellipedia has three separate components based on clearance levels.

Unlike Wikipedia, Intellipedia is not open to public access. Here’s an unofficial blog dedicated to Intellipedia news, though. This FCW article explains how Young feds bring intell changes.

In this screencast on FCW.com, Chris Rasmussen (Knowledge Management Officer, Intellipedia, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense) discusses “what it’s like to work as an Intellipedian, the rules they live by, and how the new tools are helping transform the ways of the intelligence-processing for good.”

At this writing, Intellipedia has about 30,000 articles online, undergoing 4,800 edits on a daily basis.

And with Intellipedia established, a social networking site similar to MySpace is under development. It sounds as if A-Space will incorporate the wiki site:

From an InformationWeek article:

A-Space will begin life as a portal that includes a Web-based word processing tool akin to Google Docs, a wiki-based intelligence community encyclopedia known as Intellipedia and access to three “huge, terabyte databases” of current raw intel for analysts to sift through. It’ll be scaled for 10,000 users at day one. By the end of 2008, the DNI hopes to bring in other resources like intelligence blogs, social networking capabilities akin to a Facebook for spooks, secure Web-based e-mail, better search functionality, and much more.

A-Space is expected to be online in December of this year.

What’s up next? Maybe a Second Life-like virtual world (If you ask me, this stuff is ALL a bit other-worldly). Here’s what Sean Dennehy, the CIA’s Chief of Intellipedia development, had to say (quoted in this FCW article): “I think it is a no-brainer. We could use it for training and other things.”

Other things might involve the ongoing “war on terror.” According to this article in The Australian: “…jihadists are turning to artificial online worlds such as Second Life to train and recruit members.”

Who knows what those guys will be up to next? Who knows what they’re up to right now, for that matter?

I’d tell you more but, you know, then I’d have to kill ya.

~ Ivy Wigmore

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. ~ Carl Sagan

(Public domain image created by NASA and the European Space Agency. Hubble material is copyright-free and may be freely used on the condition that NASA and ESA are credited as the source of the material.)

Oh, I love Carl Sagan! And I think Sagan might have really liked Galaxiki, a wiki site created by Jos Kirps where users collaborate to edit a fictional galaxy. You can edit for free or — if you want to play God — you can lay down a little local currency ($12 USD) and become Creator of your own solar system.

Here’s part of Kirps’ description of Galaxiki:

Millions of stars, planets, moons, pulsars and black holes can be explored using an intuitive 2D map. The site software manages most of the physical properties and behaviours of the solar systems, from orbits to the chemical composition of planetary atmospheres. Some planets offer conditions that may allow life - the idea behind Galaxiki is that community members can create fictional life forms and write about their histories on their planets. The ease of use attracts all kinds of users, so that the target audience is not limited to science fiction and astronomy addicts.

The Galaxiki physics allow taveling faster than light, and journeys between solar systems become possible within a reasonable timeframe for advanced fictive civilisations. This also means that different civilisations may meet each other at different time points, the challenge for advanced users will be to keep the global history of all civilisations in the galaxy consistent. Galaxiki is both fun and challenging, for individuals and for the community. It’s like dreams becoming true, and you’re part of it - I think that’s what makes it so attractive.

Meanwhile, back in this world, I’m not likely to be baking an apple pie any time soon. But I just might invent at least a tiny part of a universe…

~ Ivy Wigmore

According to the web site Angelwish.org, “Every 60 seconds, a child dies of an AIDS related illness.”  The Angelwish web site (and accompanying organization) touches the lives of many, many children - and today, I’m proud to say that they’re my latest discovery.  Here is how the web site describes itself: 

Angelwish was created to put the power to change a child’s life in your hands. All you need to do is select where in the world you want to save a life and we will help you to become a digital Angel.

Select the following link to grant a wish on any of six continents:

http://www.angelwish.org/wish/index.php

What makes this site particularly interesting?  Well, the site’s database of listings is generated by crawling the wish lists that charitable organizations have published on Amazon.com.  We all have friends or family who have generated a “wish list” on Amazon, providing us hints as to what to buy them on their birthday.  Well, charitable organizations generate these lists as well.  Angelwish brings the charitable wish lists onto Angelwish.org by way of mashup technology.

David Berlind of ZDNET referenced this site in his weekly podcast, which can be found here:

 http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5720

Dapper makes it easy to extract and use information from Web sites. If you’re familiar with Web services, you might recognize Dapper as an API maker. We discovered Dapper through GridLab, where a clever Italian blogger applied Dapper to WhatIs.com. Put even more simply, Dapper creates an RSS feed for any Web site, which then can be manipulated in a number of ways. Dapper will only work on HTML-based sites, so if you’re trying to create a feed from a Flash or AJAX-heavy site, you’re likely out of luck. It’s possible to make your widget private, too, if that’s of interest.

Even if you aren’t ready to dig into serious coding, this widget is worth a look. Dapper is still in beta, free to all.

What’s more than a blog and less than a Web site? A Squarespace, apparently. According to Caroline McCarthy at Webware.com, Squarespaces are what result when users of a content management system (CMS) developed by a Manhattan startup located in the heart of Silicon Alley use it as a platform for online publishing.

The Wall Street Journal Online thinks that “This is the kind of software the internet has been crying out for.”

What do users get for their money that isn’t available for free elsewhere? A robust CMS, an elegant user interface, beautiful template design and AJAX-enhanced click-and-drag functionality, in both case significant improvements to what Blogger (and certainly MySpace) currently offer, though Wordpress and Movable Type are worth considering for this sort of thing as well.

Potential users of Squarespace include small businesses, entrepeneurs, political campaign, educators and anyone else willing to pay $7 to $17 per month, as you’ll see in this gallery of featured users.

You can learn more at Squarespace.com and see a great example of the software in action at the Modern Girls Kitchen.

EarthCode is the blog of Ajax and Rails coder Andre Lewis. He uses it as a venue for technical projects and interests like this mashup that locates and rates free WiFi locations using a combination of Google Maps, user input and ratings or this tutorial that shows how to use Rails, Geocoding and Google Maps to create your own mashup.