News of the announcement was leaked yesterday when Philipp Lenssen, an avid blogger of all-things-Google, received the comic book Google put together for the release and posted it, along with his first impressions. My director, ahead of the curve as usual , picked up on it right away and added it to WhatIs.com’s Buzzword Alert.

Google has since put up a high resolution of the Google Chrome comic book. I highly recommend going over and reading through the comic. Google put considerable time into clearly explaining the challenges faced by the designers of modern Web browsers with respect to memory bloat, rendering engines, Javascript threading errors and much more.

Since Lenssen broke the news, the tech blogosphere has of course been awash with reviews, opinions and speculation about what, exactly, Chrome will mean. Walt Mossberg posted a comprehensive review of Chrome in the Wall Street Journal, including speed and feature comparisons with Safari, IE 8 and Firefox. Rafe Needleman liveblogged the press conference introducing Chrome over at Webware. John Furrier colorfully blogged that the search wars just turned into the operating system wars. That’s true — except (as he notes) that Chrome goes far beyond search. SEO/SEM hounds and search engine watchers, however, will find Danny Sullivan’s thorough evaluation of Chrome’s search functionality quite useful.

Following below is own my two cents, both with respect to the browser itself and the significance of its introduction. First, however, I’ll let the video embedded below provide a quick introduction:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/iRqmfCFU_AI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Obviously, Chrome has a lean, clean interface. This is Google, after all. Menus, dropdowns, extra bars and dialogs are largely stripped away. So what’s left?

The Web pages themselves. What a concept! I downloaded and installed the browser this afternoon without a hitch, imported my bookmarks and search history from Firefox and was off to the races. Chrome is quite speedy.

The address bar has been merged with the search field you’d see on the right in IE or FF. Firefox 3 includes a predictive search in this field already, so this isn’t ground breaking, but it is a clear recognitiion that search has become the default navigation method for most Web users. Enter your desired search terms and away you go.

Google is calling the new address field the “Omnibox,” a nod to its ability to incorporate “everything” you might need to explore. The Omnibox’s utility is another sample of Google’s secret sauce, in this case combining a record of your search and browsing history with Google’s own PageRank for given terms. The Omnibox is eerily good. With only a little use, it could predict precisely which page I was looking for after only a few characters were entered.

Chrome also features tabbed browsing, a key improvement introduced by iBrowse in ’99 and then popularized by Opera in 2000. Once Mozilla included it in Firefox, the feature took off and is now a default feature in Internet Explorer and Safari. Chrome expands the tabbed interface in a number of innovative ways, including grouping related tabs and designing each tab so that it acts as an independent browser. Bookmarks, the Omnibox, menubar icons and menus are all inside of the browser, which again frees up more space for displaying rendering Web pages.

The pop-up blocker and phishing or malware alerts also included in Chrome may not be innovative at this point but they’re certainly effective and useful. The private browsing mode, aptly called “Incognito.” (This clever feature name was perhaps made in hopes that it will avoid the “Porn Mode” moniker that has dogged a similar feature of IE 8, InPrivate.)

There’s another key development: Chrome may not be the fastest Web browser currently available but Google hopes that it will be the most stable for pages loaded with Javascript. In a Web 2.0 world ruled by AJAX, that’s no small thing. And anyone that’s used one of Google’s many online applications knows that a stable, reliable environment for this kind of scripting is crucial.

This hints at perhaps the most important detail of all, and one that I tipped my hat to in the title of this post. Microsoft made an early bid for Internet dominance in the infamous browser wars of the 1990s by including Internet Explorer in each copy of Windows. Despite the Justice Department’s successful antitrust suit, IE continues to have upwards of 75% of the world’s browser share. Firefox has made inroads on this market share, to be sure, and the most recent version of Mozilla’s browser has been the best option around for speed, privacy, safety and usability since its introduction this summer, following close upon the success of Firefox 2.

Now it’s Google’s turn.

Google’s introduction of its own browser has the potential to upset the market in a way that no other company can, simply because of Google’s ability to promote the download and use through its various Web properties. As Google’s various Web applications and cloud computing architecture continue to mature, the Web itself can develop into an operating system. If this sounds familiar, that’s because Sun’s vision of network computing in the 90s using Java popularized such a concept long ago. Vastly improved broadband connectivity, viable Web-based apps and an Internet technology giant flush with revenue from the world’s best advertising platform change the dynamic a bit, of course. Google built its own Javascript engine to improve performance and, crucially, integrated Google Gears with Chrome to allow true offline access to its various Web applications. That adds up to something that distinctly resembles a fully-fledged desktop operating system and productivity suite.

While it’s true that consumer and enterprises haven’t been making a run on thin clients running on Linux quite yet, the potential to further erode Microsoft’s dominance of the operating and desktop productivity software markets is embedded within Chrome. I’m far from the only writer prognosticating on this count, of course. Michael Arrington thinks Chrome is Google’s Windows Killer. As Michael points out, this clears the way for “millions of web devices, even desktop web devices, in the coming years that completely strip out the Windows layer and use the browser as the only operating system the user needs.” Given that both the enterprise and consumer markets haven’t exactly been hot about Vista, I suspect Microsoft may be somewhat concerned about this development. Henry Blodgett over at the Silicon Valley Insider sees the development from precisely this angle, blogging that Google has launched a cloud operating system and called it a ‘browser.’

Who else should be concerned? Maybe Mozilla, though judging by this interview with its CEO, they’re putting a good face on the development for the moment. What’s next? Harry McCracken asked 10 questions about Google Chrome over at Technologizer that address Mozilla’s future relationship (and relevance). Jeremiah Owyang has added a few more questions in thinking about what Chrome could mean long term. Both ask for response and speculation in their comment sections, so have at ‘em.

Microsoft hasn’t been standing still, of course. They’ve been chasing search revenue for years, as evidenced by the failed Yahoo! acquisition. As the folks over at the Google Subnet blog at NetworkWorld point out, IE 8′s InPrivate mode thwarts Google’s targeted advertising. Unless the world upgrades to IE 8 and begins to browse InPrivate en masse, however, I’m guessing that GOOG’s 3+ billion of revenue per quarter is gonna be safe for the moment.

That’s especially true when you consider another critical element of Chrome: its future relevance to mobile search. Google’s Eric Schmidt has been quite bullish in this area, estimating that mobile search revenue will likely surpass desktop search in the not-so-distant future. The iPhone has shown what a data connection and full Web browser can do to mobile search (Try 50 times as many searches originating from iPhones vs. a normal cellphone). Here’s a prediction you can take to the bank: Just as the iPhone features a stripped down version of Safari, Google’s Android OS will have a similarly light version of Chrome optimized for a mobile device and poised to fully take advantage of the possibilities for geotargeted advertising based upon a user’s demographics, Web history and location.

Louis Gray is dead-on when he points out that Web browsers are now about the hooks. Apple’s Safari will be increasingly optimized for the iPhone and working with the private cloud that is MobileMe. Microsoft has built IE to be integrated with Windows and Office, though because of the bundling issues presented by antitrust has always had to walk a fine line. Flock, the social media-optimized version of Firefox, carves out a niche because of its tie-ins with the various networks and services. Chrome is no different, as I pointed out above. If you are already a power user of Gmail, gDocs, gTalk, gReader or g-Anything, Chrome may make more sense. Chrome is, I should note, only available for Windows Vista or XP at the moment. Guess they figure Safari will do the trick for a Webkit-based browser for Mac users and that the Linux crowd will be satisfied with Firefox and Opera for the moment.

To poorly paraphrase Lando Calrissian, Google’s Chrome is likely to allow all mobile users to truly surf with them amongst the clouds.

The newest version of Clearspace, Jive’s enterprise social software platform, allows organizations to collaborate across intranets and extranets, along with extensions into the public Internet. Companies like Intel (Community), Nike (Community), VMware (Community) and Electronic Arts (Community) have all used Clearspace to provide collaborative forums for customers, end users, clients, product groups, online gamers and event-goers.

Clearspace also includes integration with Salesforce.com:

Watch a demonstration of the capabilities of Clearspace 2.5 over on Vimeo.

Enter bit.ly. Bit.ly was created by Betaworks, the NY-based software concern that created Summize. Summize was recently acquired by Twitter, if you’re not following the rapidly evolving Web.20 startup space.

Dave Winer used a post announcing the launch of bit.ly on scripting.net to explain why bit.ly fills a number of other needs:

“They asked what it would take for me to use bit.ly, I said: data. I need to know how many clicks each pointer got and where the clicks came from. They gave me that, and thumbnails, permanent caching of the pages I’m pointing to (goodbye linkrot) and a lot of smart stuff going on behind the scenes that we’re not ready to talk about yet. (Though we told Marshall and he explained.) Here’s the info page for this post.

And, most important, an XML/JSON interface, so I can process all that data with my own programs. Here’s the XML readout for the shortened link to this post.”You can use your own keywords to the URL, organizing your links like tags.

Winer also notes that he’s a minority investor in the service, so while you can take his words with a grain of salt, try the service out and weigh its merits for yourself.

 I will say,  however, that bit.ly is easily the best URL shortener I’ve used to date.  It accomplishes its core mission quickly and easily, converting long URLs to short ones on the bit.ly homepage or using a bookmarklet you can drag to your Web browser’s toolbar. (It’s even kinda cute; note the blowfish mascots on the right.)

If you’re a Web developer or simply a data geek, the ability to pull all of the data about a given shortened URL through a XML or JSON interface will be quite helpful for analyzing your traffic and audience behavior.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of bit.ly’s other nifty features:

• display your 15 most recent shortened URLs below the entry field
• tracking of both clicks on shortened URLS and referring pages
• an API for creating shortened URLs from web applications, which is quite useful is you’re a Web developer
• automatic creation of thumbnail images that can be displayed on a webpage next to shortened URL

If my excitement about bit.ly doesn’t move you, Marshall Kirkpatrick has posted a glowing review of bit.ly at ReadWriteWeb that thoroughly explains why bit.ly is worth a try, along with an endorsement of bit.ly’s advanced URL tracking capabilities by Lifehacker.

If you like bit.ly, please recommend it to others. The larger the bit.ly community grows, the more effective and useful this nascent index of the Semantic Web will become. That’s because bit.ly is analyzing all of the pages that its users create shortcuts to using the Open Calais semantic analysis API from Reuters. All the data gathered is available in public RSS feeds. bit.ly is also using the MetaCarta GeoParsing API to draw geolocation data out of the database of submitted links.

Mozilla’s user experience guru, Mike Beltzner, took the time to demonstrate some of Firefox 3′s best features in this detailed screencast, embedded below.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://people.mozilla.com/~beltzner/overview-of-firefox3.swf" width="800" height="600" wmode="transparent" /]

Note: This screencast won’t scale to size, so it may look misformatted on this blog. Try the link above if the overhang is just too hard on your design sensibilities.

[@Firefox Answers]

Isn’t it just it a presence messaging on steroids? What about a free global SMS addressbook? Or a hyperlink-enabled persistent chatroom? To be fair, I don’t hear that last often, but summing up what Twitter is and what it does is challenging — especially in 140 characters or less. Twitter’s own “social messaging utility where people can communicate in real-time” comes close. Twitter’s creators know better than most what they’ve created and how it works.

Other takes on Twitter range far and wide:

• Caroline Middlebrook described Twitter as “an incredibly powerful marketing & community building tool.”
• In a long post that describes how he discovered Twitter and how SocialText is using it, Ross Mayfield called Twitter “mobile social software that lets you broadcast and receive short messages with your social network” aka, “Continuous partial presence.”
• Wendy Boswell writes that Twitter is a “mini-blogging platform that you can use to send messages of 140 characters or less to family, friends, or just the general Web community.”
• Dave Winer explains Twitter as a network of users on a microblogging platform with its own open-identity system and ecosystem.
• Ed Kohler posted that Twitter is “a social networking site based around text messaging.”

WhatIsTwitter.com is addressing the question by hosting a contest that asks you to explain Twitter in 140 seconds. (It runs through 6/23/08, if you’d like to enter.)

When I tweeted the question to the Twitter community, Robbert replied that Twitter was “a great way to get in touch and ‘meet’ very interesting people!” and Liz tweeted back that “Twitter is a window into other people’s worlds. Scholars can get insulated so it is nice to hear the ups & downs in other fields.”

In the end, however, I think a shade on Wikipedia’s current definition comes closest: a free distributed social networking and microblogging service that may be updated from the Web, IM, cellphone or a desktop client.

The question of what, exactly, you can DO with Twitter is something else altogether. The session at Enterprise 2.0 devoted to microblogging addressed exactly that question. The discussion was lively, both in person and on Twitter itself, as we could all see on the screen as Laura Fitton (@pistachio) Twittered about the event.

Even though at least one member in the audience questioned the etiquette of such an embedded distraction, with respect to her engagement with the rest of the panel, the bulk of the conversation between the other Twitterers in the audience and those present was inquisitive, supportive and engaged. You can see the various streams of conversation around the session and the conference in general at Twemes.com by using the hashtags #e20, #en20 and #ent20.

With the notable exception of Loren Feldman from 1938Media, the panelists supported the idea of Twitter or something like it (call it “X enterprise microblogging platform”) being both useful and present within an enterprise in the near future.

So what’s the story? Have I lost you yet? Do many of the terms above need further explanation? A colleague looked at me recently with a quirked eyebrow and asked me if I seriously expected her to ask conference-going IT professionals to “Tag their tweets on Twitter” and all I could do was grin.

Like so many emergent services and ecosystems on the Web, Twitter has evolved its own lingo. I’ve blogged about Twitter for WhatIs.com before, of course, but it’s worth reviewing the basics. Here’s a quick guide to get you started and give you some of your own”Twitter-fu.”

The Basics: For the novice Twitter user

By now, the story of how Twitter came to be has been extensively documented, so I’ll leave it to others to tell the tale. Check out this great video from Common Craft, Twitter in Plain English:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ddO9idmax0o" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

You can update Twitter from Twitter.com, which is how the majority of users access the service, from instant messenger or by texting to “40404″ with a cellphone registered with the service. If you do use a cellphone, remember that there may be associated charges for text messages of .10 or .15 per message. Early adopters of the Twitter and the iPhone discovered to their chagrin that thousands of texts got quite expensive. If you’re planning on using your cellphone to tweet, seriously consider investing in an unlimited text messaging plan.

No matter what, you’ll need to register first. Choose the username that fits you, your brand, your company, service, product or simply your whim. Try to make it as short as possible; you want to reserve as much space as possible for others to use in replies, since they’ll need to include your username in a reply.

Here’s where one of the conventions that Twitter has introduced into the Web comes into play. Instead of remembering both a username and a domain name (johndoe@yahoo.com), all you have to do is remember a username (@johndoe). Just type in go to twitter.com, add the user name to the url and click “follow.”

If you want to publicly reply to a tweet from another user, just include @johndoe in your message and he or she will automatically see it. Just click “replies” on your Twitter page to see how has responded to you. You can also direct message another user by typing “d johndoe” — but only if they are following you. This is quite useful for conversation you don’t want the entire Web to be involved in.

There are other etiquette concerns, paralleling netiquette on the rest of the Web; read Chris Brogan’s post Considering Social Media Etiquette and Grammer Girl’s Twitter Style Guide to get a flavor of the conventions at play.

Ready to go? Start at the Twitter homepage, which includes a useful Twitter FAQ TwitterFeed. Each time you post to Twitter, it’s called a “tweet.” Each tweet has its own URL, just like a “normal” blog post has a permalink. Twitter’s 140 character limit means that brevity is crucial, so using URL shorteners like TinyURL.com is a must. You can make your first update just like a blog post on Blogger or WordPress. “Hello World” would work, if you’re stuck for inspiration.

Twitter isn’t much fun, however, if you’re just twittering into the ether. To get the most from the service, you’ll need to find some friends or find interesting feeds to follow, like @MarsPhoenix or @BarackObama. MC Hammer is out there too, by the way. You can always just search for people you know on Twitter or go to a user’s profile page if you already know someone you want to “follow.” Once you get rolling, you can use a service like WhoShouldIFollow.com to find more friends.

Following means that you’ll get all of that person’s updates, so choose carefully. If you choose to follow top Twitterers, expect to see a lot of messages. This is a great way to discover interesting new people, however, so even if you don’t follow @Scobleizer, @LeoLaporte , @JasonCalacanis, @KevinRose or other A-list bloggers or “cewebrities,” make sure to check their profiles to see who they’ve discovered. You can always unsubscribe if someone posts content or links you don’t want to see in your feed.

The other symbol you’ll see often is the hashtag, which is the Twitter version of a social bookmark. Think of them as a way to add your tweets to niche conversations, specific events or around products or services. Learn more at hashtags.org. I mentioned them earlier when I listed the various hashtags for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. By adding a # sign and then a series of numbers and letters afterwards (try #beatLA, for Celtics-lovers) your tweets will be aggregated into the great conversation.

Twitter has opened its application programming interface (API) to the development community , which has responded by creating many desktop clients that you can use to update the service, manage your messages and friends.

To use my favorite client, Twirl, you’ll need to download Adobe AIR and install Twirl as a desktop client. Twirl includes a URL shortener and many other features that, in my humble opinion, richly enhance your Twitter experience. Twirl can also be configured to post automatically to Pownce and Jaiku, two other popular microblogging services. If you use a Mac, Twitterific might be a good fit, too.

Rafe Needleman has posted a terrific “Newbie’s Guide to Twitter” over at Webware.com, which I highly recommend if you’re still having trouble getting started.

Getting into the conversation: For the intermediate Twitter user

Now that you’ve gotten your feet wet, here are some more services to expand your horizons.

You can monitor whatever keyword you choose, like your name or your company’s brandname, at Tweetscan. Even if you don’t choose to use Twitter actively, this is an important component of brand and reputation management.

You can see threaded conversations with Quotably. This is a useful tool if you want to see an entire back and forth between users in one place.

Similarly, Summize helps you track Twitter conversations in real-time.

Use Mobile Twitter if you have a BlackBerry, Treo or other smartphone with a browser or try out Hahlo.com if you have an iPhone.

There’s a dedicated BlackBerry client called TwitterBerry too, which is worth looking into if you’re a “CrackBerry Addict.”

Quakk, Tiny Twitter, TwitToday and Twobile all work as clients for Windows Mobile 5.

Facebook has a Twitter application that embeds your tweets in your profile and allows you to tweet from within the social networking environment.

You can display your latest tweets automatically on your blog with an embedded widget, like this Twitter widget for WordPress or the Twitter Widget for Blogger.

Or, if you want to hook up your blog’s feed to Twitter, Twitterfeed will be helpful.

Watch Twittervision to see a mashup of a global Google Map and location-specific tweets.

Use TwitPic to share photos on Twitter.

For the Advanced Twitter User

If you’ve gotten this far and have been nodding your head all the time, waiting for something new, congratulations: Your Twitter-Fu is strong. The Twitter Fan Wiki should be your resource of choice, where new applications, services and software is aggregated and vetted by a strong user community. If you’re an alpha geek, make sure to check out the scripts page, which is chock full of geeky goodness.

I’m far from the first to try to explain what Twitter is an how it works, of course. Make sure to check out Tweeternet.com for an excellent explanation and outstanding list of Twitter tools.

If you’ve mastered the basic and intermediate tools and technologies, consider the following ways that Twitter has been put to good use:

• As a social justice tool, where people in critical situations can get the news out quickly
• As a crisis response and management tool (check out @RedCross)
• As a presence tool for emergency workers or individuals in a natural disaster zone

If you have questions, thoughts, additional resources, uses or any other response to this post, please use the comments. And, of course, Twitter about it. Do you think Twitter — or a client like it — is right for your business or enterprise? Let us know!

Is sending an attachment over email a bad option, for whatever reason?

You could try Amazon S3 or FileURLs, both of which offer the ability to transfer files around. You could use the tried and true method of posting to a server and FTP client. You could even set up a BitTorrent tranfer between machines.

Or you could check out Drop.io. Launched in November of 2007, this New York City-based storage-as-a-service provider makes storing and sharing files anonymously a breeze. Allen Stern covered the launch of the Drop.io alpha for Center Networks.

You don’t need to register or sign up for an account. Drop.io allows a user to create a “drop” — a dedicated storage space, with all of two clicks. Basic drops are free and include 100MB of storage space.

Here’s how it works:

You creates a drop URL with a unique name more than seven characters long.

You upload a file to it and sets an expiration time (1 day to 1 year) for when it will be deleted, along with passwords for access and administration.

You then can choose what level of access (read, read/write, read/write/delete) any non-admin users will have.

Once you’ve created a drop folder, you can continue to add files and notes to it over the Web, cellphone, email, SMS or even fax.

Each drop also has a dedicated phone extension that allow you to call in and record voice messages that are then added to the drop.

Drop.io isn’t indexed by Google or other search engines, so your data will remain as private as your friends and clients are with the access information.

Drop.io is, in fact, completely anonymous, other than the fact that it tracks your IP address to address legal requirements or tersm of service violations

The service doesn’t require you to give your email address or create a permanent account or profile. Once the drop expires, so does everything related to it.

Just any time you’re uploading large files, there can be freezes or time outs if your upstream connection isn’t all it could be, as David Weinberger noted when he tried it out. I didn’t have any issues when I dropped a screencast for a colleague onto the service.

Drop.io has another cool feature: an RSS feed created for the drop. As a fan of RSS, this is a snazzy feature that instantly opens up new means of collaboration and distribution.

If you post an audio or video file into a drop, bingo: instant podcast, complete with a player. Remember: You can also leave voice messages on a given drop, so this is about as easy a podcasting method as you’ll find.

As Lifehacker pointed out, Drop.io features free, simple faxing. Other folks can send faxes to your dedicated number, where the document are converted into a PDF and syndicated to any portable device that can handle that format. You’ll need to send an automatically generated cover sheet to the sender to ensure proper conversion. Conversely, you can upload a document to Drop.io, enter a destination fax number and click “Fax” to send.

There’s even a way to embed the Drop.io widget in a Web page or wiki, which allows visitors to *send* you files. Password protection is included if you’re leery of malware (an excellent idea, in this writer’s opinion).

Your friends, colleagues and clients can also post to the drop simply by emailing a file to it, though given that the service specifically works *around* sending large files through email servers, this is probably best kept to smaller bits and bytes of content. Just address the message to yourdropname@drop.io.

Read the Drop.io FAQ for more information or check out the brief tutorial.

Watch a video interview with the founders of Drop.io, Sam Lessin and Darshan Somashekar, from CenterNetworks.
Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur also had Sam and Darshan on the 46th episode of the Net@Night netcast.
[Listen to the MP3]

The service isn’t perfect: As Dave Winer and Michael Arrington both noted, files posted to Drop.io are not added as an enclosure to the RSS feed, which means you’ll have to go back to the service to retrieve the media.

That being said, I’m an instant fan — and I’m far from alone. The following is just a sample of the positive reviews for drop.io out there:

Download Squad: Share files with Drop.io

AppScout: Drop.io simplifies file sharing and uploading

HackZine: Drop.io is simple, anonymous file sharing

Drape Stakes: Drop.io’s file sharing with RSS = endless possibilities

Andy Piper: Sharing large files with Drop.io

One Minute Tips: Drop.io is the Swiss Army knife of transfer

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/b3W-SOVeeTs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I have to admit, the speed test at the end makes me pretty darn jealous.

To paraphrase Michael Bay, that kind of bandwidth tips the awesomeness scale.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/MiHsxQJ9ZOo" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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.