I know most bloggers will understand it when I say that it’s good to be back. Since July 2007, I’ve been without a voice. An online voice that is.

Seven long months.

I signed off from the Mobile Enterprise Weblog on Jul 24, and it’s been agonizing to cram everything into tightly-controlled and edited research documents. After all, what can you say in 1,500 words?

The argument could be what can’t you say in 1,500 words. It depends on the audience. For readers out there, and those of you in the blogosphere, you know what I mean. A good, lead-me-down-the-path post is worth its weight in gold. Whatever the length.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail to let me know that I had been quoted in Time Magazine. An above-the-fold quote

But the Internet doesn’t work the way the software business works. Yes, it runs on computers, but the Internet is part of the media now, where choice rules. Says Daniel Taylor, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group: “In the technology business, they say you’ve always got to choose between us and them, between our technology and theirs. That’s what Microsoft has done. Yahoo! is a really good property for them, but I don’t think they are going to be able to pull it off.”

But honestly. The thing that meant the most to me was to get a mention from Barbara French at Tekrati. I keep Barbara’s RSS feed going every day, and I agonized over whether or how I should announce that I was taking a position at Yankee Group. I figured that this was something best left to my new employer. I told my friends and colleagues. By October, word of my new role had propagated far enough, and it led to this piece: Four high-profile bloggers turn analyst.

Four high-profile bloggers have recently become vCard-carrying members of the ICT industry analyst community. First, it was Daniel Taylor returning to the analyst ranks at Yankee Group. Next, David Tebbut joined Freeform Dynamics. Yesterday, Jeremiah Owyang joined Forrester Research and Matthew Aslett joined The 451 Group. And just in time for Oktoberfest, too.

I’ve always believed that the collective reputation of “the analysts” depends on the quality of the people filling the jobs. If so, prospects for the analysts are looking pretty good.

Thanks, Barbara. I’ll have a märzen for you.

In the meantime, I’ve checked back with my former blogger colleagues from the mobility space. Thanks to Judy Breck, the Carnival of the Mobilists is up and running and at #111. Carlo Longino is ticking away at MobHappy. John Sun is continuing his mission at Mobile Analyst Watch. Anders Borg is still writing his Mobile News segment. And C. Enrique Ortiz is busy with his Mobility Weblog. There are many others. David Beers came to mind, but his blog has been quiet. And I haven’t read Ken Camp in a while.

In revisiting the pages of these wonderful weblogs, I was expecting to see that we were on diverging paths. They would be thinking about mobility, and I would be focused on digital advertising and marketing. My colleagues at Yankee Group draw strong — but artificial — distinctions between mobile and online, entertainment and advertising, and so on and so forth. This is the nature of research. We draw lines. Define coverage areas. And get to the business of analyzing.

My world centers around digital media, internet video, social networks, and gaming. Anywhere advertising comes into play. Mobility is important enough to have a separate team of analysts. So you can imagine my surprise when I revisited the carnival only to see extensive discussions about how social networking, gaming and video all relate to mobile environments.

Perhaps that’s the point. At Yankee, we talk a lot about what we call “Anywhere” which is driven by ubiquitous broadband connectivity. We say that it doesn’t matter how you connect, because you’re connected. You’re connecting to an application, to media, or even to each other. That’s what’s driving things.

And that may very well be the reason why I’m at Yankee Group. I came to the conclusion that enterprise mobility would just become part of enterprise computing. And the same goes for media, entertainment and social networks — the mobile component is just…well…part of the whole.

Yesterday, I was at an event in New York City. I was talking to a media company executive responsible for digital advertising. I mentioned internet video, and she shut the discussion down with a simple sweep of her hand — “we know that there’s scale in internet video. I’m not interested in that.” I was wondering where the conversation was headed. “But,” she said, “what are you doing in mobile marketing?”

There are moments when it’s truly wonderful to be an analyst. That was one of those times. For the bloggers who were wondering where I was. I’m back. Back in the analyst community.