I am about to head to California, not for a long Memorial Day weekend, but for the Google Developer’s conference in San Francisco. But before we join the population celebrating our mobile freedom by oxidizing as many hydrocarbons as possible, both in vehicles and on barbecue grills, some events in the news today deserve noting for their timely Anywhere significance. Specifically:

• Microsoft is embracing a Windows “bring your own laptop to work” model. Coincidentally, Yankee Group CTO Jeffrey Breen and I had been talking about the business possibilities of this approach just a day or two ago, as he watched me running my Yankee Group Windows laptop image on my personal MacBook Pro. I remember seeing British Petroleum (in my opinion, one of the largest and smartest multi-national IT groups I ever met) roll out a similar program around 2000. I thought the idea was brilliant then, and virtualization makes it even more practical now. The concept is simple: companies don’t buy computers for employees, but simply provide them with a subsidy and a virtual desktop image that they use on whatever machine they want to buy. Expect us to write more about this trend in an upcoming Yankee Group Decision Note; in my opinion, this trend is going to become unstoppable for Anywhere Enterprises.
• From the “out of this world” desk, NASA will be streaming the Sunday landing of its Phoenix explorer robot on Mars using a variety of Web 2.0 technologies, including Second Life broadcasts. Not only will there be images posted as they arrive here on earth, but NASA will be incorporating a variety of user-generated content including blog comments, wikis, and podcasts. Further, those with Second Life avatars can dress up in virtual space suits, sit on virtual bleachers and and tour the virtual Mars landscape while watching the television broadcast, all at this Second Life virtual world location. How cool is that?
• Telstra plans bragging rights to the fastest iPhones on the planet. Anywhere consumers who live for mobile speed have known for years they have to go outside the US to get all the 3G megabits they crave. But the Australians seem to be taking this to a new height: A Telstra executive claims that the Australian carrier will have Apple iPhones available on its network that can move 42 Mbits/sec by Christmas this year. Given that iPhones on 2.5G EDGE already can load pages about as fast as a Nokia 3G phone does with that faster network, that means that Anywhere consumers down under may have the ultimate mobile Web experience in their pockets this year. That said, standing in line at the NYC Apple Store 17 days before the 3G iPhone is expected to be announced still makes no sense, and more likely reflects entrepreneurial demand for scarce first generation iPhones to unlock more than 3G lust. And in case anyone is wondering, no such line yet exists outside the Apple Store here in Boston.
• And finally, I always knew Google Maps changed the world, but I had no idea Google’s mark on the planet was this big.

See you in San Francisco.