So there is to be an OpenSocial Foundation…great! Earlier this week Google, Yahoo and MySpace all got together to tell the world about the importance of creating a Foundation to support Google’s already announced OpenSocial initiative.  OpenSocial (the initiative, not the Foundation) allows developers to use one source for code to create applications  that can be distributed across a number of social networks including MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, etc.

The Foundation announced on March 25 has been entrusted with ensuring that the original principles of OpenSocial would be enforced and “assure neutrality and longevity of specification for building social applications across the web.”  Neutrality and openness are becoming increasingly important for the developer community and for the internet companies themselves who are beginning to show dependence on external development to enhance internal innovation.

However, the announcement itself was far from groundbreaking.  We already knew about the principles of OpenSocial, so why bother with a big announcement?

Well if you are Google, this was a big deal indeed.  Remember a little story about a company called Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo?  Remember Google’s reaction to the news story, through its corporate blog that it hoped the deal would not go through because Yahoo had been an important partner in web development and openness?  Well, it looks as if that philosophical idea had become a reality - now Google and Yahoo are partners in ensuring open web development of the social variety. 

Moreover, Google and MySpace had been rumored to be breaking up over their partnership for advertising.  Again, Google has been able to squelch that rumor with this.

The story a lot of people missed wasn’t the announcement but the players - Yahoo, Google, MySpace all coming together and Google being the tie between them.

So the real winner in the OpenSocial Foundation release?  Yes, of course, the little guys (the developers) are winners.  Certainly the on-going development of the web, in theory at least, will enhance a consumer experience.  But congratulations Google on continuting to be the source of code and partnerships that are tying the world of the web together.

The rattle of jackhammers and traffic gridlock welcome any visitor to London after the ides of March.

The UK financial year is ending: Spend your budget by April 5 or expect a cut, particularly if you’re in public works.

This year, the thud of suitcases locking and money swooshing down the Thames join this noisome mix. London’s non-doms and investors are in startled exodus.

The cause: severe new UK tax laws. And they’re empoverishing our industry.

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Perhaps it’s the influence of Lent, but I’m filled with the spirit of penitence. And in totting up my transgressions, it struck me that it’s hard not to sin in the converging industries of telecoms, media and IT - either personally, or professionally.

Clap me in irons, but I’m a Wifi piggybacker, shameless in the theft of bandwidth from those with unguarded networks. And in the bad old days before VOIP, I happily used callback services on my travels to reduce telephony costs.

In the late 1990s, the pan-European operator for which I then worked eagerly monetized bandwidth swaps with its peers. It made our balance sheet look good, and our highly-paid accountants advocated it. We also weren’t shy in refiling voice traffic via various island-based operators with favorable onward settlement rates.

Of course, there’s a difference between sins of omission, and sins of commission. But the problem is that what’s defined as a good, bad or just plain iffy can radically change in fluid industry environments.

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I’ve always liked being a girl. You live longer and can blub freely at the Sound of Music. But the industry in which I work remains male dominated. And that demographic distorts how the industry views its innovations.

Take presence, a core component of unified communications (UC). To my mind, Susie Orbach needs to quit her riff on fat: Presence is a feminist issue.

I recently spoke at the U.K. Communications Management Association’s annual conference. In a two-day span, no less than 8 presentations advocating presence were made. I’ll single out John Mann, director of the Innovative Communications Alliance at Nortel EMEA. His live demonstration of presence was articulate, persuasive and technically flawless.

This went down awfully well. I looked across the sea of dark suits in the audience. Of course they love it, I thought, they’re (nearly) all men. It’s in their genes.

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Here we are, back once again to the season of predictions for the new year. But today I offer no guesses on the future, Oscar or otherwise. (Want some good YG predictions? Check out our recent work on the future of mobile music in Europe.) Instead of predictions, I’ve got a couple of wishes about my network.

1. I wish I weren’t a prisoner of my mobile network. I’d like to upgrade several of the phones in my household without the service commitment extending into the next millennium. (And yes, I’d be happy to pay market price in exchange.) I’d also like other devices I might have, or buy, to be able to use the network without a massive contractual hassle. If network providers want network consumption, they need to make it easier for me to flood the network with my devices — the same way my life is becoming flooded with devices in the first place.
2. I wish my network were smarter. I’m not a privacy freak; I want my network to know not only who I am and where I am, but how to provide continuinity to what I’m doing with it as I move around, even as I change devices. I guess I just want an Anywhere Network — one that’s high in capacity, highly intelligent, available anywhere. When will providers start handing off physical network knowledge to applications that can use it to make themselves more useful to me?

As Dickens said, we live in hope even as we die in despair.
What are your connectivity wishes for 2008?