Today we continue our run-down of the best of 2007 with picks for the year’s best software and web services, courtesy of BNET Insights.

Rick Broida, writing for BNET Insight’s “Business Hacks” section, lists his favorite software apps for 2007:

GIMP 2.4: Photoshop-caliber image editing without the high price. In fact, there’s no price at all: GIMP is an open-source (read: free) application.

ODIR: The Outlook Duplicate Items Remover does exactly what it promises: finds and removes duplicate entries in your contact list, calendar, note pad, task list, and inbox. Indispensable.

PPT to YouTube: This handy bit of freeware turns PowerPoint presentations into YouTube-compatible MP4 or WMV files and optimizes them for online viewing.

Revo Uninstaller: Faster, easier, and more thorough than Windows’ own uninstaller, Revo sends unwanted software packing — and stray Registry entries along with it.

Startup Delayer: My single favorite app of 2007, Startup Delayer makes Windows boot faster by delaying selected programs so they don’t run immediately on startup.

Mr. Broida also provides a list of his favorite web services from the past year:

Google Everything: I can’t pick a single Google product. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Notebook… shall I go on? Although these aren’t new services, they’ve all shown improvement this year …

Meebo: For many users, instant messaging is an integral part of business life. Meebo puts a robust IM client right inside your browser, meaning there’s no intrusive chat program to install, and lets you log into multiple systems simultaneously: AIM, GTalk, MSN, Yahoo, etc. And, of course, you can log in from any computer. This is the way IM was meant to be.

SplendidCRM: Businesses can spend a small fortune on CRM. Or not, if they leverage this free service. SplendidCRM manages your customer and sales data inside an attractive, tab-based interface.

Yapta: The travel site of the year, Yapta helps you get an airfare refund or credit voucher if the price of your flight drops after you buy your tickets. Just enter your trip’s confirmation code and Yapta will alert you if and when you’re eligible for money back. New plug-ins let you track airfares right inside your browser.

Zoho Writer: Sure, Google Docs gets all the glory, but if you want the Web’s most robust browser-based word processor, look to Zoho Writer. This year brought a wealth of new features, including a Word plug-in for easily importing and exporting Zoho Writer documents.

What do you think? Do you agree with this take, or do you think it’s missing the boat? Were any of your favorites left off, or do you disagree with some of the choices Mr. Broida made? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

To read the original articles, click here for the Top Software of 2007, and here for the Top Web Services of 2007.

Happy New Year from Aplus.Net!

The iPhone. Windows Vista. Google Android. 2007 was quite a year for consumer technology. And according to the Washington Post’s resident tech expert writer Rob Pegoraro, Apple came out as the clear winner by the year’s end” “often at the expense of Microsoft”, he wrote in today’s year-end consumer technology review:

Apple’s successful switch to Intel processors, which made it easy to run Windows alongside Mac OS X, gets much of the credit for the company’s new popularity. So does OS X itself ” a remarkably sane and simple way to run a computer — and the often-outstanding programs bundled on new Macs.

But Microsoft didn’t help itself, either.

Windows Vista’s steep system requirements made it unusable on many Windows PCs. Vista’s stringent anti-piracy routines alienated law-abiding customers. Its well-intended “User Account Control” security turned out to be a nuisance.

Many third-party software developers who had fueled Microsoft’s past success also sandbagged Vista. Some took months to revise their programs for the new system; some still haven’t finished the job.

Of course, no summary of Apple’s success in 2007 would be complete without mentioning the iPhone; and you can’t really bring up the iPhone without talking about the Google Android project (which has already had a successful level of support from phone carriers, even before being released):

Windows Vista also lost all hope of being the year’s biggest product debut when Apple introduced the iPhone. Its touch-sensitive screen, which lets you zoom into Web pages by spreading two fingers across the screen, brings the same frictionless simplicity to the mobile Web that the Nintendo Wii brought to video games.

The iPhone also showed what could happen if wireless carriers left phone design to people who were actually good at it. What if, say, the Web’s premier source of information could make a phone?

It just so happened that in November, Google announced its Android project and a lineup of phone manufacturers and wireless carriers that will work on it. When it ships the second half of next year (if all goes well), Android will let any user customize it at will.

Not long after that, one of the most controlling carriers ever, Verizon Wireless, announced that it would open its network to any compatible device — not just those customized to its specifications — in 2008.

Other carriers have joined in selling freedom as a feature. For example, AT&T now brags that customers can use any compatible phone on its network.

Mr. Pegoraro goes on to discuss the ongoing revolution in digital rights management (DRM), software “that controls what you can do with a song download”, and the role of (guess who!) Apple CEO Steve Jobs in urging broad changes in the current model of that software. Needless to say, with record labels nationwide in panic mode and online file sharing reaching all-time highs, any and all changes to DRM business models have huge reverberations to consumers and corporations nationwide.

Wal-Mart and then Amazon.com opened MP3-download stores, featuring more unrestricted downloads than iTunes. Apple responded by cutting prices and expanding the selection of its DRM-free offerings; Microsoft, in turn, added a million MP3s to its Zune store.

Some major record labels have resisted this change, but the market will not grant them much choice — their competitors sell a better product.

Summed up, the writer attributes these consumer tech initiatives to the hope that “parts of the tech industry are grasping the value of choice” a feature that might be more attractive to buyers than the usual faster-better-cheaper sales pitch.” We can only hope he’s right.

Read Rob Pegoraro’s original Washington Post article here.

Earlier this week, ICANN issued its 2007 annual report, a slickly put-together PDF document outlining the organization’s goals, achievements, and initiatives for the new year.

While not exactly red-hot news (overviews of board membership changes, bylaw fulfillment, litigation status, that sort of thing), the report is interesting reading, and anyone involved in the domain registration or web hosting industries should be aware of the changes being planned by this very powerful organization. (As it turns out, ICANN has some ambitious projects in the works.)

But it’s hard to read the gushingly enthusiastic report without having a skeptical moment or two. It’s absolutely understandable for any organization to be self-promoting in the reports it issues to the public, but there are perhaps more than a few souls who might take issue with some of these claims. For example, one cannot dispute the facts behind ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey’s words that ICANN “now produces more up-to-date and accessible information that allows a wider range of people to participate in our processes” — and yet, some people might single out the words “more” and “wider” as indicative that the organization still has a long road ahead of it before it achieves the kind of transparency it seems to be looking for.

For the most part, though, the report focuses on ICANN’s initiatives for the future, which are always good to know given its huge influence. Per Mr. Twomey’s pages, ICANN

made enormous progress on two developments that will change the Internet as we know it: the creation of new generic toplevel domains (new gTLDs) and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) concluded almost two years of policy development work to develop a fair and efficient process for introducing new gTLDs. The GNSO’s work was guided by advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee and by ICANN’s core values of fostering choice and competition while preserving the security and stability of the Internet. The GNSO recommendations will be considered by the ICANN Board of Directors in early 2008. Pending approval by the Board, a big staff priority for 2008 will be the implementation of new gTLDs.

On Internationalized Domain Names, we passed several major milestones that bring us closer to making a truly multilingual Internet a reality. The first was the successful laboratory testing of IDNs in November 2006. This paved the way for the next and most exciting step: inserting test IDNs in 11 languages in the root zone. While these “example.test” domain names are for evaluation only, they are an important step towards the expected deployment of IDN TLDs in 2008.

Read the entire report here, and feel free to sound off in the comments section.

Happy holidays!

As we enter into the final week of 2007, one story is beginning to dominate U.S. business news. It’s a story of unique historical significance, with both positive and negative net effects for Americans.

That story is the decline of the U.S. dollar. Although not new to this year, 2007 has seen the most noticeable drop in the dollar since the decline began in earnest in 2000, and 2007 has also seen a noticeable acceleration of the effects of that decline. In short, economists and the general public alike are beginning to take a more careful look at what has become an alarming trend.

According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the dollar has declined “more than 40 percent” in comparison to the euro since that currency was rolled out to world markets between 1999 and 2002. The dollar has declined 12 percent in 2007 alone, the article also states.

Depending on your perspective, this is either good news or bad news.

For American manufacturers and exporters, it’s good news:

For now, that drop is allowing the U.S. economy to reap rewards. American products have become exceedingly competitive, boosting exports ranging from Caterpillar tractors to Boeing jumbo jets that are now relative blue-light specials in the global marketplace. Using the same logic of chasing cheaper local production costs that has driven many U.S. factories to China, a few iconic European companies, including Airbus, are set to shift some manufacturing lines to the United States.

… Rolls-Royce has proposed moving some operations from Liverpool to its factory in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Airbus has said it will shift more of its production to the United States, home turf of rival Boeing, to offset the cost of the stronger euro. As the dollar has weakened over the past seven years, Airbus has opened assembly lines and other operations in Wichita and Mobile, Ala.; as well as in Moscow and Beijing.

Unfortunately, it’s bad news for importers, and for Americans abroad:

In very real terms, [the weakening dollar] has forced Americans to rethink their lust for foreign goods. Sales of luxury, British-made Jaguars and Land Rovers, for instance, are declining in the United States because of the weak dollar, while fewer North American tourists — a 10 percent drop in the third quarter of 2007 compared with the same period last year — treated themselves to trips to England.

The chink in the dollar’s armor has dealt a blow to American pride — at least to the kind of pride that comes with buying power.

Nowhere is that more visible than with Americans overseas.

But whether this particular situation is good news or bad news for you personally, Americans can’t help but feel a certain unease at the big-picture implications:

With the exception of November, when the dollar dropped sharply after bearish remarks by Chinese officials, the fall has been gradual. It is unclear what will happen in the future. The dollar has fallen because of a combination of fears over the U.S. economy, including the subprime mortgage crisis that may worsen.

… It marks a shift for Americans in the global economy. In times of strength, a mightier dollar allowed Americans to feed their insatiable appetite for foreign goods at cheap prices while providing Yankees abroad with virtually unrivaled economic clout. But now, as the United States struggles to fend off a recession, observers say the less lofty dollar is having both a tangible and intangible diminishing effect.

“The dollar was the dominant force in world economics for 100 years — we had no competition,” said C. Fred Bergsten, an American economist and director of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There was no other economy close to the size of the United States. But all that is now changing.”

… Although considered unlikely, analysts say a more rapid decline could prove disastrous. A global run on the dollar would force the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates to prop up the U.S. currency just as lower interest rates may be needed to stimulate the domestic economy.

What do you think? Is your business in a position to be harmed by a weakening dollar, or has it perhaps helped your bottom line? If you have comments to share, we’d love to hear them.

The original story by Anthony Faiola in today’s Washington Post offers much further detail and analysis. It’s an eye-opening read; click here to check it out.

The news that FTC has ruled in favor of the $3.1-billion Google-DoubleClick mega-merger continued to reverberate throughout the Internet today. Here are some of the more interesting articles we found that went beyond the simple details of the business transaction:

Tameka Kee, writing in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily, claims that most Internet industry executives are viewing the impending merger as a positive development.

Instead, several industry executives said the deal would actually drive innovation and increase the opportunities for all companies involved. “We’re not scared. Google’s technology has helped the online ad industry grow to reach something like $27 billion annually, and with the DoubleClick deal it will help grow the [ad-serving] industry,” said Rajiv Khaneja, president and CEO of Sparklit, a Canadian company that offers Web hosting, content management and ad-serving services. “The DoubleClick deal will also help grow the industry, and when the industry gets bigger, everyone benefits.”

“The FTC did throw a bone to those worried about privacy,” wrote ZDNet blogger Larry Dignan in today’s column. “In a separate statement, the FTC pitched self-regulatory principles on privacy to quell any emerging consumer worries. This statement reads like a discussion point more than any hard position. The FTC does propose transparency and consumer control, reasonable security for consumer data with limited retention and affirmative express consent in privacy policy changes. Those issues are great talking points, but not much more than that.”

And finally, with news of the DoubleClick-Google team-up also comes news (from the Hollywood Reporter) that Viacom is dumping Double-Click as its advertising partner — and signing a new contract with Microsoft. “Under terms of the deal,” writes Alex Woodson in the article, “Microsoft’s Atlas division will serve ads for Viacom’s Web properties, which number around 300 and include the sites for MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and those channels’ programs. The software company will also have the exclusive right to sell remnant display ad inventory for Viacom’s Web sites.” Could this sudden shift have anything to do with the fact that Viacom currently has a lawsuit filed against Google and YouTube? That would seem to be the smart answer.