Ok kids, if you haven't taken the time to vote for your favorite sites in the Open Web Awards, it's time to pony up your opinion or forever hold your peace.

The end of last week, and the first few days of this one, saw us casting our votes for everything from favorite Video Sharing site, to favorite Mobile web destination.

The Open Web Awards, are a distributed contest to find the best sites on the web. The top three sites in this category will proceed to the final round starting December 17th, and there will be an awards ceremony at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco on January 10th, 2008.

Big thanks to Pete Cashmore at Mashable for pulling this whole mess together, and keeping everyone on schedule. It's a lot harder to run an awards series than you might think. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and vote!

We just wanted to remind you that today is your last chance to enter nominations for the Open Web Awards. This is the first annual collaborative awards event honoring the best social networking services.

We're asking readers to choose their favorite companies in five categories:

1. Mainstream and Large Scale Networks
   
2. Applications and Widgets
   
3. Start Pages
4. Mobile
5. Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

Please choose just one company or web site per category and leave a comment on our nominations page. All entries must be received by 3:00PM EST today. Around 30 blogs are participating in the Open Web Awards, which are sponsored by Mashable. Your nominations will be thrown into the larger pool and soon we'll start the voting rounds.

It seems like every week a few dozen companies pump out new online "operating systems," commonly referred to as WebOSes. Essentially, they're like virtual desktops that you can access from any web browser. Each lets you run a small suite of applications like a word processor, spreadsheet, calculator, instant messenger, and in some cases, even a web browser.

This week, French company Jooce launched a beta version of a slick looking WebOS, and we shrugged. It's hard to care anymore. Mashable's put together a list of more than 45 WebOS applications. And that might be just the tip of the iceberg.

Sure, the world would be a better place if we had more than 3 or 4 desktop operating systems to choose from (assuming you don't run into file compatibility problems). But seriously, do we need 50 different webtops? In fact, do we need one? There's not a single thing you can do with Jooce, EyeOS, Ataloo, AjaxWindows, or any other WebOS that you can't do with Zoho, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and a good online storage site.

We could see a WebOS being useful if the world was filled with dumb terminals that had nothing but a web browser installed. Then you could go to any terminal and access a powerful online desktop. But instead, you can use your powerful computer to access a stripped down version of all the same tools that are already on your desktop.

Seriously, does anybody actually use any of these services? Bueller? Bueller?

For bloggers both old and new, a choice of blogging tool (or a switch) is a crucial step to make while building the empire. There are of course a boatload of choices, from Drupal, to Blogger and even the lightweight Textpattern, but for the serious blogger that needs every ounce of power and customizability from their platform of choice, WordPress and Movable Type are the reigning kings across the web. They're both very mature products, and while WordPress has been open source from the start, Movable Type recently joined that party as well with a vastly updated UI and a strong set of features straight out the gate. But how can you decide which one to chose without having to muck around with their respective PHP and MySQL configurations just to get started?

Fortunately, Mashable has published a general comparison of both platforms, ranking them in categories like ease of installation, usability and the all-important user community. We won't spoil the outcome though, because there are some great thoughts and tidbits about both platforms that can make or break the decision for some folks. You'll just have to head over and check out Mashable's comparison for yourself.

Social networking blog Mashable has compiled the largest list of RSS resources you've ever imagined (assuming you've spent any time imagining lists of applications).

Looking for a good RSS reader for your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine? Mashable's got you covered. How about cross-platform readers? Check. Web-based readers? Mmm hmm. Readers for your mobile phone? Not a problem.

Mashable even includes feed remixers, validators, browser plugins, WordPress plugins, and three separate services that convert RSS feeds to email.

Don't expect a complete review of each application or service, but if you're looking for a few new programs to try, you might want to check Mashable's list.

Mashable is an excellent blog that covers news at social networking web sites. And from the you are what you eat file, Mashable today has launched its own social network at my.mashable.com.

Basically, My Mashable lets you share all of your social network accounts in one place. Well, not all of them, we couldn't find listings for Reddit or umm... Catster.

Not much more to the site right now. You can find out what social networks your friends belong to, and you can find new "friends" by browsing or searching tag. As social networks go, it's pretty simple. But this might be a site worth keeping an eye on. Mashable's Pete Cashmore is an expert on Web 2.0 sites, and it'll be interesting to see how he leverages that expertise toward improving his own site.

[via Frantic Industries]

I'm not much for my prognostication myself--which is to say that I'm terribly bad at it--but it seems like everyone else in the tech industry can't get enough of it. The LA Times has predictions from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, paidContent's Rafat Ali, Wired editor Chris Anderson, and other industry notables. Ali predicts that talents bred on the internet will start breaking out, getting their break on YouTube and making it in the mainstream. Anderson says, "2007 is the year that somebody figures out how to make video advertising work in a YouTube world. And if I'm right, the TV industry is going to get very rocky, very fast." And Ballmer? He says "2007 will be the year that unified communications technology helped us regain control of our information and our lives." Uh, Steve.. we might've stayed in control all along if it weren't for Microsoft's marriage to the movie and music industries.
Web 2.0 blog Mashable has its own list of 2007 predictions, which includes the explosion of online contests, widgets hitting it big (but RSS staying on the back burner), and the triumph of YouTube over MySpace, among others. And the Washington Post's Brian Krebs makes predictions regarding cybersecurity in 2007 which paints an unpretty picture of scammers and malware. Finally, Searchblog writer and FM Publishing chair John Battelle hasn't made his predictions for 2007 yet, but he has done a retrospective of his 2006 list. The verdict? Not too shabby.