As the year ends down, the year-in-review stories wind up. Let it never be said that Telephony missed a chance to add our two-cents.

Thus: the 2007 Best and Worst issue, on newsstands now, as they say. Or you can hop over to our Web site and see our Top-X lists right now, including:

• Most Unexpected Event (Sprint’s Foresee out; Verizon open; cable down; and more)
• Top Buzzwords (transformation, green, mash-up and others)
• Hot List (Smartphones, SDPs and P2P) Not List (IMS, customer privacy)
• Game-Changing Technologies (Android, personalized TV, bendy fiber, femtocells)

And that’s only just the tip of the iceberg. Start here to go through all the lists.

Not to be outdone, our readers contributed a few memories of 2007 as well, including these notables:

From F. Brian Blanchard, Member of Technical Staff, AT&T Labs - Product Design:

• Top on-the-job headache for 2007: Conforming to new AT&T guidelines for new company
• Trend you hope your company doesn't follow: Overbuild of fiber to the home

From John Macdonald, Supervisor, Special Services, Verizon:

• A trend you hope your company doesn't follow: Poaching on the Open Handset Alliance
• A trend you hope your company does follow: Continuing the advance of 100 Gb/s
• “I'm just glad…”: “I don't work at Vonage”

Larry Duncan , AT&T Technical Training Design:

• Top on-the-job headache for 2007: Being the “acquired” company in a mega-merger and having to learn all new processes and terminologies.
• Trend you hope your company doesn't follow: The old AT&T corporate world mentality (military-type hierarchal “do it because I say so”).

What’s that ancient curse? May you live in interesting times. The telecom world has been “interesting” for quite a long time now, and 2007 was no different. Onward to 2008!

E-mail me at rkarpinski@telephonyonline.com.