• Apple and Google ruled a year to note in your Facebook (Guardian UK)

• Will CES 2008 Live Up to the iPhone? (PC World)

• Digital album packaging should improve in 2008 (Reuters)

• Oman's Renaissance to sell media unit for $7.8 million (Reuters)

• Get ready for a rocking '08 in networking tech (CNET)

• Feds aid viewers' move to digital in 2009 (LA Times)

• Philips to Unveil 52-inch Multi-Touch LCD at CES (PC World)

• Web Playgrounds of the Very Young (NYT)

I love lists and I love trend predictions. So a trend prediction list would be an obvious choice for my post today, on the last day of the year. Throughout the past week I have been reading lots of smart projections on what to expect for the year ahead. With all the discussion of microtrends, the evolution of how we consume media and highly useful recap lists of smart thinking from 2007, I thought I would take a different approach.

Google has been quietly rolling out social features across all of its services based on Gmail contacts. While Google still has to overcome some of its social tone-deafness (e.g. automatically adding contacts without asking), this move makes perfect sense. For people over 30 (and probably even over 25) email IS the social graph.

Beginning next Wednesday, January 2nd, writers for CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman and Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson will return to work after 8 weeks on strike, the AP writes. The Writers Guild of America came to an interim agreement with Worldwide Pants, the production company for both shows owned by Letterman. "I am grateful to the WGA for granting us this agreement," the AP quoted Letterman as saying.

Reality TV celebrity Shanna Moakler, known also for her relationship with former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker (and a reality TV celeb in his own right), acknowledged in a MySpace post today that she’s been asked recently about 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears’s pregnancy.

Until another internet video site challenges YouTube’s throne, the Google-owned network continues to be a barometer for all things viral on the web. Today Reuters points out that Barely Political’s “Obama Girl” and Chris Crocker’s tearful tirade against Britney Spears haters are the Most Popular YouTube clips of 2007.

December 28

• Wal-Mart's online movie failure: DRM, high prices to blame (Ars Technica)

• Apple readying HD Radio push for Macworld (iLounge)

• 38% of Americans Watch TV Shows Online (Reuters)

• "Simpsons" DVD tops U.S. sales chart (Reuters)

• Return of late night, or train-wreck TV? (AP)

• Bunchball: Cross-Platform, Real-Time Games. A Sign of Social Networking’s Future?(TechCrunch)

• Group Warns of Sites Offering Unlicensed Music (PC World)

• Radiohead offer fans New Year's Eve gig online (Guardian UK)

• Sony cuts rear-projection TV's, allies with Samsung on future LCD production (Ars Technica)

Mind readers wanted.

Celebrity support for presidential candidates is nothing new, nor is the negative impact such support can often garner. It has led some of the 2008 candidates to form looser ties with celebrities than in years past, but one celebrity and her choice for president – Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama – have formed a bond in the last several months that would lead observers to question whether the two are considering a Prez-VP run at the Oval Office.

Little Rock, Arkansas – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has shuttered its online movie download service, the AP reports. The company launched the service in February with 3,000 titles, but customers could not watch them on an Apple Inc. device.

The New York Times blog known as The Medium posted a potentially disastrous article about Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Monday, and today an editor recanted much of the information. The article begins, “Ron Paul, our Internet president, seems to have Nazi troubles, as in they’re saying he’s one of them.” Stormfront, which the blog calls “a ‘white nationalist’ Internet community,” donated money to Paul, according to The Medium, something the editor’s note now says is untrue. However, Stormfront’s founder, Don Black, did donate $500 to the campaign.

Dear Santa: 2007 was a great year and I thank you, but I want to provide you with my Christmas list for 2008. I’ve worked with so many engineers that I know that a 363-day lead time should be sufficient.

• Apple in online film-rental deal with Fox studio (Financial Times)

• Jay-Z stepping down as Def Jam president (Reuters)

• Radiohead To Promote Album With New Year’s Eve Concert on Current TV (TechCrunch)

• Apple shares trade at $200 for 1st time (LA Times)

• Mobile Products to Watch in 2008 (PC World)

• Hacks and smack-talking make hi-def format war even uglier (Ars Technica)

• Hulu launches private beta, faces challenges (VentureBeat)

All of us at DMW want to wish all of you, our readers, Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year! We will not publish the daily newsletter from December 21, 2007 until January 2, 2008, but will post periodic news updates here on our site in the meantime. We have a lot in store for the new year, starting with our exclusive Digital Media Insider reception at CES on January 8 (for all full list of our events, click here), so rest assured that we will not let the holiday food slow us down! This is exciting times for our industry and we look forward to keeping you connected and updated with the latest in Digital Media and Entertainment in 2008.

With MacWorld right around the corner and few rumors about the next trick(s) up Steve Jobs’s sleeves, the latest word from Cupertino includes an iPod with automatic volume control, designed to calculate the user’s length of listening time and noise level, gradually reducing the volume as necessary. The Daily Mail reports that Apple owns a patent for the technology.