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.

I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed out that business plans still serve an important role in "the rest of the world." He's right, and he should know because he's the president of Palo Alto Software, the principal creator of Business Plan Pro, and the author of a blog called Planning, Startups, Stories. He was recently named the US Association of Small Business & Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Corporate Entrepreneur of the Year for 2007.

Belmont, Calif. - Collaboration software developer Raveta this week released Audio Fabric, a free application that lets musicians play together live over the Internet using any type of instrument, be it acoustic, electric, MIDI or voice. The software also enables musicians to find one another, record their sessions and store them online, and post their compositions for public listening. A premium version of Audio Fabric available for a monthly subscription fee allows more collaborators and provides better sound quality.

Mountain View, Calif. - Google on Thursday launched a new premium version of its Google Apps hosted services for business applications. The new version, available for $50 a year per user account, includes tools like GMail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and IM, and Google Docs -- the company's version of popular business applications like word processing and spreadsheets.