I know, I know, I'm a day late and a dollar short - sorry about that!  The widget world is starting to settle in for its long winter's nap, and I expect things will be pretty quiet for the next couple of weeks. Here's all the news that's fit to print from this past week:

Mashable's Open Web Awards winners were announced this week, and we're happy to say that Mpire's WidgetBucks won in the widget category - congrats to Dean and Sean and the rest of the team at Mpire!!  If you want to learn more about Mpire, check out their Widgetbox blidget. 

Bebo announced yesterday that they've seen over 4,000,000 new installs of apps since the launch of their Open Application Platform just over a week ago.  That's awesome, and speaks to the fact that Facebook isn't the only game in town.  We're proud to be a part of this launch with our apps Bite Some Sugar (accelerated with Sugar, Inc.) and the Gap ModelMaker (accelerated with FancyGens and The Gap), and we have definitely seen these apps take off over the last week.  If you haven't joined Bebo yet, please do!  We'd love to hear what you think about our apps.  Plus, we'd love for you to "friend" Widgetbox on Bebo. 

Lastly, Hi5 announced some movement with its OpenSocial support, and you can now get OpenSocial enabled versions of iLike and Qloud on Hi5.  I have to say, I find this announcement pretty disappointing.  Since when did "Open" equate to 2???  But, I suppose it is progress, and it seems to be more progress than anyone else has made (as you all know, we've done everything we can to support OpenSocial!).  I'm hopeful that Hi5 will make itself truly open to the long tail of application developers - in my humble opinion, that's where all the power is.  Social Networks are, almost by definition, tons and tons of mini networks encapsulated in a platform that allows those personal networks to express themselves and connect over shared interests.   It seems obvious to me that to make a platform truly sticky, you have to offer an enormous breadth of content where there is something for everyone.  The platforms shouldn't be in control over this one, people.  The 80-20 rule as it is currently being applied (where you only provide the 20, and skip the 80) just doesn't make sense in this world - and the people in control "whitelisting" what is popular on other networks doesn't speak to a true desire to give your users what they want (which is, of course, not what you decide they want).

But this debate will continue, I'm sure, for some time to come as the widget world grows up, and comes into its own as an industry.  You can bet that we'll be here fighting for true and complete openness!! (if you haven't guessed that already about us...) 

For now, though, I want to wish you all very happy holidays, and a Happy New Year!

(Oh, and by the way, if you are looking for the best New Years Resolutions EVER, you have to check out zefrank's - they are fantastic.  And you can now find zefrank on Widgetbox!  Spend some quality holiday time playing with MiniRacer - plus, you can get MiniRacer as a Facebook app too)