Shalom, y’all. That’s a shout-out to my Jewish peeps for Rosh Hashanah! Happy New Year! Happy new start!

And a new start is exactly what we need. I, like everyone else, watched Monday’s freefall in the wake of the bailout bill failing. And today, I’ve been subjected to a media storm of political blame-gaming (eye-roll. Right now.), Bush’s pre-market-opening plea for action, a variety of news reports about “Main Street” being furious and not bothering to educate themselves on what’s at stake, the Dow closing up 485 points, and some lawmakers in light of that saying this isn’t much of a crisis after all, that there isn’t a liquidity issue, that those “bad” assets have value and we’re just dealing with an accounting problem (!!!) ... Meanwhile, European markets were “volatile,” shall we say, we saw more government intervention overseas to prevent further bank failures, inter-bank interest rates are up to record highs (there goes that liquidity) and commercial paper — the lines of credit that businesses rely on to pay for goods and services every month — is frozen at the moment, which of course affects the suppliers that those businesses buy from as well. This latter issue has led CNBC pundits to nervously float the specter of shuttered doors, layoffs starting at any minute and massive “cost-cutting” just to buy inventory to sell. It just all goes to show that there is an immense lack of clarity as to the full scope of the crisis, potential ramifications and effect around the globe and on the proverbial Average American, as if there were such a person.

The only relief from the ongoing bombardment of dismal outlooks is the rather entertaining coverage of the lead-up to the Biden-Palin showdown on Thursday. Of course, by Thursday we could be looking at a very different economic world than today, today being by all accounts the equivalent of an investor jitters BYE week with Congress out of session for the holiday. God knows what tomorrow will bring.

So what does any of this have to do with anything in telecom? Well, there are actually winners in all of this. Potentially — if service providers move on it. I feel rather ghoulish pointing it out, but where there’s a need for cost-cutting, VoIP gets a push. As companies find themselves with mounting unpaid bills, unpaid payrolls and the prospect of cutting salaries, personnel and inventory to keep operations rolling along in the absence of commercial paper, anything that’s easy to save some pennies on suddenly moves from the “gotta look at that one of these days” to the “top priority” column.

It’s no secret that VoIP, especially SIP trunking and hosted services, can save a lot of money for companies about to become financial road kill, and in fact that probably sounds like a pretty vapid thing to say coming from a (dare I say “seasoned?”) telecom reporter. But service providers need to remember that the Average American (there’s that guy again) doesn’t know a damn thing about it. The jarring lack of education in the market as to VoIP and its cheapness and its ease of implementation has always been a gating factor, but now, service providers have an opportunity to turn VoIP into an efficient, successful vulture, feasting on the carrion left from this economic crisis.

Sorry, was that carrion comment too much?

There’s been so much talk of unified communications, fixed-mobile convergence, presence and other enhanced IP services — and those are the fun things to talk about. But service providers ignore a golden opportunity within the panic and paranoia and global meltdown to take plain old VoIP and make it into a bright spot, for everyone involved.

See? From vulture to bright spot. It’s all how you look at it.

Back at the dawn of time, the first terrestrial life forms crawled up from the primordial soup and would go on to evolve into creatures as diverse and mysterious as ring-tailed lemurs (collective “awwwwww” please), iguanas and Sarah Palin.

If this process fascinates you as much as it does me, considering that Sarah Palin can skin a moose, wear Alaska-shaped earrings without ridicule AND avoid media questions, all at the same time, Spore is the game for you. The hot, hot, hot time-spender was released earlier this month from the same guy that brought you “the Sims.” It allows you to start with a single celled organism and evolve it into any number of fantastical creatures, depending on any number of environmental variables. While this is a clever way to teach kids the theory of evolution, it’s also addictive for the grown-ups, some of whom have apparently indulged in creating rather, shall we say, vulgar creatures, a phenomenon known out there on the Web as “Sporn.”

Anything spawning its own double-entrendre-ready nomenclature qualifies as part of pop culture in my book, and I adhere to this truism: Where there is pop culture, there is opportunity.

Mobile gaming may not have taken off yet, but Spore (and Sporn)-a-holics out there might prove yet there is a viable business model to be had. EA Mobile has launched Spore Origins for the Apple Inc. iPhone and iPod Touch, and makes use of the accelerometer to maneuver your creature through the dawn-of-time gunk.

I’m not a big gamer, and I get pitched on game applications, like, ALL the time, and I’ve been cynical. But this Spore thing made me look into it further, and it appears the segment is being rethought.

For instance, an outfit called Cellufun also is taking a page from pop culture, this time the social networking phenomenon. Personally, I have a feeling that social networking is about to get real old, real fast...case in point, my friend Tanya’s status on Facebook, which she just joined, says: “Tanya is late to the Facebook party, which she predicts wrapping up sometime around December 2008.” But for now, it’s still worth exploiting.

And to that point Cellufun Friday launched a global WAP site for multiplayer gaming, which wraps in all those high-usage, time-wasting principles of Web 2.0, like blogging, points accrual for various things, blogging, customizable avatars, blogging and blogging. I think really it’s the blogging that will get people involved—everyone likes a good flame war. As long as they’re not in it.

This week’s Google Android G1 launch is drawing attention from the gaming community too, for its open app development approach. The similarly value-propped Apple App Store has yielded some profits for some gaming companies, but it’s suffering from some backlash at the moment, leaving Android looking pretty attractive. Accordingly, gaming bigwig Gameloft announced plans to develop more than10 titles for Android, to be launched beginning in the first quarter of 2009.

I guess we’ll see how it all works out. As in, will anyone make money from this besides the developers? Is it worth the time of service providers to worry about the space? Will there be a gaming evolution-spark to take it mainstream and out from its own primordial soup?

Who knows. In the meantime, please, please stop sending me Sporn (and you know who you are).

So Sprint CEO Dan Hesse is in a new commercial about ... something ... oh that’s not good ... but anyway, I saw it during the sitcom Do Not Disturb with Jerry O’Connell, who was in Stand By Me with Kiefer Sutherland, who was in Lost Boys with Jami Gertz, who was in Square Pegs with Sarah Jessica Parker, who was in Footloose with, that’s right, Kevin Bacon.

Yes, I realize I have entirely too much time on my hands.