0.30 – The three guys are back and the big news is that Kevin is flashing a brand new 4GB iPhone. Unsurprisingly, this very expensive wi-fi enabled iPod is the first topic of conversation.
4.45 – Duncan wonders if RIM and Apple are changing the space completely. Mark thinks the Blackberry is going to be strong for business and Apple will take over consumers. Duncan disagrees and thinks RIM is becoming more and more consumer focused.
8.26 – Google makes another acquisition, this time of GrandCentral. Is this the next step in a globe spanning telecom network? Google says no, but Duncan thinks the “lady doth protest too much�.
9.34 – Kevin loves the Grand Central service and agrees with Duncan’s assertion. The amount of dark fiber and size and number of data centers points to a big telecom network.
10.29 - Mark wonders how this would change the landscape for telecom carriers. Duncan takes a long term view – voice telephony will be completely free, eventually. He sees the commodifcation of data services as a big problem for the carriers.
13.55 – Duncan wonders if Google will go the last mile and make an acquisition to connect customers to the network. Mark thinks Google will buy a piece of the 2008 spectrum auction and use it for wi-max.
15.48 – BCE is the next big topic. Will someone like Telus gazump OTPP? Will the media continue to buy into Michael Sabia’s spin? Will BCE go for more than $42 a share (some people are suggesting $49 a share)?
17.17 – Mark rails against the media calling this process an auction while Kevin calls it a management led buy-out and predicts that this isn’t all over just yet.
18.56 – Duncan has more criticism of the media’s retransmission of the Sabia spin and calls Sabia out for an inaccuracy.
19.57 – Mark thinks the buy-out is in precisely the wrong time for BCE, which has a lot of capital investment to be make right now. Duncan thinks the company will have up to $50bn of debt after the transaction.
0.27 – Just Mark and Kevin this week, Duncan is trapped in the BCE / Telus drama
0.59 – Mark starts off with news that Telus has pulled out of the BCE takeover process because they haven’t had enough time for due diligence.
1.17 - Darren Entwistle met with the newspapers last week suggesting a Bell / Telus merger was the best option for Canada.
1.33 - Kevin thinks Bell blew it. He doesn’t understand why they wouldn’t extend the deadline.He suggests it’s a matter of mistrust and a battle of egos.
2.08 - Mark suggests Michael Sabia of Bell would have known that Entwistle would be the topdog and he would be out of a job.
3.02 – Mark thinks the whole thing has been a public disaster.
3.12 - Kevin agrees calling it a “contrived BS process.� It brings more attention to Foreign Ownership restrictions. If they were lifted Canadians would get more for their money.
4.01 - Mark wonders if there are serious negotiating tactics in play. It might be a message to the Federal Government, Competition Bureau, the Board of Directors of Bell Canada.
6.09 – Mark is excited for the official launch of the iPhone in the US he thinks it will be ‘God’s gift to smart phone’despite the limitations which Matthew Ingram discussed in the Globe and Mail.
The question is why with all those limitations are people willing to spend the money on it?
6.58 - Kevin offers the simple answer because it’s cool! It’s a fashion accessory, not just a phone.
Kevin wonders how much more than 10 million will it sell, considering there are 35 million Mac users in the world.It’s the new design benchmark.
8.10 - Mark reminds us of the blogosphere coverage when Blackberry Pearl came out and how the reviews at the time affected sales.With the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal fawning over the iPhone, it counts for a lot considering it’s over a $2000 investment in “cool� when you factor in fees over the course of a contract.
9.05 - Mark calls it ‘iLove’
9.19 - Kevin reminds us the first generation of a product is never the best.And there is talk that the second generation is possibly coming out later this year.
10.05 - Mark asks why would you buy one now?When the second generation will probably have so much more to offer?
10.33 - Kevin thinks there is no rational answer because it’s not a rational decision to line up 2 days ahead of time to get one.
11.26 – Mark compares it to Cabbage Patch dolls, and the Wii, consumers love to be the first to have something.
11.40 – Mark talks about the future of online radio.The copyright board in US is changing royalty regime which will triple the amount of money that online radio stations will have to pay to access music
12.35 - Mark thinks the Music Industry is cutting off its own nose despite its face because Internet radio is the ultimate discovery tool and consumers end up buying more and seeing more shows.
13.20 - Kevin finds it hard to understand as a fan, he feels that Internet radio shouod be a loss leader.He suggests more subscription services.The music industry needs to find a new business model.
14.20 - Mark talks about going to see Manu Chao in Toronto last week, the show was sold out which suggests people will pay a premium to see a live performance, because it’s not a commodity.It’s the foundation of the music industry.
15.44 - Kevin agrees, the Industry needs to change their current way of thinking.
16.38 – The guys wish everyone a great Canada Day and a happy Independence Day.
0.38 - The guys get started with talk about the news of a potential BCE / Telus merger.
1.01 - Duncan talks about private equity’s interest in Bell and their inability to cut costs the same way that Telus could because they would lack the same synergy that combining Telus and BCE would have, which gives Telus has the ability to bid much higher than other players.
3.17 - What will the merger mean to foreign ownership restrictions in Canada?
3.39 – Duncan suggests if the merger goes through there will be the potential for other carriers to follow suit.
3.55 – Canada could end up with 2 or 3 national players which will mean less choice for consumers, higher costs and layoffs.
4.20 – The guys discuss the current environment and the fact that Canada is already priced as though it were in a monopoly situation, can we expect prices to go even higher?
5.10 – Duncan talks about Stephen Harper and the Tories general Western-based roots, they would love to see Eastern-based Bell be bought out by Western players.
5.53 - Harper is an economic nationalist and has received flack in the past for letting assets such as Inco go.
6.04 – Setting the stage for a national player in telecom will help motivate the government to take down take down international barriers to allow them to eventually ease foreign ownership regulations.
6.27 – The Federal government is encouraging creation of a large national player in telecom that can compete internationally, how will it affect the banking sector?
7.07 – Talk of Telus CEO Darren Entwistle’s rise from regional VP at Cable & Wireless to potentially becoming the King of Canadian telecom if the merger with BCE goes through.
7.46 – The guys wonder how Entwistle will get along with BCE CEO George Cope …
8.44 – More CEO chat. Announcement that co-founder of Yahoo, Jerry Yang, has replaced Terry Semel as the new CEO of Yahoo.
9.25 – Semel’s demise came when he didn’t buy Google.
10.03 – Most companies don’t do well when the founder of the company steps back in as CEO.The one exception to the rule being, Apple’s Steve Jobs.
10.30 - Talk that Yahoo will get out of the search business and focus on ad revenue instead.
10.52 – Mark suggests the issue with Yahoo is it has lost its personality and become very corporate, whereas Google despite being big business, is still seen as a dynamic, fun company.
12.02 – Interesting that Canadian tech company Cognos blame their luke warm 2nd Quarter forecasts on the rise of the Canadian dollar.Conducting research and development in Ottawa has always been cheap, but the rising dollar is affecting the cost.
0.27 – Mark is back with Duncan. Kevin has taken the week off but will back next week. The subject of the week is the Canadian Telecom Summit which raised the issue of broadband Internet access, pricing and availability.
1.42 – Duncan thinks tiered pricing, depending on usage, is going to be difficult to implement in the short term. He thinks the answer for the cable companies will lie with Sandvine’s network management service.
3.24 – Mark brings up the lack of competition in the Canadian telco industry.
4.02 – The only reason the Toronto One Zone wi-max service is any good is because no-one uses it!
4.35 – How much will people pay for broadband? Do the carriers have their consumers by the balls?
5.28 – Duncan brings up the public policy issue of equality of access. Fiber tubes could be laid down in the big cities – thus alienating the more rural towns.
6.15 – Mark bemoans the dwindling rate of broadband penetration, due to a lack of innovation, lack of choice, and a low price. Duncan agrees.
7.23 – The guys segue into the wireless market – does Canada need or want a fourth carrier? Quebecor and MTS think it does and wants to be able to buy wireless spectrum. Money quote from Bell’s Lawson Hunter - “Where we you when Microcell was for sale in 2004?�
8.46 – Duncan thinks any outside player should be able to go to the regulator and ask to be sold wireless spectrum to break up the existing oligarchy. He doesn’t think it’ll matter because if the fourth carrier is successful, one of the big three will just buy it out anyway.
10.36 – Mark references an article that suggests Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski will jump ship and go to run Qwest. Duncan doesn’t see it happening, but admits it can’t be a lot of fun to run Nortel right now.
13.21 – The guys discuss a rumour that Nortel CTO John Roese is being groomed as the next CEO. Duncan thinks that is about 3-5 years down the line.
14.02 – He then segues onto another rumour that Intel is slashing its prices by 50 per cent and that the semiconductor industry will grow by just 1.8 per cent in the next 12 months. Mark wonders about the motivations behind Intel’s move, Duncan thinks it’s a reaction to AMD’s “poking of the bear�.
16.10 – He also thinks that Intel feels AMD is close enough to going under, Intel may be able to push them off the cliff. Would the investors let AMD go bankrupt? Duncan thinks the debt is too high for the PE crowd to come in and make money from any deal.
0.32 - It’s just Mark and Kevin this week as Duncan is away at a television engagement.
0.47 - Mark is excited to hear Kevin’s take on the big tech news of the week; the official launch of Apple’s iPhone.
1.01 - Kevin really wants one, but disappointed to know it will be locked to which ever network Apple deals with and while it can be used on other networks, a lot of the features would not be enabled.
1.45 - Kevin reminds us the issue with Apple is always supply and demand, they’re great at building hype, but never have enough.
2.20 - Mark asks about the high price and if it will affect consumer interest.
2.50 – The guys discuss why consumers are willing to pay higher prices. Kevin thinks the real trend in IT right now is in design, and people will pay a premium for functionality advantages.
3.58 – A few more concerns with the iPhone to mention, Kevin isn’t sold on the touch screen and thinks it will take some getting used to.
4.15 – The big question, when will Canadians be able to get it? Kevin foresees it on the market before Christmas if Rogers and Apple can strike a deal. But Mac has a history of holding back products from Canada, such as the iTunes store.
5.12 – Talk that Telus will hook up with W-CDMA network. It could have leverage in negotiations with Rogers giving them the advantage on the wireless front.
6.14 - Mark talks about his lack of excitement over the eminent $30 Billion dollar take over of BCE and the recent involvement of the Teachers.
7.40 - Kevin talks about private equity firms going after telecom companies.
8.51 – Mark wonders what the new owners will do with it?
9.26 - Mark thinks private equity firms might also go after Telus and thinks it is a much more exciting story because of the inclusion of Telus Mobility. Kevin thinks it’s a possibility.
10.27 – Kevin wonders about the future if there are changes to the Foreign Ownership Restrictions and the inclusion of big US carriers.
11.10 - Mark talks about his weekend blog post about banning the internet at work in response to several companies including TD and the City of Toronto’s move to ban employees from using Facebook. Is Facebook the problem or is the problem employers not trusting their employees?
12.40 - Kevin suggests that companies could ban personal web surfing at work but people would still find a way to waste time. The onus is on the employer to engage their employees.
13.35 - Mark sums it up, it all comes down to whether you get the job done or not.
15.57 - Mark asks Kevin for his impressions of the MESH Conference which happened in Toronto last week.
16.35 - Kevin thought the sessions were well run and a great bang for his buck.
17.38 - Mark talks about why they tried to keep the price reasonable in order to reach young entrepreneurs and give them the chance to network.
18.10 - Mark mentions reading on Start Up North that the Toronto Venture Group has filed for bankruptcy protection and wonders if there is enough of an ecosystem in Toronto to support the tech start up world?
19.00 - Kevin points out there is smaller pool to draw from in Canada, there are still great entrepreneurs that need to be spotted, and it’s important to keep them with in Canada.
0.32 – Mark et al are back with apologies for their absence last week and news that Jim Balsillie has taken another run at buying an NHL team.
1.45 – Duncan reminds us of the legion of tech entrepreneurs who used their success to buy professional sports teams only to see their stock price tank. Duncan’s interested in seeing the market’s reaction to this news.
2.44 – Mark goes back to the theory that Balsillie will move the Preds up to Waterloo. He’s also interested in the different paths Balsillie and Lazaridis are taking now RIM has been such a huge success.
4.10 – Balsillie is the business guy while Lazaridis is more focused on the engineering. Kevin questions Balsillie’s choice to take the eye off the ball when so many competitors are catching up to the Blackberry.
4.53 – Mark brings up Google’s $3.9m investment into biotech start up 23andMe, which was founded by Sergey Brin’s wife. Duncan points out the amount is less than a rounding error on Google’s market cap and that the new company is not a biotech company, but a bioinformatics company and sees some synergies between the two companies.
6.59 – The guys move onto Google’s $100m acquisition of FeedBurner, the RSS distribution and advertising company. The buy comes in the wake of other online advertising acquisitions including Microsoft’s $6bn purchase of aQuantive.
8.02 – Kevin thinks this shows the explosion of online advertising and Duncan compares the size of these acquisitions with the global advertising companies. He also thinks that this points to a huge feeding frenzy in the online advertising market.
9.07 – Mark finds it interesting that Google can walk in and buy Feedburner and DoubleClick, two prime targets in the advertising market. Duncan thinks it talks to the currency Google has and the multiple that its stock trades at.
10.13 – Kevin asks who’d you rather work for – Google or Microsoft. He makes a good comparison that Google is the new Microsoft; Microsoft is the old IBM. Duncan points out that it’s been uncool to work at Microsoft for more than a decade now but it’s still cool to work at Google.
11.26 – Duncan brings up Zarlink, the former MyTel semiconductor vendor that sells to the telecom space, who reported a very poor quarter despite cost cutting and asset selling to get back in the black. He can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel for the telco industry.
12.35 – Duncan reflects on the telecom industry’s growth which some data suggests will either be at zero per cent or, in fact, be negative.
12.55 – Mark heralds Toronto Tech Week including mesh (now sold out) and the Canadian New Media Awards. He hopes the sell out nature of mesh reflects the enthusiasm that is surrounding the Internet right now.
14.30 – Duncan plugs a conference around municipal use of WiFi happening early next week and Mark takes the opportunity to slam Toronto Hydro’s WiFi network in downtown Toronto.
0.37 – Encouraging signs for bloggers as Mark got an invitation from Nortel for its “Tech Day�. He could go but Duncan checked out a talk from John Rose on “hyperconnectivity� – all broadband, all the time.
1.14 – Mark wonders if this is just a marketing term or if it can give Nortel a competitive edge. Duncan thinks that current 3G networks don’t provide the experience users want so there is a market and Nortel’s technology seems to have a jump on its competitors.
3.19 – Kevin weighs in with a carrier’s perspective. Which is less rosie for Nortel small product set. He’s skeptical on Nortel’s outlook.
4.44 – Duncan thinks Nortel is focused on its R&D efforts and that while it’s a coherent strategy, it’s too soon to judge.
6.59 – Mark plunges into the acronym pool with questions on IPTV and VOIP. Duncan he saw some interesting stuff on the next generation of VOIP.
7.13 – The guys jump onto the social network bandwagon and Facebook in particular. Mark wants to know why the Ontario provincial government banned Facebook.
8.27 – Kevin think organizations are afraid of the inordinate amount of time that people spend on social networks but it’s still a valid means of communications.
8.46 – Duncan thinks it’s important to try out the social network rather than just talk about the technology. Like any technology, it’s just as important to shut off as it is to sign up.
9.55 – Mark brings up MySpace’s push into Canada and Duncan talks about the licensing issues that the company needed to navigate before launching. He’s worried that it’s too late for the News Corp company to (re)gain market share on Facebook.
10.54 – Kevin thinks this is more about the faddish nature of social networking sites. “We’ll be here all week� is Duncan’s take on that.
11.37 – Facebook’s announcement of free classifieds generated a lot of excitement and Mark asks if this is another blow to the traditional newspaper industry. Duncan doesn’t think the average Facebook user has either money or assets but does think that social networks need to start getting some of both.
15.56 – Mark dips into the gutter and comes up with Internet porn. He cites a study that shows just how much the Web is used for gambling and sex. Is there an investment opportunity here?
13.59 – Duncan provides a cautionary tale for anyone looking to invest in the “sin business�. Is the Internet maturing past porn and gambling?
15.15 – Mark is impressed how the porn and gambling industry has pushed the boundaries of technology on the Internet.
15.58 – Just to end the episode off on a high Duncan wonders if he can hear the sound of one hand typing.
0.28 – All three of the boys are back for another week of Talking Tech. They kick things off with “old� news of Rupert Murdoch’s $5bn bid for Dow Jones. Duncan gives us his thoughts on the deal which is about the data, not the publishing business.
2.42 – Kevin compares the Dow bid with Reuters’ M&A talk. He thinks more people will enter the bidding for Dow Jones while Mark looks at Murdoch’s News Corp empire’s make up and wonders if a bigger synergy is at work?
3.55 – No. Duncan thinks the Dow Jones is a jewel in Murdoch’s crown with no bigger picture. Duncan compares the cost of the print paper with the cost of the Dow’s data feed (3:200 in his estimation).
4.58 – Mark brings up Nortel’s Q1 results but he’s more interested in the bullish nature of CEO, Mike Zafirovski, in the AGM that the markets picked up on. Duncan takes a deep dive into the numbers and reveals a small, but trending, improvement.
7.36 – Mark is skeptical of the telecom space in general, not just of Nortel. Duncan thinks the telecom space isn’t just volatile – it’s a market in decline due to the technological efficiencies developed in the last boom.
9.13 – Kevin is also skeptical and wonders how Nortel can differentiate itself in the market. He also thinks it is a second tier player after the distracting accounting problems. If you didn’t know, Cisco, Erikson, Alcatel and Lucent are the top tier companies.
10.03 – Duncan shifts gears to the Microsoft-Yahoo! M&A chatter. Mark thinks Microsoft is a good acquirer of software but their acquisition record in other areas is…spotty. He is curious how two such big companies can integrate.
11.44 – Kevin thinks it shows how badly Microsoft missed the boat in online advertising. He calls it two online search garbage trucks colliding. Microsoft doesn’t get any synergies from the deal, just users. While Google is looking to merge their on- and offline search, Microsoft and Yahoo! are simply trying to get people to use their engines.
13.38 – Mark brings up “The Curve�, RIM’s new pro-sumer device. Kevin thinks the market is ripe for any smart phone above the $250 price point but doesn’t think it has the cache of an iPhone.
14.33 – Duncan thinks this will herald a goldrush of smart phones. He points out that a success for RIM or Apple will be 7 million units while a success for Nokia needs to be 100m units.
15.30 – Mark reminds us that the Blackberry isn’t about the handset; it’s about the data plan. Kevin chimes in on the massive cost of data in Canada vs. the U.S.
0.30 – Mark and Duncan are back (still no Kevin) to talk about the good quarterly results from Apple and Microsoft.
1.12 – Is Apple’s growth sustainable or is just a fad? Duncan compares Apple to Madonna and thinks that, for now, its growth is sustainable BUT, will the hype around the iPhone bring the whole house of cards down?
2.37 – Mark brings up the movie Helvetica and every design person interviewed had their trusty Mac in screen. He thinks that the iPod gave users permission to buy Mac computers and wonders if the iPhone could take that permission away?
3.51 – How will the stock options controversy affect the Mac aura? If Steve Jobs needs to step down, Duncan predicts Apple’s stock will drop $30 - $40 in a day.
5.27 – Mark asks Duncan to explain why so many wealthy, high profile execs back date stock options. Duncan explains that the accounting rules have changed and now back dating options can put a hit on the company’s earnings.
7.01 – Mark is surprised so many people are so surprised at Microsoft’s success, which was largely driven by Vista. Duncan explains Vista’s attractiveness to the consumer and reseller – as illustrated by Microsoft’s software revenues growing 69 per cent.
9.35 – Duncan reminds us that the entertainment side of Microsoft’s business isn’t doing so well – its revenues dropped 20 per cent.
10.01 – The guys move onto the strategy behind the Nintendo Wii. Instead of competing with high end graphics machines such as the Xbox 360, the company dumbed down its product and went after everyday consumers. Duncan uses this as a classic case of disruption – coming up with a just good enough product, rather than a perfect product.Another example of this is Slacker a satellite radio/mp3 player combination.
12.35 – Dalsa lost its CEO this week and this is a great springboard for discussion on the changing landscape of the Canadian tech CEO ecosystem. Duncan doesn’t think there is a single CEO of a public company has been in office for more than 10 years and thinks this talks to the need for management talent in Canada.
14.34 – Local entrepreneur Randy Charles Morren’s RSS email service, Rmail, gets some love from Mark after selling the company to NBC Universal.
12.28 – Duncan has a new job at Deloitte as Director of Canadian Research for Technology, Media, Telecommunications and Life Sciences. He’ll be writing some original research but will also be Canadianizing global research and meeting with up and coming businesses.
0.25 – Mark, Kevin and Duncan are back with a discussion of what were the Blackberry’s users doing during the down time this week?
1.55 – Duncan wonders if there is an architectural reason for the service going down and staying down. If the software and the system doesn’t scale, how will this affect the stock price?
2.45 – Kevin wasn’t affected by the outage, and still thinks a Blackberry is the most effective email device out there. Mark is curious to know if RIM needs to make a major investment in its architecture?
5.59 – BCE is now in play with private equity investors ready to spend up to $30bn on the company. Mark can’t see the value for investors in a low growth company in competitive markets.
7.02 – Duncan thinks that the fact BCE hasn’t grown is a reason for people to buy into the company. Cutting costs, slashing jobs and spinning off assets like Bell Mobility are all things that smart people are putting forward to extract value.
8.38 – Kevin thinks that no matter what happens, the situation is indicative of a lack of confidence in the management team.
9.07 – Duncan brings up another angle – John Henderson of Scotiabank is suggesting BCE take over Telus to form “BELUS� – but doubts the current management team would be that aggressive.
9.51 – Mark wonders what Darren Entwistle would next do if that happened. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is a big fan of his so he could go south of the border as an SVP.
10.35 – Kevin doesn’t think Telus wants to be taken over. The board is happy with the team and the company has just got over the hump of challenges that BCE is now facing.
11.12 – Could Michael Sabia have done anymore to improve the company in the eyes of the institutional investors?Kevin thinks that the company missed the boat on Microcell and that it’s slow on migrating to GSM networks.
12.56 – Duncan pushes back on Mark’s assertion that there’s no value to leverage out of BCE by pointing out that debt is no barrier to success. The prospect of being hanged in the morning is a great way to sharpen the mind.
13.37 – He uses Rogers as an example before revealing the secret to making money out of BCE and Telus… (13.37)
14.14 - The guys move onto a lighter topic – the acquisition of StumbleUpon by eBay for $40m. Mark uses it as a way to rail against the Canadian VC market. As a former VC, Duncan has an interesting perspective.
15.11 – Mark admits that Canadian VCs such as the one’s that funded b5media, Brightspark and JLA, are starting to get it and by investing in b5media, put a stake in the ground.
1.23 – The guys start off with the consolidation of the Canadian software industry and the sale of one of Mark’s stocks, Work Brain by Infor.
3.05 – Duncan laments the investor’s choice of Canadian enterprise software companies. Mark brings up the problem with the Canadian software industry – to scale you need to sell to the U.S. which is when you’ll attract the attention of an acquirer.
4.09 – Is Canada the farm team for the global software industry? Canada certainly seems to be able to nurture small companies who get acquired once they become a mid-sized software company.
4.24 – RIM and Nortel managed to stay in Canada but Duncan is worried about the lack of obvious star companies coming into the “farm system�.
5.20 – Mark goes back to an old hobby horse – the poor venture capital environment for tech start ups in Canada. He talks about AdScape, a company that moved to the U.S. but kept its R&D in Canada. When it was bought by Google, Canada didn’t see any of the benefits.
6.04 – The Canadian VC/Angel community hasn’t seen too much success that would recycle the available money through the system and start new companies. Duncan points out that the technology pool in Canada is very small.
6.55 – The guys segue onto the iPhone. Mark doesn’t see the handset market replicating the conditions that the iPod succeeded in. Duncan says that the iPod raised the bar for Apple and the iPhone.
7.11 – He’s curious to know how long the “cool� factor will last and how Apple will get into the carrier’s distribution channel. He points to RIM as the case study for getting a carrier to pimp their product.
8.56 – Mark is worried about the cost of the iPhone. Will the carriers subsidize it in the same way as the Blackberry is subsidized? As an enterprise device, the user rarely sees their bill at the end of the month; the iPhone is more of a consumer device.
9.40 – Duncan is concerned that the iPhone’s WiFi offering may actually be a nail in its coffin. Because users would be able to circumvent the carrier’s network, they would get cheap calls through Skype. The carriers would hate that.
11.20 – Why would the carriers subsidize a product that would kill their profit margins?
13.33 – EMI and non-DRM mp3 music tracks is the next topic for discussion. Bob Lefsetz ranted that music should be getting cheaper to encourage experimentation.
14.09 – Duncan illustrates his point with the fact that Vladimir Ashkenazy’s 1971 complete recital of Beethoven is in the top 100 songs on iTunes. The album is more than 10 hours of music, and was making the company zero dollars at its previous $100 price but is a huge hit at $29.99.
14.50 – Mark uses Allofmp3.com’s success of selling albums for $2 through a quirk of Russian copyright law. Mark will try out new music at $2 or $3 but not at $14.
15.55 – Mark is surprised the music industry has gotten its position on the web so wrong. Duncan compares it to the Sony Betamax debacle and says that entrenched positioning makes it hard to say you’re wrong before going back the iPhone.
16.24 – He reminds us of the small line between success and failure that Apple has seen before ranting about the music industry’s obsession with DRM.
0.45 – Mark and Duncan are back, without Kevin, to discuss Kathy
Sierra’s cyber bullyingordeal.
Mark wants to talk about evilness and anonymity on the Web.
1.50 – Duncan
is a big fan of Kathy and is astonished that someone who writes about the stuff
that she writes about has attracted this amount of hatred and vitriol. Mark
asks if the Internet should be regulated?
3.08 – He also wonders about the anti-elitist nature of the
blogosphere. Duncan
is surprised that the mainstream media hasn’t picked up this story.
6.01 – Mark thinks this is indicative of the echo-chamber
nature of the blogosphere and the tech sub-sector as well.
6.55 – Mark is surprised about Scoble’s
non-blogging protest. Duncan reminds us that
Ghandi brought the British Empire to its knees by not eating rice before
moving onto…
6.15 – BCE! Duncan is surprised that Michael Sabia
is having so little traction in the market and brings up the Globe
and Mail story of BCE being taken private by KKR.
8.15 – Mark explains investors’ different reactions to stock
based stories. Sabia and Entwistle (Telus) have been doing much the same job with
completely different results. The amount of moving parts in BCE means that
other companies can look at splitting it up for a profit.
9.35 – The denial from BCE makes Duncan think it is in play – mostly due to
the “new� private equity maths being used. If BCE is taken private, what does
this mean for the average Canadian.
11.15 – The guys talk about BCE’s handling of the denial and
its ramifications on the stock price.
12.48 – Mark thinks that BCE’s biggest problem is its lack
of momentum in the wireless space.
13.55 – Duncan
discusses the takeover possibilities of Telus and Rogers but comes back to the fact that BCE,
as a larger company than Telus, is a more attractive proposition for private
equity.
15.01 – Mark asks if
bloggers are journalists? Is their insight and opinion as valued as the
traditional media? Duncan
says they can be – Mark has broken stories on his blog that the media hasn’t
known about.
16.13 – Duncan
also talks about the standards
needed to qualify for media accreditation – if you have had three published
pieces in the last year in one man and his dog publications, you qualify. A
blogger with 100,000 hits a day who breaks a number of stories doesn’t.
17.04 – The media is clearly threatened by bloggers, but the
bigger story is that conferences and companies are recognizing bloggers as
“media� and are allowing them the sort of access usually reserved for
traditional media.
17.55 – Duncan
says that following the money is a good strategy here. Yahoo! lists blog stories along
with wire stories on its financial pages. He thinks we’re seeing a lot of
conversion. Mark is excited about the tech sector right now!
0.32 - Mark kicks things off with the world's obsession with YouTube, given NBC's announcement of their own video portal.
1.19 - Duncan likens big media corporations trying to jump on the YouTube bandwagon is like dinosaurs putting on fur coats and pretending to be mammals.
2.15 - Does the NBC initiative have a chance at being a success? Kevin thinks success would be to get all NBC content off YouTube and onto the new portal, but he's skeptical of how far content owners can take it.
3.13 - Duncan reminds us that YouTube works as a single portal and that disparate portals are inconvenient.
3.47 - Mark wonders what the Viacom lawsuit will mean for YouTube, but Duncan points out that there's no one else piling on so it may not mean anything. Mark compares today's TV industry with the music industry of the late nineties. If everyone can get together and put content on shared platform, piracy would disappear.
5.29 - The guys move onto Motorola and the handset industry that's becoming increasingly commoditized. Duncan uses another analogy - in a war, you should always bet on the arms merchants as they benefit no matter who wins. The problem is that bullets are just chunks of lead with no value or differentiating. Are handsets becoming like bullets?
7.09 - Kevin thinks the fickleness of consumers is to blame for the savage marketplace. Duncan quotes Coco Chanel. In a technology podcast.
7.51 - Mark segues into a Lulu Lemon $200m IPO rumour and how the exclusivity of some premium products is disappearing as they enter the mass market.
9.05 - Duncan launches into an analysis of RIMs business model and how the consumer focus of its products could lead to dangers down the line. Kevin and Mark bring up the recurring revenue RIM gets from Blackberry users.
10.34 - Duncan disagrees and goes into exactly why. He�s heard that argument for a while and it still hasn�t come to fruition.
11.37 - Mark wants to talk about the Google phone. Kevin is unsure of the viability outside of a niche market, Duncan says the screen shots he has seen look very well designed.
13.15 - Steve Ballmer's comments come up. Should he have a mute switch? Kevin thinks Ballmer is being very defensive and can't see how his comments benefit the company.
14.33 - People like Mark, who have migrated across to Google Apps and who don't use Microsoft products, are exactly the people who Ballmer should be worried about.
15.03 - Duncan cuts Microsoft some slack and actually agrees with Ballmer's point that a lot of Google's apps are released too early, with too many bugs and don't integrate well. Just because the pot is calling the kettle black doesn't mean that the kettle isn't black.
16.05 - Kevin argues that that's just Google's model and that it shows Microsoft should be, and is, worried.
1.26 – Kevin weighs in on what the Tellme acquisition means for Microsoft’s strategic direction, which is
a willingness to get in anything that may make it money.Mark brings up the Microsoft strategic
partnership with Nortel as well as its (MS’s) chequered acquisition history
beyond Windows and Office.
2.42 – Duncan
thinks it’s easy to take shots at Microsoft but they have done well with their
innovation drives.
3.55 – Is Microsoft too big for an $800m deal to move the
needle on its stock price?
5.10 – The guys move onto Cisco.
Duncan says the
deal shows Cisco is determined to make a deal if it will shift information
across its network. What will CEO John
Chambers’ legacy be when he leaves Cisco?
6.26 – Duncan
brings up Microsoft’s new Business
Productivity Infrastructure Optimization focus. It combines unified
communications with business intelligence and electronic content management
together as an office suite for the enterprise.
7.45 – Microsoft’s successes have been when its packaged up
applications as a complete, good enough, one stop suite. Why would this be any
different?
8.15 – Will Viacom be
able to squish YouTube with its $1bn
lawsuit? Kevin thinks it’s both a “real� law suit and a negotiating tactic
while predicting the beginning of the end of YouTube.
9.31 – Mark thinks it’s the end of YouTube’s momentum but Duncan thinks that the
content owners would be stupid to shut down YouTube and the free
advertising/exposure it brings.
11.41 – Is YouTube the MTV
of the Web 2.0 generation? If the content owners can give YouTube users a taste
of what they have, not the whole cake, they should be able to make money out of
it.
12.05 – Lawsuits were a big theme for the week as well with
the SEC filing some amazing
allegations against Nortel dating back
to 2000.
14.18 – Duncan
reminds us that there’s a difference between fraud and negligence. He’s amazed
that the allegations came from Nortel’s own internal investigation.
15.16 – Mark wonders about the motivations
behind the manipulations. One was to bolster the company’s results during the
downturn and the second was to trigger stock options and bonuses during the
upturn. Was the over-riding motivation greed or ego?
16.19 – Duncan
thinks there are two things going on, if you believe the SEC allegations. His
feeling is that someone told CEO John Roth that everything was fine but then
had to cover up their errors by moving money around. Kevin believes that this
scandal will effect the perception of Nortel in the market.
17.50 The guys end the show on a positive note with a
conversation on Web entrepreneurs – green is gold! A lot of investment money is
flowing towards the environmentally friendly firms.
0.27 – Mark and Kevin are back with Duncan Stewart who will
now be a regular co-host.
1.04 – The big story of the week is Guelph based Geosignraising
$160m. Geosign operates more than 180 Web sites with 35 million unique
visitors each month.
1.28 – Kevin has never heard of them and Duncan thinks this is the largest private
round a Canadian technology company has ever raised. He’s interested in the
stealth mode Geosign underwent before raising financing.
3.15 – Geosign is more interested with the focused brand of
their Web sites than their own brand.
4.23 – Clearwire, the
WiMax guys, raised $600m
in an IPO. Duncan
thinks the problem is that no one really knows what WiMax is capable of. The
other problem is that the last three attempts to build a wireless network have
failed.
5.37 – Kevin thinks the stock did well because of the
founder, Craig McCaw’s,
track record. He wonders where WiMax fits into the telco marketplace.
6.37 – Mark brings up Iridium who went into bankruptcy a year
after going public. He thinks WiMax is a niche play with a cool technology
rather than good business.
7.32 – Another cool technology is high definition
(HD) TV. Duncan
goes through the pros and cons of HD for the consumer and for the broadcaster.
9.10 – Kevin thinks that Canada’s
HD market will be pulled along with the U.S. market.
9.41 – Mark ruminates
on the amount of invitations to panels, conferences and meet-ups he’s been
getting. Are we in another tech bubble or is there a need to collaborate and
meet people?
10.26 – Duncan
thinks the bubble, and all its conferences, was a very different thing.
Conferences then were all about raising, and making, money. The sort of things
Mark is talking about are more about embracing a new way of thinking about
things. This is no get rich quick scheme.
11.22 – Kevin thinks the amount of money the tech industry
is spending on marketing shows how healthy it is. Mark thinks there is a
revival in entrepreneurialism due to the low barriers of entry offered by the
Internet.
12.36 – Mark wonders where the tech IPO is. Clearwire fell
after its launch and Vonage is a dog.
Duncan points
to the barriers of entry surrounding the software and hardware industries.
Entrepreneurs can only afford to do Web 2.0 things right now.
14.11 – Duncan
gives the AIM
stock exchange some love as training wheels for becoming a public company.
He thinks that people predicting an IPO boom are 18 months too early.
15.32 – Kevin agrees with that analysis with respect to the
telco space.
16.08 – Mark brings things full circle suggesting that
companies are loathe to go public and are instead looking for private
financing.
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking
Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
0.29 – Duncan Stewart is back as a special guest for all
things Nortel and in particular an
executive called Joel
Hackney
1.18 – Hackney was in North
Carolina when he confronted a lady
who honked him for cutting her off in a car park. He plead guilty to false
imprisonment, uttering threats and assault on a female. Mark was surprised to
see his Nortel
blog becoming the source for Nortel information for Nortel employees
1.59 – Duncan’s
take is that Nortel needs to be whiter than white and should’ve taken the Tylenol approach
and got out in front of the scandal. Mark agrees and gets some props from Duncan
3.40 – It’s an interesting case study on what to do with a
strange issue. Blogs can be very opinionated and so how the blogosphere deals
with certain events is more and more important
4.39 – Duncan
disagrees with Mark that “going dark� buys a company more time. Nortel needed
to say “this happened, we are examining it and we will deal with it�. They
didn’t and by not doing it the issue escalated
5.15 – Duncan
talks about how the democratization of the investigative journalist and the
democratization of information flow will effect a company’s communications
processes
5.50 – Mark brings up Peter Currie’s resignation
and the newest restatement
from Nortel. Kevin thinks it’s getting embarrassing even if the market isn’t
penalizing Nortel yet. Duncan
thinks Nortel should restate more often
8.03 – Mark brings up Wireless
Number Portability – something that’s coming up on March 13. Kevin thinks
not advertising the date of WNP means the wireless carriers are viewing it as a
zero sum game
9.20 – A study for Seaboard Group shows that Canadian
wireless users typically pay 56 per cent more than the average U.S.
user and 30 per cent more than European users. Duncan brings up an analogy to illustrate the
problem – more competition is needed, not WNP
10.55 – Kevin thinks foreign ownership or preferred conditions
for new entrants is the answer
11.45 – Mark thinks the market is like a runway. Penetration
is only at about 55 per cent of the market so there’s more room to grow. Until
penetration gets to 75 per cent or higher, there won’t be too much aggressive
competition
13.26 – Stock theme of the week is the deal
between Oracle and Hyperion. This effects Canada’s
largest software company, Cognos another
billion dollar market cap BI vendor. Every time Oracle buys a BI player,
Cognos’s value jumps as the merging company’s customer base suffers through
integration challenges
0.37 – Mark was excited about Sling Media, makers of the
Slingbox being in Toronto
and got a chance to shoot the breeze with them. He loves the sling but wonders
if this will ever go mainstream?
1.23 – Kevin thinks it’s a definite geek gadget
1.49 – Can you ever be a viable company selling $200
hardware. Sling has a lot of funding behind it and soon hopes to be the
standard software in your mobile device
2.55 – Mark is also fascinated by Sling’s Manager of Online
Communications who was originally a blogger
covering the company. He wonders if the blogosphere is a new recruiting ground
for branding, communications and marketing people
3.41 – Kevin thinks it depends on how the hiring company
views the blogosphere
4.45 – Mark has seen more PR people reach out to him as a
blogger than when he was at the National Post
5.35 – Kevin drops the bomb that he’s planning to join the
blogosphere with a gadget blog! He’s got the URL and just needs to get his
design down
6.23 – Google Apps for the enterprise (Premier Edition) launched last week for
$50 per year, per user. Is there any room within the enterprise for Google’s
suite? Kevin thinks that the large enterprise won’t have room for it but that
charging for the service Google will get better adoption from the small to
micro businesses
8.10 – Mark uses Gmail as his
go-to mail and within b5media and the mesh organizers, the teams use Google
Apps to collaborate
10.45 – The guys have spent a lot of time talking
competition in the wireless section but now they turn their attention to
broadcasting and Astral Media’s acquisition
of Standard Broadcasting. What does this mean for the Canadian marketplace, the
consumer and the advertiser?
11.55 – Kevin thinks it can’t be a good thing for the
consumer or the advertiser and that ad rates aren’t going anywhere but up
13.00 – Mark references a Globe
and Mail article suggesting competitive forces should drive the market, not
regulation. He sees the telecom and broadcasting markets as giving consumers and
advertisers less choice
14.14 – Kevin isn’t optimistic on the state of prices in
these Canadian industries. He suggests intervention is in order
15.15 – Mark warns we should be careful what we wish for
over deregulation and Kevin points to the New Zealand market where more
regulation was needed after deregulation
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking
Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
0.37 – Mark and Kevin are back with news of another Google
acquisition. Adscape places
advertisements in video games and competes with Microsoft acquisition Massive
1.47 – Kevin is quite the gamer and has been noticing a lot
of ads, especially in NBA ’07,
that do seem to “stick�
2.45 – Can anything Web 2.0 be advertising free? Would ads
take away from the gaming experience? Kevin thinks it has to be subtle in order
to work
3.16 – Austin Hill points out that Adscape, Voodoo and iStock Photo are all high
profile web start ups with no Canadian venture capital money. Mark asks whether
the Canadian VC market has an appetite for Web start ups (with the usual b5media disclosure)
5.28 – Kevin agrees that the U.S. is snapping up the best
Canadian start-ups. Is there an aversion from the VC community or is it a problem
of scale for the companies
6.28 – Mark and Kevin cover speculation over a fourth
telecom carrier in Canada. The Canadian government is starting the process
to sell a spectrum option (that’s needed to run a wireless service) that would
see a new wireless company emerge and that could open up the wireless market
8.26 – Kevin believes the Canadian wireless market’s prices
are suppressing demand and causing trading problems with the U.S., Canada’s main trading partner. He
thinks the cell phone landscape will be changing
9.20 – Mark thinks Canada
needs more competition in the wireless sector after Microcell
was acquired by Rogers with Federal approval. The last thing the big three
want is a fourth carrier that would come in and be aggressive on pricing.
10.56 – Mark segueways into the Blackberry, the wireless carriers best
friend. How is the Blackberry changing our lifestyles? Kevin thinks there needs
to be balance between work and life – something the Blackberry puts a strain on
12.51 – Mark is an undisciplined Blackberry user. He advises
putting the Blackberry down when you get home and after you’ve had an evening
with the family, allow yourself a five minute window to get those urgent emails
out
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking
Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
1.10 – Kevin analyzes the layoffs and puts the
Alcatel/Lucent cuts due to synergies but thinks the Nortel problems are
symptomatic of its ongoing problems. Mark wonders where Nortel will be once the
restructuring and job cuts are done?
4.19 – Is there light at the end of the tunnel for Nortel?
IPTV is a big focus, but will it take off and rival cable and if so, will
Nortel even be a player? The questions are there for wimax
5.50 – Mark brings up Steve Jobs’ DRM missive – talking
out of his mouth and ass at the same time. Kevin is baffled that Jobs is
pushing the music industry to abolish DRM when Apple is in a shared leadership
position
7.20 – What is Jobs’ ulterior motive?
7.50 – EMI is
considering selling all of its music in a digital
format free of restrictions. Kevin thinks this will reduce piracy, increase
sales of music devices and industry sales in the long term. He warns there will
be growing pains though
8.59 – Mark breaks down the issues surrounding DRM. Mark
thinks the best thing about P2P file sharing is the no risk aspect of
discovering new music. He thinks the industry needs to find new ways to expose
consumers to new music in a low risk, low cost way
11.08 – Kevin warns that no matter what music companies try
to do to protect their content, someone will always be able to break it
11.28 – Mark brings up CircuitCityclosing 62
of “The Source� stores. He’s always
found it very geeky – Kevin reminds him they’re doing a podcast. Enough said.
12.05 – Kevin isn’t sure why Circuit City is failing; but
thinks it could be to do with Best Buy and Future Shop’s presence
12.45 – The weekly request for swag. Mark segue ways into
the amazing amount of Apple gadgets you can
buy. Apple’s PR take note!
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking
Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
0.30 – Kevin’s back with news that CBC.ca is linking to Talking Tech – will the
podcast get bought up by the mainstream?
1.13 – It’s been a slow week in tech this week but the guys
start off on Windows
Vista which officially launched after 5 years and 50 millions lines of code
– but no lines outside the big retailers
2.05 – Mark sees Vista as
an upgrade to XP. Kevin thinks the lack of excitement shows just how many applications
are being moved online
2.48 – However, Microsoft has the hardware partners to
ensure you won’t escape from Vista’s clutches
3.01 – Will this be the last version of Windows from
Microsoft? Mark wonders if the amount of web-based applications will open the
door for Linux to make a charge to the mainstream.
3.56 – If people are spending money on their computers,
they’re spending on upgrading their online experiences
4.56 – BlogTV.ca launched
this week. Kevin was there picking up a great grab-bag from Canada’s
version of YouTube. He guesses the people who use it will be looking for very
localized content but doesn’t think it’ll make a big splash with advertisers
6.20 – Mark wonders why it’s taken so long for Canadian
companies to embrace video sharing. He also notes that BlogTV is very DRM
friendly – so don’t go looking for the “good stuff�
7.45 – Canadians are very enthusiastic about high speed
Internet access and now Cisco and Videotron offering high speed access of 100mbps.
Kevin will believe it when he sees it but can’t imagine what applications he’d
use it for after music and video
9.41 – Mark points out that people are willing to pay for
speed and the ISPs are going to make Canadians pay through the nose for it. He
is, however, looking for a free wireless router from Cisco using the N
technology.
11.26 – Nortel’s CTO, John Roese is now blogging (hat tip to Alec Saunders).
It’s strange that an embattled company’s executive is one of the first Canadian
executives to be blogging. Kevin is unsure why more aren’t blogging – but warns
not to blog unless you have something interesting to say
12.53 – Mark agrees blogs aren’t for everyone but suggests
that consumer facing companies should definitely be blogging. Is Rose’s blog
for internal purposes or is it to build the external brand image?
0.35 - Kevin is out for the week and Mark welcomes back
analyst Duncan Stewart
1.01 – Microsoft is
in trouble for paying
an expert to edit Wikipedia
entries. Duncan
points out that Microsoft has always been seen as an aggressive corporation but
doesn’t see the big deal about editing an open source document that can always
be changed back
3.23 – Mark brings it back to the Vista laptop giveaway and
says that this was the right idea but the wrong approach as well
5.02 – Duncan analyses the
stock price and comes to the conclusion that it is a good value, especially
with the Vista coupons to be cashed in next
quarter. The chip price war should be affecting Microsoft’s sales more though
6.37 – Mark wonders what the rate of adoption for Vista will be and how long the company’s entertainment
unit will continue to lose $300m a year
7.22 – Duncan
points out Microsoft has never been good at anything outside of Windows and
Office. He brings up “Tiger�, a failed video on demand offering from the 90’s
8.01 – He also predicts Vista’s
adoption rate will be lousy and that Microsoft took all the interesting
features out in order to ship it
8.40 – Mark references Walter Mosberg’s review “It’s okay�
that sums it all up. Mark won’t be upgrading his desktop Windows machine
9.19 – He brings up Forrester’s ROI
of Blogging report that addresses blogging from an empirical point of view
9.56 – Duncan
says a lot of the investment community uses blogs to get information on
companies and says that the idea of a corporate blog is a brilliant one. He
likens it to having a Web site in the 90’s – it’ll become mandatory.
11.23 – CEOs will need to become more human in the eyes of
customers and shareholders
11.58 – Mark reminds listeners that blogs aren’t for
everyone but they are extremely useful for consumer facing companies such as Tim Hortons and Loblaws’ President Choice brand
13.17 – Loblaw’s is one of the least tech-savvy retail
companies and the culture may not be right for them. However, all companies
have shareholders and could do a better job communicating with them – something
blogs are extremely efficient at doing
14.10 – Mark starts to wrap things up with a look at Google’s plans for google-ising YouTube with Adwords, turning a “cool�
service into a real business. Duncan
reminds us of Google’s ability to monetize freemium Web services such as search
15.38 – Mark comments on the amount of ubiquity Google has
achieved in his life. Finally, Duncan
draws comparison between Microsoft and Google to end the show
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking
Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
0.55 – Joost, formerly
known as The Venice Project, a new way to distribute TV shows, kicks off this
week’s discussion. Kevin is impressed with the amount of content available and
the buzz that’s been generated. 2.20 – Mark thinks people are equating the success of Joost
with the success of Kazaa and Skype, the founders’ previous ventures. He’s
more interested in the wider picture of video distribution that players such as
Netflix are getting into.
3.10 – The traditional business models of cable co’s and
broadcasters are being disrupted.
3.45 – Kevin predicts the cable co’s and broadcaster will
react with law suits to stop the new distribution channel.
5.27 – Mark predicts that Joost will be bought by a bigger
player within three years if it gets any user traction.
6.17 – Kevin wants to talk about Skype’s move to start
charging connection and sign up fees in certain markets. Mark calls it the
eBay-isation of the service following the $4.2bn acquisition. It won’t stop
growing and it will still be lower priced than the alternative
9.57 – Mark brings up the problem of protecting data after a
CIBC fund lost
the data of 470,000 customers stored on a back-up file. In the U.S., more than
40 million credit cards could’ve been compromised following a hack
into TJX’s systems
11.05 – Will this curb online finance and business? Kevin
isn’t phased and has had his information stolen offline, not online. It may
make people think twice though.
11.43 – Not Mark! He thinks not using the Internet because
of the chance of a break-in would make life a lot harder and more inconvenient.
These incidents do keep the big security vendors laughing all the way to the
bank though.
13.02 – News from the Canadian entrepreneur market is that Terry
Mathews sold his voice software company, Ubiquity, to Avaya for $140m. On the flip
side though, his company March Networks
saw customer Wal-Mart looking for another supplier for surveillance video
technology. Even though that stock took a hit, he’ll be OK.
14.48 – Mark goes through what exactly March Networks does
and recommends buying March’s stock. Buy on bad news, sell on good news is his
motto.
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking
Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
Mark and Kevin are back with resident stock analyst Duncan
Stewart.
1.20 – Kevin regales us with highlights from the zoo that
was CES. The theme from 2007 is
the continued march to the living room from technology vendors. Slingbox taking files
from your computer and playing them on your TV is something that Mark’s written about before
2.20 – Mark wants to talk about the Microsoft
Home Server. He loves the idea of having a central storage for files that
you can access from anywhere in, or outside, the house.
2.15 – Duncan’s
thoughts are that display technology was particularly important. Do not buy
plasma as it burns out – especially as the new LCD will be as good, if not
better than, the current plasma technologies
5.00 – Kevin predicts he’ll be investing in Skype enabled phones – he saw some good ones
on display in Vegas, especially if you have a SkypeOut plan
5.56 – Some of the crazier gadgets on display included a
living room sized simulator, huge gaming guns and virtual reality technology.
Disappointingly for gadget fiends, a lot of what was on display was tactical,
not conceptual
6.54 – The biggest story to come out of CES was that it was
completely overshadowed by Macworld, Steve Jobs and the launch of the iPhone
7.34 Duncan’s initial take on the iPhone, beyond technical
specs, is that the market Apple is trying to penetrate is a lot more mature than
the mp3 player market was when the iPod
was launched. Cell phones are already well styled and it’s hard to see the
iPhone selling more than the 10 million Steve Jobs would like to sell
8.40 – Kevin disagrees and points to Apple’s track record of
disruption.If the iPhone acts the way
it did at Macworld, it will be that all-in-one device that has been promised
for so long. He’s fed up with carrying around two devices and will seriously
look at buying it
10.21 – Mark is more pragmatic.The cost is high considering consumers are
used to getting phones for free or extremely cheap music players. Will the
Canadian carriers be on-board with wi-fi connectivity? Probably not
11.15 – The iPhone will not be a Blackberry killer!
11.50 – The media, both traditional and citizen, fascination
with Apple is another facet to the story.
12.28 – Duncan chimes in on the US distribution deal with Cingular, not a popular carrier, and
warns that the wireless connection on the iPhone is a very skinny pipe which
will make it hard to get a good user experience
13.27 – Mark brings up some poor results for AMD. Duncan goes onto reveal that AMD
missed its quarter projections – which doesn’t bode well for its battle with Intel. Intel is destroying AMD’s margins even
though AMD is gaining market share
15.01 – Mark wonders why Intel has waited until now to turn
its guns on the new upstart. Duncan lets us in on a parlor game where
manufacturers keep AMD whenever they look as if they’ll drop below 15 per cent
market share.In return, Intel slaps AMD
whenever they look as if they’ll rise above 25 per cent share
16.04 – Stock tips are hard to come by but buy AMD when it’s
at 15 per cent market share and then sell as it approaches 25 per cent
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking
Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
0.46 – Mark and Kevin jump into the special all-you-can-eat holiday
buffet being served up by Skype.Does this mean that eBay is getting
serious about Skype as a business?
1.31 – Mark’s company, b5media
has already paid the 13.95 for his year’s service.Skype is moving into the mainstream after
being a disruptive technology.
2.29 – Kevin predicts that Skype will find the VOIP market
to be a crowded one and will keep it in the back of his mind, despite Seaboard using Vonage.
2.50 – Mark crunches the numbers and comes up with an extra
$80m in revenue for Skype.How does this
make the $4.2bn eBay paid for Skype look like now?
4.10 – Kevin segues into Craigslist who’s CEO, Jim Buckmaster,
recently announced it wasn’t
interested in profits.Mark says
Buckmaster’s comments raised interesting comments – is “The List� a business or
a public service?
5.55 – Mark revisits an interview he had with the founder
and the CEO of Craigslist.They’re not
interested in taking over the world in the same way as Google is but they’ve
created a product that resonates with people all over the world that’s
competing against the traditional newspapers.
7.20 – Kevin says newspapers should be grateful Craigslist
isn’t raising more money to directly compete against the mainstream media.
7.45 – The guys move onto a favourite subject, BCE.In a recent investors day, George Cope predicted 3-5 per cent revenue
growth in 2007 when the telecom market could be deregulated and face a price
war.
8.35 – Kevin was there and saw the love investors have for
Mr. Cope before going through the reasons why he’s so bullish about 2007. He
predicts better packaging, innovative marketing and more compelling bundles
next year.
The interrogate Kevin Restivo session starts here:
9.45 – Mark wants to talk IPTV.Microsoft is pushing its platform and there
are trial pockets over the country.Kevin doesn’t know why it hasn’t taken off yet.
11.10 – When will carriers get serious with VOIP and when
will the cable co’s get serious? Kevin doesn’t think there’ll be any big
changes in the short term so the carriers don’t cannibalize their existing
customers and the cable co’s are focused on the low-hanging fruit for now.Steady as she goes seems to be the message.
12.58 – Mark and Kevin got an offer to try out Microsoft Vista this
week.Mark is a recent Mac convert but was impressed by
the beta he saw.Kevin is curious but
not as excited as Mark, they both want to see if it’ll live up to the five year
hype.
0.30 – Mark and Kevin welcome technology analyst Duncan
Stewart as their first ever live guest.
0.50 – They dive into the
split between Nortel and its
accounting firm, Deloitte.Kevin bemoans the fact that Nortel was once
interesting but can’t shake its accounting woes.
2.47 – Duncan
believes it was an important step to move on from the accounting mishap to
partner with a firm that investors will have (more) trust in.Mark notes the amount of accountants that
were embedded within Nortel made it a messy, protracted split.
4.50 – Troubled stock prices leads into a discussion of Yahoo! and the succession of Sue Decker.Duncan
likens her promotion as a sports team’s towel manager being announced as new
starting quarterback.
5.45 – Mark asks Kevin if he knows what Yahoo! is, and
whether it knows it is.Kevin references
the infamous peanut
butter manifesto and points to the string of convoluted acquisitions as
evidence of confusion.
7.16 – The news release that anointed
Drecker referenced Jerry Yang, but not co-founder David Filo.Duncan
calls Yahoo!’s approach “a mile wide and an inch deep�.
8.08 – What does Yahoo! want to be when it grows up?
8.30 – Mark gives some thought to the slew of acquisition
and what it means to the tech start-up industry in Canada – he’s disappointed by the
lack of innovation happening at the moment.
9.05 – Kevin think the Canadian start-up scene is in a
valley and can’t see the next RIM out there.
9.58 – Duncan
points out that people we thought had died, Wi-Lan
and Servicom, are coming back and making
some ripples, if not waves.
10.10 – The trio turns their attention to getting Kevin some
nice gadgets for Christmas.He’s excited
by video game consoles, the LG Chocolate phone and the Blackberry Pearl.
0.31 – The story of the week is Microsoft Vista.The hype is over, the product has been shipped and Mark defers to Kevin for an expert opinion.Vista is groundbreaking, but only from a product development perspective.This will be better than most of Microsoft’s first tries but it’s still worth waiting for the kinks to be ironed out
1.55 – Neither Mark or Kevin think customers will be jumping on board right now, but as the saying goes, they’ll either pay now or they’ll pay later.The upgrade cycle means Vista will be a success eventually; the only question is whether Microsoft can afford to wait for that revenue
4.27 – Mark thinks the next big cash cow for Microsoft will be Office 2007.Enough time has passed since the last upgrade for users to be wanting more from their office suite
5.45 – Kevin moves onto the beleaguered newspaper industry, one of Mark’s favourite topics.Last week Kevin Meaney (USA Today) asked hi-tech entrepreneurs/investors how they would improve the newspaper industry but surprisingly, they couldn’t come up with anything radical
6.58 – Mark believes the answer is in changing the culture of the newsroom from reporters to content producers.In addition to writing articles for the paper, they should also be blogging, writing small, snappy, instant opinion pieces and recording video
8.33 – Kevin brings up file sharing and the fact that BitTorrentraised $25m (U.S.) and now looks to be legitimately moving into the mainstream
9.27 – Mark isn’t sure what to make of it.Licensing deals have been made with content owners to distribute their content with BitTorrent technology.There’s no network, so where’s the VC money going to go?
10.10 – Will the licensing of content really drive people to download legitimate, rather than pirated, content?Kevin thinks it’s a great move and that the standoff between “rogue� file sharers and content owners is coming to an end
12.18 – Mark believes most people want to do the right thing when it comes to accessing content, but at a reasonable price.iTunes hit the sweet spot with the 99cents price point.Can BitTorrent, and the movie/TV industry, access this market as well?
13.20 – However Mark’s been watching free episodes of My Name is Earl on French file sharing site, DailyMotion
14.25 – The guys end the show with another plea for Starbucks sponsorship
Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
