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.
