0.45 – Mark and Duncan are back, without Kevin, to discuss Kathy Sierra’s cyber bullying ordeal. 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!

Audio or text comments for Mark, Kevin and Duncan can be emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.

Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.

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.

Audio comments for Mark, Kevin and Duncan can be emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.

Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.

0.32 – The theme for this week is “Let’s make a deal�. Microsoft bought Tellme for between $800m and $1bn while Cisco bought Webex for $3.2bn.

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.

Audio comments for Mark, Kevin and Duncan can be emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.

Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.

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 Geosign raising $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.

Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.

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

15.05 – Mark ends things with a plug for mesh conference and the key note speakers who include Mike Arriginton, Richard Edelman and Craigslist’s Jim Buckmaster, among others. Tickets are on sale now

Audio comments for Mark and Kevin can be left on the Talking Tech hotline: 1 206-333-1327 or emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.

Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.

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

8.15 – Is the tech IPO back as Business 2.0 suggests? Mark hasn’t seen any evidence for this but thinks the tech M&A is back. Kevin agrees we’re going to have to wait for another gold rush of IPOs

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.

Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.