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.

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 is back with Duncan Stewart. 

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 systemâ€?. 

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 “coolâ€? 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? 

12.00 – Mark brings up Rogers’ new wireless webcam which was launched by William Shatner last week. He’s not sold on the video and wireless connection.  

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. 

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.