0.32 â 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 â 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. Duncanâs interested in seeing the marketâs reaction to this news.

2.44 â Mark goes back to the theory that Balsillie will move the Preds up to Waterloo. Heâs also interested in the different paths Balsillie and Lazaridis are taking now RIM has been such a huge success.

4.10 â Balsillie is the business guy while Lazaridis is more focused on the engineering. Kevin questions Balsillieâs choice to take the eye off the ball when so many competitors are catching up to the Blackberry.

4.53 â Mark brings up Googleâs $3.9m investment into biotech start up 23andMe, which was founded by Sergey Brinâs wife. Duncan points out the amount is less than a rounding error on Googleâs 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 â The guys move onto Googleâs $100m acquisition of FeedBurner, the RSS distribution and advertising company. The buy comes in the wake of other online advertising acquisitions including Microsoftâs $6bn purchase of aQuantive.

8.02 â 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 â 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 â Kevin asks whoâd you rather work for â Google or Microsoft. He makes a good comparison that Google is the new Microsoft; Microsoft is the old IBM. Duncan points out that itâs been uncool to work at Microsoft for more than a decade now but itâs still cool to work at Google.

11.26 â 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 canât see any light at the end of the tunnel for the telco industry.

12.35 â Duncan reflects on the telecom industryâs growth which some data suggests will either be at zero per cent or, in fact, be negative.

12.55 â 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 â Duncan plugs a conference around municipal use of WiFi happening early next week and Mark takes the opportunity to slam Toronto Hydroâs WiFi network in downtown Toronto.

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.

0.25 â Mark, Kevin and Duncan are back with a discussion of what were the Blackberryâs users doing during the down time this week?

1.55 â Duncan wonders if there is an architectural reason for the service going down and staying down. If the software and the system doesnât scale, how will this affect the stock price?

2.45 â Kevin wasnât 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 â BCE is now in play with private equity investors ready to spend up to $30bn on the company. Mark canât see the value for investors in a low growth company in competitive markets.

7.02 â Duncan thinks that the fact BCE hasnât 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 â Kevin thinks that no matter what happens, the situation is indicative of a lack of confidence in the management team.

9.07 â Duncan brings up another angle â John Henderson of Scotiabank is suggesting BCE take over Telus to form âBELUSâ â but doubts the current management team would be that aggressive.

9.51 â 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 â Kevin doesnât 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 â 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 itâs slow on migrating to GSM networks.

12.56 â Duncan pushes back on Markâs assertion that thereâs 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 â He uses Rogers as an example before revealing the secret to making money out of BCE and Telusâ (13.37)

14.14 - The guys move onto a lighter topic â 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 â Mark admits that Canadian VCs such as the oneâs 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 â Mark is back with Duncan Stewart. 

1.23 â The guys start off with the consolidation of the Canadian software industry and the sale of one of Markâs stocks, Work Brain by Infor.  

3.05 â Duncan laments the investorâs choice of Canadian enterprise software companies. Mark brings up the problem with the Canadian software industry â to scale you need to sell to the U.S. which is when youâll attract the attention of an acquirer. 

4.09 â 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 â RIM and Nortel managed to stay in Canada but Duncan is worried about the lack of obvious star companies coming into the âfarm systemâ. 

5.20 â Mark goes back to an old hobby horse â 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 didnât see any of the benefits. 

6.04 â The Canadian VC/Angel community hasnât 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 â The guys segue onto the iPhone. Mark doesnât 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 â Heâs curious to know how long the âcoolâ factor will last and how Apple will get into the carrierâs distribution channel. He points to RIM as the case study for getting a carrier to pimp their product. 

8.56 â 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 â Duncan is concerned that the iPhoneâs WiFi offering may actually be a nail in its coffin. Because users would be able to circumvent the carrierâs network, they would get cheap calls through Skype. The carriers would hate that. 

11.20 â Why would the carriers subsidize a product that would kill their profit margins? 

12.00 â Mark brings up Rogersâ new wireless webcam which was launched by William Shatner last week. Heâs not sold on the video and wireless connection.  

13.33 â 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 â Duncan illustrates his point with the fact that Vladimir Ashkenazyâs 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 â Mark uses Allofmp3.comâs 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 â 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 youâre wrong before going back the iPhone. 

16.24 â He reminds us of the small line between success and failure that Apple has seen before ranting about the music industryâs 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.  

0.45 â Mark and Duncan are back, without Kevin, to discuss Kathy Sierraâs cyber bullying ordeal. Mark wants to talk about evilness and anonymity on the Web.

1.50 â 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 â He also wonders about the anti-elitist nature of the blogosphere. Duncan is surprised that the mainstream media hasnât picked up this story.

6.01 â Mark thinks this is indicative of the echo-chamber nature of the blogosphere and the tech sub-sector as well.

6.55 â Mark is surprised about Scobleâs non-blogging protest. Duncan reminds us that Ghandi brought the British Empire to its knees by not eating rice before moving ontoâ

6.15 â 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 â Mark explains investorsâ 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 â The denial from BCE makes Duncan think it is in play â mostly due to the ânewâ private equity maths being used. If BCE is taken private, what does this mean for the average Canadian.

11.15 â The guys talk about BCEâs handling of the denial and its ramifications on the stock price.

12.48 â Mark thinks that BCEâs biggest problem is its lack of momentum in the wireless space.

13.55 â 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 â Mark asks if bloggers are journalists? Is their insight and opinion as valued as the traditional media? Duncan says they can be â Mark has broken stories on his blog that the media hasnât known about.

16.13 â Duncan also talks about the standards needed to qualify for media accreditation â 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 doesnât.

17.04 â The media is clearly threatened by bloggers, but the bigger story is that conferences and companies are recognizing bloggers as âmediaâ and are allowing them the sort of access usually reserved for traditional media.

17.55 â 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 weâre 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.

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. HeÃÂÃÂÂÃÂÂs heard that argument for a while and it still hasnÃÂÃÂÂÃÂÂt 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.

1.26 â Kevin weighs in on what the Tellme acquisition means for Microsoftâs 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 (MSâs) chequered acquisition history beyond Windows and Office.

2.42 â Duncan thinks itâs easy to take shots at Microsoft but they have done well with their innovation drives.

3.55 â Is Microsoft too big for an $800m deal to move the needle on its stock price?

5.10 â 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 Chambersâ legacy be when he leaves Cisco?

6.26 â Duncan brings up Microsoftâs 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 â Microsoftâs successes have been when its packaged up applications as a complete, good enough, one stop suite. Why would this be any different?

8.15 â Will Viacom be able to squish YouTube with its $1bn lawsuit? Kevin thinks itâs both a ârealâ law suit and a negotiating tactic while predicting the beginning of the end of YouTube.

9.31 â Mark thinks itâs the end of YouTubeâs momentum but Duncan thinks that the content owners would be stupid to shut down YouTube and the free advertising/exposure it brings.

11.41 â 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 â 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 â Duncan reminds us that thereâs a difference between fraud and negligence. Heâs amazed that the allegations came from Nortelâs own internal investigation.

15.16 â Mark wonders about the motivations behind the manipulations. One was to bolster the companyâs 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 â 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 â 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 â Mark and Kevin are back with Duncan Stewart who will now be a regular co-host.

1.04 â 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 â Kevin has never heard of them and Duncan thinks this is the largest private round a Canadian technology company has ever raised. Heâs interested in the stealth mode Geosign underwent before raising financing.

3.15 â Geosign is more interested with the focused brand of their Web sites than their own brand.

4.23 â 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 â Kevin thinks the stock did well because of the founder, Craig McCawâs, track record. He wonders where WiMax fits into the telco marketplace.

6.37 â 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 â 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 â Kevin thinks that Canadaâs HD market will be pulled along with the U.S. market.

9.41 â Mark ruminates on the amount of invitations to panels, conferences and meet-ups heâs been getting. Are we in another tech bubble or is there a need to collaborate and meet people?

10.26 â 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 â 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 â 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 â 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 â Kevin agrees with that analysis with respect to the telco space.

16.08 â 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 â Duncan Stewart is back as a special guest for all things Nortel and in particular an executive called Joel Hackney

1.18 â 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 â Duncanâs take is that Nortel needs to be whiter than white and shouldâve taken the Tylenol approach and got out in front of the scandal. Mark agrees and gets some props from Duncan

3.40 â Itâs 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 â Duncan disagrees with Mark that âgoing darkâ buys a company more time. Nortel needed to say âthis happened, we are examining it and we will deal with itâ. They didnât and by not doing it the issue escalated

5.15 â Duncan talks about how the democratization of the investigative journalist and the democratization of information flow will effect a companyâs communications processes

5.50 â Mark brings up Peter Currieâs resignation and the newest restatement from Nortel. Kevin thinks itâs getting embarrassing even if the market isnât penalizing Nortel yet. Duncan thinks Nortel should restate more often

8.03 â Mark brings up Wireless Number Portability â something thatâs 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 â 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 â more competition is needed, not WNP

10.55 â Kevin thinks foreign ownership or preferred conditions for new entrants is the answer

11.45 â Mark thinks the market is like a runway. Penetration is only at about 55 per cent of the market so thereâs more room to grow. Until penetration gets to 75 per cent or higher, there wonât be too much aggressive competition

13.26 â Stock theme of the week is the deal between Oracle and Hyperion. This effects Canadaâs largest software company, Cognos another billion dollar market cap BI vendor. Every time Oracle buys a BI player, Cognosâs value jumps as the merging companyâs customer base suffers through integration challenges

15.05 â Mark ends things with a plug for mesh conference and the key note speakers who include Mike Arriginton, Richard Edelman and Craigslistâs 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 â 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 â Kevin thinks itâs a definite geek gadget

1.49 â 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 â Mark is also fascinated by Slingâs 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 â Kevin thinks it depends on how the hiring company views the blogosphere

4.45 â Mark has seen more PR people reach out to him as a blogger than when he was at the National Post

5.35 â Kevin drops the bomb that heâs planning to join the blogosphere with a gadget blog! Heâs got the URL and just needs to get his design down

6.23 â Google Apps for the enterprise (Premier Edition) launched last week for $50 per year, per user. Is there any room within the enterprise for Googleâs suite? Kevin thinks that the large enterprise wonât have room for it but that charging for the service Google will get better adoption from the small to micro businesses

8.10 â Mark uses Gmail as his go-to mail and within b5media and the mesh organizers, the teams use Google Apps to collaborate

8.15 â Is the tech IPO back as Business 2.0 suggests? Mark hasnât seen any evidence for this but thinks the tech M&A is back. Kevin agrees weâre going to have to wait for another gold rush of IPOs

10.45 â The guys have spent a lot of time talking competition in the wireless section but now they turn their attention to broadcasting and Astral Mediaâs acquisition of Standard Broadcasting. What does this mean for the Canadian marketplace, the consumer and the advertiser?

11.55 â Kevin thinks it canât be a good thing for the consumer or the advertiser and that ad rates arenât going anywhere but up

13.00 â 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 â Kevin isnât optimistic on the state of prices in these Canadian industries. He suggests intervention is in order

15.15 â 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.

0.37 â 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 â Kevin is quite the gamer and has been noticing a lot of ads, especially in NBA â07, that do seem to âstickâ

2.45 â 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 â 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 â 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 â Mark and Kevin cover speculation over a fourth telecom carrier in Canada. The Canadian government is starting the process to sell a spectrum option (thatâs needed to run a wireless service) that would see a new wireless company emerge and that could open up the wireless market

8.26 â Kevin believes the Canadian wireless marketâs prices are suppressing demand and causing trading problems with the U.S., Canadaâs main trading partner. He thinks the cell phone landscape will be changing

9.20 â 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 â 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 â something the Blackberry puts a strain on

12.51 â Mark is an undisciplined Blackberry user. He advises putting the Blackberry down when you get home and after youâve 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.

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.

1.10 â 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 â 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 â Mark brings up Steve Jobsâ DRM missive â 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 â What is Jobsâ ulterior motive?

7.50 â 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 â 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 â 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 â Mark brings up Circuit City closing 62 of âThe Sourceâ stores. Heâs always found it very geeky â Kevin reminds him theyâre doing a podcast. Enough said.

12.05 â Kevin isnât sure why Circuit City is failing; but thinks it could be to do with Best Buy and Future Shopâs presence

12.45 â The weekly request for swag. Mark segue ways into the amazing amount of Apple gadgets you can buy. Appleâs 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.

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.

0.30 â Kevinâs back with news that CBC.ca is linking to Talking Tech â will the podcast get bought up by the mainstream?

1.13 â Itâs 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 â but no lines outside the big retailers

2.05 â 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 â However, Microsoft has the hardware partners to ensure you wonât escape from Vistaâs clutches

3.01 â 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 â If people are spending money on their computers, theyâre spending on upgrading their online experiences

4.56 â BlogTV.ca launched this week. Kevin was there picking up a great grab-bag from Canadaâs version of YouTube. He guesses the people who use it will be looking for very localized content but doesnât think itâll make a big splash with advertisers

6.20 â Mark wonders why itâs taken so long for Canadian companies to embrace video sharing. He also notes that BlogTV is very DRM friendly â so donât go looking for the âgood stuffâ

7.45 â 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 canât imagine what applications heâd use it for after music and video

9.41 â 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 â Nortelâs CTO, John Roese is now blogging (hat tip to Alec Saunders). Itâs strange that an embattled companyâs executive is one of the first Canadian executives to be blogging. Kevin is unsure why more arenât blogging â but warns not to blog unless you have something interesting to say

12.53 â Mark agrees blogs arenât for everyone but suggests that consumer facing companies should definitely be blogging. Is Roseâs blog for internal purposes or is it to build the external brand image?

14.50 â Are Mark and Kevin swag whores? Email your answers to heytalkingtech@gmail.com

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.

1.01 â 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 doesnât see the big deal about editing an open source document that can always be changed back

3.23 â 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 â 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 Microsoftâs sales more though

6.37 â Mark wonders what the rate of adoption for Vista will be and how long the companyâs entertainment unit will continue to lose $300m a year

7.22 â Duncan points out Microsoft has never been good at anything outside of Windows and Office. He brings up âTigerâ, a failed video on demand offering from the 90âs

8.01 â He also predicts Vistaâs adoption rate will be lousy and that Microsoft took all the interesting features out in order to ship it

8.40 â Mark references Walter Mosbergâs review âItâs okayâ that sums it all up. Mark wonât be upgrading his desktop Windows machine

9.19 â He brings up Forresterâs ROI of Blogging report that addresses blogging from an empirical point of view

9.56 â 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 90âs â itâll become mandatory.

11.23 â CEOs will need to become more human in the eyes of customers and shareholders

11.58 â Mark reminds listeners that blogs arenât for everyone but they are extremely useful for consumer facing companies such as Tim Hortons and Loblawsâ President Choice brand

13.17 â Loblawâs 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 â something blogs are extremely efficient at doing

14.10 â Mark starts to wrap things up with a look at Googleâs plans for google-ising YouTube with Adwords, turning a âcoolâ service into a real business. Duncan reminds us of Googleâs ability to monetize freemium Web services such as search

15.38 â 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.

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.

0.55 â Joost, formerly known as The Venice Project, a new way to distribute TV shows, kicks off this weekâs discussion. Kevin is impressed with the amount of content available and the buzz thatâs been generated.

2.20 â Mark thinks people are equating the success of Joost with the success of Kazaa and Skype, the foundersâ previous ventures. Heâs more interested in the wider picture of video distribution that players such as Netflix are getting into.

3.10 â The traditional business models of cable coâs and broadcasters are being disrupted.

3.45 â Kevin predicts the cable coâs and broadcaster will react with law suits to stop the new distribution channel.

5.27 â Mark predicts that Joost will be bought by a bigger player within three years if it gets any user traction.

6.17 â Kevin wants to talk about Skypeâs 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 wonât stop growing and it will still be lower priced than the alternative

9.57 â 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 couldâve been compromised following a hack into TJXâs systems

11.05 â Will this curb online finance and business? Kevin isnât phased and has had his information stolen offline, not online. It may make people think twice though.

11.43 â 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 â 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, heâll be OK.

14.48 â Mark goes through what exactly March Networks does and recommends buying Marchâs 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.

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.

Mark and Kevin are back with resident stock analyst Duncan Stewart.

1.20 â 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 Markâs written about before

2.20 â 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 â Duncanâs thoughts are that display technology was particularly important. Do not buy plasma as it burns out â especially as the new LCD will be as good, if not better than, the current plasma technologies

5.00 â Kevin predicts heâll be investing in Skype enabled phones â he saw some good ones on display in Vegas, especially if you have a SkypeOut plan

5.56 â 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 â 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 Duncanâs 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 itâs hard to see the iPhone selling more than the 10 million Steve Jobs would like to sell

8.40 â Kevin disagrees and points to Appleâs 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. Heâs fed up with carrying around two devices and will seriously look at buying it

10.21 â 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 â The iPhone will not be a Blackberry killer!

11.50 â The media, both traditional and citizen, fascination with Apple is another facet to the story.

12.28 â 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 â Mark brings up some poor results for AMD. Duncan goes onto reveal that AMD