According to research by Persues Development, there are 31.6 million hosted blogs, and the number is expected to hit 53.4 million by year-end. The market leader is Google's Blogger with 8 million blogs while Livejournal.com has 6.6 million. With the blogsphere exploding, there has to be an entrepreneur willing to run with my idea of a search engine that separates the wheat from the chaff - in other words, a system that kicks back the best blogs based on criteria such as links and personal reviews

I realize everyone is very keen about the prospects for wireless data these days but there seems to be far too much enthusiasm. The latest salvo in the wireless hype campaign comes from ABI Research, which expects high-quality, full-motion video to be the next "killer app". Call me a skeptic or wireless Luddite but shouldn't the industry focus on driving mobile e-mail penetration before it gets carried away with emerging services that need large amounts of bandwidth? I'm also leery about the idea people will want to watch videos on their wireless devices. In Canada, Rogers is currently offering downloadable videos but how much demand will there be for clips that cost $2 a shot. You could make the same argument for wireless music downloads. Is the convenience of immediate access really worth it? The carriers certainly hope so but I have my doubts.

It appears a feature story in today's National Post has finally prompted Mamma.com to confess it's being formally investigated by the SEC. For months, the search engine company has been squirming around the issue of a formal probe, which looks like it will be comprehensive. You knew something had to be terribly wrong in the state of Dennmark when Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban dumped his 13% stake in the company last year after owning it for a very short period of time. Cuban bailed after Mamma announced plans to do a complex and questionable financing deal. Investors would be wise to stay far away from Mamma until the SEC finishes its investigation.

A new poll by Virginia-based SunRocket suggests that while consumers may be aware of VOIP, they don't understand how it works. The poll "demonstrates consumer awareness does not equate to consumer understanding," said SunRocket co-founder Joyce Dorris. The poll's result support my growing contention VOIP is being improperly sold by focusing on price rather than features. There is so much emphasis on grabbing market share and/or a foothold with "look, our prices are the lowest in town", that not enough time is spent educating consumers are how much better VOIP is than regular telephony. If the industry fails to change it ways, VOIP adoption could plateau after you've captured the bleeding edge and leading edge. It's time for the industry's marketing techniques to become a little more sophisticated.