For people who read this blog from time to time, you may notice some new features as I experiment with different tools and the look and feel. One of them is MyBlogLog, which is a tool to track the links that people are clicking on. For those of us curious, if not obsessed, with traffic in and out of blogs, MyBlogLog is pretty cool. Rick Segal likes how MyBlogLog lets new users easily try out of the pro version for three days. If you like how it works, the annual fee is $25. If not, the free version is fairly robust. I'm not sure there will be a big business in blog tools - much like there's not much money in browser plug-ins - but there are clearly people dabbling with new bells and whistles for the blog eco-system. It is hard not to get the feeling many of these initiatives will be positioned as take-over opportunities for blog publishers that want to differentiate themselves as they race to establish a place in the top tier. Don't be surprised to see Six Apart or Blogger, for example, make some strategic M&A moves - much like Ask Jeeves bought Bloglines in the search market.

You have to laugh when Henry Blodget is given a national forum (Fortune Magazine) to pontificate about Google's valuation. This is the guy who touted dot-com stocks in public but trashed them behind close doors (and in e-mail). For some reason, Blodget riffs on why investors should ignore the "hysteria" surrounding comparisons between Google with Time-Warner. I've got no clue why Time-Warner comes into play but he makes a good point about Google's need to diversify. As much analysts are going ga-ga over the stock amid $300+ target prices, Google is a one-trick pony - albeit a fantasically lucrative pony. At some point, the search market's growth will slow and/or competition from Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL will become more intense. This means the growth valuation Google currently enjoys will start to fade. So what does Google do strategically to find another high-growth engine. Personally, I say take a run at Skype with an impossible-to-ignore offer that Niklas Zennstrom, et al have to no choice but to accept. As much as VOIP could be a huge business, its popularity as a GoogleTalk product will help drive more consumers to the core paid-search service. As for Blodget, he should focus on whatever he's doing other than talking to the masses about dot-com stocks.

In the wake of the CRTC's VOIP decision last month, ILECs have started to launch their appeals. In a filing to the Federal Court of Appeal yesterday, Bell, Sasktel and Telus argued a provision in the decision that prevents them from contacting residential customers who leave for another service provider for a year. This covers local phone, high-speed, LD, VOIP and TV. The ILECs are appealing based on freedom of speech in the Canadian charter. The truth is they should be appealing the CRTC ruling on silliness. It's one thing to hobble the ILECs from competing freely in the VOIP market so competition can be encouraged; it's quite another to shackle them in a variety of ways. The CRTC wants competition yet it seems intent on not letting ILECs compete. The CRTC also ignores a key issue in its VOIP ruling: the emergence of alternative tools that make the local market share numbers cited by the regulator look suspect. You can't make a ruling on local service if you ignore the fact there are 10 million wireless phone users out there.
That said, I believe ILECs are also engaged in another battle with the CRTC. In some respects, these appeals are as much PR campaigns as they are crucial business strategies. At the end of the day, ILECs don't want to be regulated by the CRTC for any service. The final hurdle is the $10-billion local phone market. With the VOIP decision, there will be active competition, and it may not be long before cablecos and players such as Vonage have 5% or 10% of the market. At some point, the CRTC is going to have to look at the competitive inroads and decide regulation is no longer needed. Then, it will let ILECs to do what they want. That's when things could get very interesting.