Kevin Restivo, a colleague of mine at the Financial Post, had a story in Saturday's paper about people surrendering their Blackberries because they were having trouble with the always-on connectivity. (I wonder if there's a phrase to properly describe this "condition"). He cites several people who talk as if they were giving up coffee or, worse, a narcotic. Frankly, I have difficulty relating to people who don't want mobile access to e-mail. If you're a senior executive or someone who spends a lot of time out of the office, mobile e-mail is a must-have service. It's only going to get more popular as more cell phones come with e-mail software - whether it's from Research in Motion, Visto, Seven, etc. That said, I don't have mobile e-mail - at least for the time being. I can't quite justify spending $100 a month for a phone/e-mail because I don't spend that much time out of the office. Then again, I could be persuaded if there was a reliable, bug-free device that offered a calendar, contact database, phone and e-mail. Maybe the next iteration of the Treo 650 or the RIM 7100 will do the trick. I thought the Treo 650 was the one but a month-long evaluation left me disappointed.

Have to say I'm amused by Michael Robertson's latest technology foray - Project Gizmo, which is apparently going after Skype. Robertson believes the masses will adopt Gizmo because it uses SIP rather than proprietary technology. If you're a true entrepreneur, I guess it's easy to overlook the fact Skype has more than 40 million registered users, a global brand, and enthusiastic venture capital backing. Robertson has launched disruptive companies (MP3.com, Lindows/Linspire) but his track record of success is spotty if you're not counting media coverage as "success". Skype's biggest worry isn't new competitors such as Gizmo but the wrath of global carriers that are watching Skype attract more users and more minutes, while piggybacking on their networks. I wish Michael Robertson all the success in the world but, unlike MP3.com, he's late to the party.

Looks like Google AdSense isn't going to make me rich after all. Last month, this blog had more than 115,000 page views but only $19.83 in AdSense revenue. I guess the content is so compelling - :) - people don't want to click on Google ads. Actually, I think it may highlight an unspoken truth about blogs and advertising: few of them will be financially lucrative. So why blog if it's not about money? As Technorati CEO Dave Sifry told me a couple weeks ago, blogging is more about non-financial considerations such as branding, profile, communications and idea generation. You have to respect people who are willing to spend so much time on their blogs without the prospects for financial gain. It seems to anti-capitalist! So if there isn't a lot of money in blog publishing/advertising, where is the money in the blogosphere going to be made/generated. So far, it seems tools such as search (Technorati), content management (TypePad) and perhaps content aggregation (NewsGator) have the best prospects but it is still early days. This makes the new fund created by RSS Investors ( aiming to raise $100 million but only has $20 million so far) is intriguing because the market is so immature and it's really anyone's guess how it will develop. RSS Investors is focusing on firms using RSS technology for news aggregation, blogs and new classes of search engines. I wonder if this fund is a trend or simply a small group of people either ahead of the curve or involved in a Don Quixote-like pursuit of fame and riches?