Well, what do you know - podcasting is pretty easy! Kevin Restivo, my partner in crime in covering the technology beat at the National Post, and I sat down today for our first podcast. We discussed the CRTC's flawed attempt to deregulate the $10-billion local telephone market; Research in Motion's fiscal fourth-quarter results, which disappointed investors; and Apple's controversial launch of Bootcamp, which lets people run Windows on Macintosh computers. If you've got suggestions and ideas, please send them along. You can find the podcast here. (By the way, we're looking for a cool name.)

YouTube.com's $8-million cash injection earlier this week from Sequoia Capital has put the spotlight yet again on cool Web 2.0 companies with uncertain or no business models. As much as YouTube is extremely popular (more than 100 million page views a day), it really hasn't got a business model yet - other than plans to cautiously introduce relevant-based advertising. The key question facing YouTube and other popular Web 2.0 services is whether they can cross the chasm from free to fee. In other words, can they convince enough of their free-loading customers to actually purchase premium services and/or accept advertising. In any event, I've using YouTube's financing as the basis for my column in today's National Post looking at the free-to-fee challenge and why far too many Web 2.0 start-ups will fail to cross the chasm.

It was not a good day for Canada's telecom regulator, the CRTC, yesterday. It's much-awaited decision on how Canada's $10-billion local telephone market will be deregulated was hit with a hailstorm of criticism from incumbent carriers who are shocked the CRTC failed to properly analyze the shifting competitive landscape as cablecos build market share while Web-based service providers such as Vonage, Primus, AOL and Skype establish footholds. Instead, the CRTC said incumbent carriers have to lose 25% market share before they can apply to have a specific market deregulated- a process that could take as long as two years. So instead of getting the new, streamlined regulatory framework, the incumbent carriers find themselves with another complex, bureaucratic system that, if anything, will put more pressure for the CRTC to be reformed.
  To make matters worse, the CRTC's media call yesterday was embarassing. Rather than use the widely accepted conference call system whereby participants call in and have their questions moderated by an operator, the CRTC decided to use an antique system that had probably been collecting dust somewhere. This saw the operator call each reporter around the country. And rather than having questions queued up, anyone could ask a question any time - not a good thing with reporters on deadline with different agendas. To make matters worse, the sound quality was so bad you felt like the call was being done in a submarine. Then, the theme song from 2001: A Space Odessey could be heard in the background. When that disappeared, it was replaced by beeping of a call-waiting system.