This marks my 150th posting as a blogger.

From what I have seen in my first few months of blogging, the medium is interesting and I enjoy the challenge of trying to generate stimulating thoughts on a regular basis.

I find blogging to be an interesting transformation from newsletters; still, I don’t see blogs replacing mainstream media yet. With Technorati tracking more than 1.2M blogs and growing, there’s just too much filtration needed for the average reader.

Mark Evans writes about the challenge in defining who is a journalist – and he considerately mentions the challenge for conference organizers in deciding who gets free media access. Notwithstanding a US court ruling that some interpret to the contrary, I think it is possible to distinguish between the riff-raff and journalists.

Even top bloggers digress into items better suited for intimate diaries with frequent off-topic personal issues. That kind of writing may be fine for sites targeted for friends or family but seems to be a practice that will chase away non-voyeuristic subscribers.

How will readers find diverse, trustworthy sources of material worth reading? Blog ranking services are based on various measures of popularity, hardly a scientific measure. Massive blog rolls on some sites appear to be tactics simply to increase rankings for search engines.

Thoughtful analysis, and stories worth reading. That is what our choice of newspapers deliver, whether it is broadsheet or tabloid, daily, weekly or monthly.

Newspapers and magazines present a somewhat more authoritative voice, conforming to at least a modicum of journalistic ethics and with varying degrees of political bias to match the desires of their target audience. The traditional media have editors that help filter the journalists – in effect imposing responsibilities to justify their journalistic freedoms.

Until someone develops a Brita for bloggers, to paraphrase a line from Finding Forrester, I’ll continue to read the National Post and its kind for dinner and save the blogs for dessert.

It seems to me that many folks in our sector are sometimes guilty of extrapolating trends from too few data points.

We want to watch how our kids are using tools like instant messaging and file-sharing and gaming and social networking. But we need to keep next generation services really simple or really, really useful so they will actually migrate beyond the inner sanctum of ‘early adopters’ and hit the mainstream.

For example, Skype is an interesting application that is pulling away long distance revenues, but it isn’t replacing the telephone. I can’t use Skype while I’m cooking in the kitchen.

Go ahead and write to tell me how you have blue tooth ear-buds and set up your multi-media, Linux enabled home. That proves the point. The concern is what I call the Iridium syndrome: doing stuff because you can, regardless of the merits of the business case.

Like Jeff Pulver suggesting that American Idol should migrate from broadcast TV to the web. Sure, just tell the 58% of Americans without broadband service that we don’t care if they can’t watch; Jeff wants to broadcast American Idol that way to “create a tidal wave of epic proportions for other shows to follow”.

It sounds more like Iridium all over again.

It isn’t just Barrett Xplore that is deploying a combination of satellite and WiMax to deliver broadband to tame the wild frontier.

AT&T; has announced that they are going to pursue a similar architecture, which provides a major vote of confidence to what John Maduri and his team are doing.

What is troubling to me is that everyone seems to be convinced that we need to follow the great Canadian tradition of government subsidies and handouts in order to push broadband to the masses. Everyone other than Barrett Xplore itself, which has been executing its business plan using its own money.

So, when Barrett has launched a Cabinet appeal to fight against the CRTC Decision telling Bell to provide rural highspeed service using cash from the Deferral Account. Bell says it isn’t a subsidy. In their words, it is simply topping up the business case…

Among many other items, we’ll be watching this unfold. Community broadband networks are being discussed at The Canadian Telecom Summit in two weeks.

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Update: Tyler Hamilton has commentary on this issue in today’s Toronto Star: Telcos don’t deserve your $620M

Mark Evans writes about the Motorola Q and how it has been annointed by many as the next in a long line-up of so-called Blackberry killers.

I saw the Q this week when TELUS’ Technology Strategy chief Eros Spadotto proudly showed it off as a coming exclusive. It is bigger than the Blackberry but it offers an awful lot of capabilities.

Mark’s article in the papers this week noted that owners find them so reliable that fans seem to only replace them when they are lost. I needed to replace mine because I discovered that my Blackberry doesn’t float and it also didn’t work after drying out.

This being the time of year that I like to spend time near the waters of Lake Muskoka, let me provide some free advice to the people looking to displace the Blackberry from my holster. Motorola – take a cue for the Q.

Build a device that is waterproof and floats and I am ready to switch!

As I was reading the latest rants by Barenaked Ladies’ Steven Page, I was struck by the similar language used by both the Creative Commons crowd and the Net Neutrality advocates. I tripped upon this as I was reading a commentary in one of the trade papers that seemed to be arguing that, since digital technology makes copying so easy, we need to just let it happen.

It turns out that Lawrence Lessig noticed similarities between Fair Use and Net Neutrality a few days ago [which scares me, in that I don’t often agree with his perspectives].

I find it interesting, but not necessarily surprising, that successful musicians are revolting against the distribution system. I am certain that many are having second thoughts about the contracts that they signed when they were starving artists and now are spinning out obscene amounts of cash for their labels.

Is the need to transform the traditional music industry business model based on the view that technology has made the theft of music so easy? I need something more: it just sounds like the same argument that a street gang member could make, sneering that the innovation of steel crowbars made glass obsolete, so the jewellery industry had better transform their business model.

Copyright reform and network neutrality share a theme. Both are concerned with the public’s use of other people’s property. In one case it is intellectual property; in the other, it is the digital transport network. Who owns these assets? Who determines the limits on what the owner can charge? The marketplace? Government?

In settling both issues for the ‘here and now’, we need to be concerned with ensuring that there remain incentives that foster further development. Encouraging the development of both intellectual property and digital networks. These are important issues that require far more thoughtful discussion and less shouting of catchy slogans.