Blogs, like most of the web, are a ‘pull’ technology. You visit the site in order to pull down and read the content.

Part of the initial success of the Blackberry was its ‘push’ technology. New messages were automatically sent to the device. Newspapers and magazines are most successful when pushed to their readers. Publishers prefer to have readers subscribe and readers like the convenience of having their favourite content arrive at their doorstep.

Hence the availability of RSS: Really Simple Syndication to feed blogs to regular readers.

The Blackberry is good at reading messages but it is not noted for web browsing (or floating, but that is another entry). So, what do you do to read Telecom Trends or any other RSS feed when you are on the go?

The answer is Newsclip, from Virtual Reach – a really useful reader of really simple syndication. Any RSS feed. Check them out. Virtual Reach has entered into a distribution agreement with Rogers although Newsclip is also available for any Blackberry and many other devices on any network.

The CTO, and one of the founders of Virtual Reach, Jay Steele, will be speaking on the Mobile Applications panel at The Canadian Telecom Summit on June 12.

---

Disclosure: The president of Virtual Reach is my brother Brian. He has overcome the unfortunate handicap of being born after me.

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.

---

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!