It’s been awhile since our last Talking Tech but we’re back – well, Kevin Restivo and I are back. Not surprisingly, we talked about the launch of the iPhone on June 29. Kevin’s excited and thinks it will be a smash-hit. I’m somewhat more pragmatic (see my post earlier today). More out of obligation than anything else, we also talked about the $30-billion private-equity feeding frenzy for BCE Inc. (now known as Bell Canada) before moving onto a much more intriguing topic: whether the personal use of the Internet should be banned at work. Finally, we did a re-cap on the mesh conference, which I co-organize.

In this week’s Talking Tech podcast, Duncan, Kevin and I talk about:

- Nortel: Is hyperconnectivity going to save Canada’s flagship technology company

-  MySpace moves into Canada; Facebook moves into free classfied ads

-  Porn: 379 million pages on the Web; $2.89-billion of online business in the U.S. last year. Go figure.

On this week’s Talking Tech, Duncan and I (Kevin’s away) take a meandering path through a bunch of different topics – not all of those elegantly linked.

We start by looking at the strong quarterly results from Apple and Microsoft, which reaped the dividends of strong iPod and Vista sales respectively. I ask the naive question about whether the iPod can continue to sustain its amazing growth. Duncan’s responded by comparing Apple to Madonna but wonders if the iPhone bring the whole house of cards down? In terms of the dark stock options cloud hanging over Apple and Steve Jobs, Duncan predicts Apple shares could tumble $30 to $40 if Jobs is forced to step down.

In talking about Microsoft and the Xbox, we spent some time looking at the strategy behind the Nintendo Wii. Instead of competing with high end graphics machines such as the Xbox 360, the company dumbed down its product and went after everyday consumers.

Duncan uses this as a classic case of disruption – coming up with just a good enough product, rather than a pefect product. There’s a good article in the latest issue of Business 2.0 on the Wii.

On the local M&A front, entrepreneur Randy Charles Morren’s RSS email service, Rmail, gets some love from Mark after selling the company to NBC Universal. By the way, Duncan  has a new job as director of  Canadidan research for technology, media, telecommunications and life sceiences with Deloitte.

After a brief hiatus, we’re back with another Talking Tech podcast. We spent a lot of time talking about the Blackberry service outage, probably because all three of have mobile e-mail. An intriguing issue that Duncan raised is whether RIM is falling victim to its success, and whether there is a scaling problem with the company’s software and network architecture.

We couldn’t resist weighing into the takeover frenzy surrounding BCE Inc., which has put itself into play, and could fetch $30-billion from private equity investors. Another scenario being bandied about is BCE merging with Telus to create “Belus”. Kevin doesn’t think Telus wants to be taken over. The board is happy with the team and the company has just got over the hump of challenges that BCE is now facing.

Finally, we chat about eBay’s $40-million to $45-million acquisition, which I use as a way to rail against the Canadian VC market.

Hey, we’re Talking Tech, although Kevin is MIA again. The big news within the Canadian high-tech scene was the $227-million acquisition of Workbrain by Infor Global Solutions. Duncan (Stewart) laments the demise of yet another sizable Canadian software company, and wonders how long large players such as Cognos and Open Text will stay independent.

The launch of the iPhone on June 11 captured our attention. I have concerns the iPhone will too expensive to replicate the success of the iPod. Duncan says another issue is the iPod raised the bar so high, it will tough for the iPhone to meet expectations even if it sells millions of units. Another interesting angle that Duncan raised is the iPhone’s WiFi offering may be a nail in its coffin because users would be able to circumvent the carrier’s network, they would get cheap calls through Skype.

Finally, we talk about EMI’s decision to release DMR-free music. Despite all the excitement about EMI’s announcement, I’m puzzled by the idea EMI wants to sell music for $1.29 a track, which is 30% more expensive than iTunes. This point was hammered home by Bob Lefsetz, who argues that digital music should be getting cheaper as opposed to more expensive if you want to encourage consumption, experimentation and purchases.

Duncan illustrates his point with the fact that Vladimir Ashkenazy’s 1971 complete recital of Beethoven is in the top 100 songs on iTunes. The album is more than 10 hours of music, and was making the company zero dollars at its previous $100 price but is a huge hit at $29.99. Then, there’s AllofMP3.com, which has seen huge success selling CDs for $2 a shot.