4. Telecom Trends

Blogger: Mark H. Goldberg

Why him? No one does a better job of exploring, interpreting or criticizing telecommunications policy in Canada. Period. Although he's very well-connected -- he's involved in hosting the annual Canadian Telecom Summit -- Goldberg is unafraid to voice strong opinions about the incumbents, the CLECs and the other businesses that are affected by emerging network technologies.

Sample post: "While we have never had greater access to diverse viewpoints, we are also better empowered to restrict our news sources to those channels, blogs, and RSS streams that are more likely to align with our current thinking... Just as the Internet empowers increased access to diverse viewpoints, we might wonder if its narrowcasting capability enables increased isolation from such diversity."

5. Canadian IT manager

Blogger: Stephan Ibaraki

Why him? Known as the IT Manager Connection, this blog is run through Microsoft's advisory program, but Ibaraki remains a key contributor, interviewing countless executives (such as General Motors of Canada's CIO) and turning them into easy-to-download podcasts. He also serves as a sort of online liaison between the vendor community and associations like the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS), giving him a good understanding of issues across the board.

Sample post: "I'm seeing increased penetration of ITIL for operational management and COBIT on the more overall strategic level for larger enterprises. However, one item that comes up repeatedly is that the business side of many organizations still has a hard time looking beyond IT as a maintenance function. We likely need more discussion at the national level between CEOs and IT Leaders on this front -- how do you get the business side to look at IT as a strategic asset? We talk about aligning IT with business strategy but a better choice of words could be 'aligning IT with the organization,' since IT empowers everything today."

6. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/Michael Geist Blog

Why him? The University of Ottawa professor is Canada's conscience on all things related to digital copyright, net neutrality, Internet governance and user-generated content. His groundbreaking series of blog posts, "30 Days of DRM," offered the most comprehensive look at digital rights management, and he has extended the discussion through Facebook and YouTube.

Sample post: "Canadians increasingly recognized the detrimental effect of the proposed copyright reforms on consumer rights, privacy, and free speech, and were moved to act. I acknowledge that this scenario cannot be repeated for every issue. Yet, for similarly placed concerns, the lesson of the past two weeks is that politicians, companies, and other organizations can ill-afford to ignore a medium (Facebook) that is capable of mobilizing tens of thousands within a matter of days. Those caught flatfooted may ultimately find themselves struggling to save face."