Rupert Murdoch, who warned a bunch of U.S. editors a few months ago that ignoring the Internet would be a strategic disaster, has backed up his tough talk by acquiring Intermix Media for $580-million. It's a bold and aggressive move to capture part of the booming online advertising market as Intermix operates 30 Web sites and 35 e-mail newsletters. The star within Intermix's portfolio is Myspace.com, a fast-growing social networking site that likes to describe itself as a "lifestyle portal". In May, Myspace.com was the 38th most popular Web site in the U.S. with 15.5 million unique visitors. Intermix is also notorious for settling a spyware lawsuit after it was caught the attention of U.S. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. As Silicon Valley This Morning succinctly put it: Rupert Murdoch "get it" - the "it" being the Internet and how it is changing the media industry.

Another day, another venture capital round in the telecom industry as Ellacoya Networks has raised another $13.5 million from a group of investors that includes BCE Capital, Canaan Partners, Atlas Venture, Flagship Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Ellacoya develops technology that lets carriers "intelligently" manage their IP networks. In other words, the technology lets carriers run their existing IP networks more efficiently as traffic increases - rather than being forced to make large investments to expand capacity. If private equity deals are any indication, network management has become a key industry trend as the growing use of broadband puts more demands on networks. For a list of some noteable telecom financing deals, check out a recent posting by Telco Trash.

WinZip, which many people use (it has been downloaded 140 million times) but barely anyone actually pays for, has been acquired by Vector Capital for an undisclosed price (probably a minimal amount given WinZip's revenue or lack thereof). Vector is best known for buying Corel Corp. in 2003. Now, can Vector come up with new ways to monetize WinZip. Time will tell.

As the Skype eco-system continues to gain momentum, an application that should capture some attention is Pamela, a personal assisant plug-in that answers calls when you're away or don't want to be disturbed. It looks like Skype VoiceMail and much more. A basic version of Pamela is free while standard and professional versions with more features are $10 and 35 respectively. What's interesting about all these Skype-related applications is how they're competing directly against Skype's fee-based services. It's not only the "we can do it better" approach but "we can do it better and eat your bacon". This contrasts with the traditional telecom carrier world, there are few ways rivals can offer complementary servies. It's not like if you're a Verizon customer, you can buy call-forwarding or call-waiting from a third-party supplier - although you can buy an answering machine. Perhaps Skype is happy having a small part of a large premium product pool, or maybe Skype believes many of its users will be more comfortable using "real" Skype services.

Gary Daichendt has finally come out of hiding to talk about why he abruptly resigned as Nortel's COO last month - well he sort of came clean. In his first interview, Daichendt said he resigned but it had nothing to do with God telling him it was time for him to replace Bill Owens as CEO - an allegation made in a recent Ottawa Citizen column. Without getting into the details, Daichendt said he left Nortel over how strategy would be implemented and by whom - as opposed to the strategy itself. He did, however, there were some "style" differences between him and Owens. Fair enough, but you're still left wondering why actually happened. Daichendt said he was hired with the intention of eventually becoming CEO. Was it the timing of his ascension to the top spot? Was it Owens trying to be "the man" until Daichendt officially got the CEO job? Was Daichendt looking for a way out after realizing the new cut-throat world of single-digit telecom growth market not as excited as the bucolic world of commercial real estate in Southern California? Question, questions that may never be answered.