You know why Vonage needed to raise another $250-million in private equity last month? According to Nielson/NetRatings, the company spent $220.3-million on Internet advertising last year. Wow!

For anyone who questions the growing influence of blogs, check out Liberal MP Sam Bulte's editorial in yesterday's Toronto Star. After weeks of criticism from the blogosphere, Bulte finally provided her views on why she supports copyright reform. Mind you, her timing is questionable given it was published a day before the election. But, then again, Bulte participated in a $250-a-plate fundraiser organized music, movie, software and publishing industry leaders last week so optics apparently aren't her forte. Michael Geist - Bulte's biggest protagonist in the debate - quickly posted that Bulte's editorial features from material created by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. While Bulte's role in copyright reform may not be an election issue or one covered extensively by the mainstream media, popular U.S. blogs such as Boing Boing and TechDirt continue to cover the action, while local blogger Rob Hyndman also weighs in. Random Bytes, meanwhile, has a delicious post on how Bulte claims "the extremists" such as Geist are only involved in the copyright debate "because they want to download". This comment comes from an all-candidates meeting on Goldhawk Live.

In the past couple of days, there has been growing discussions within the Canadian blogosphere about how and/if blogs will be able to "report" on results of today's federal election. Several people (Alan Gahtan, Andrew Coyne, Rob Hyndman) have focused on Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act that does not permit the transmission of election results prior to the close of all polling stations. Does this means, bloggers can't post until all the polls close? What about posts by foreign bloggers? As Alan Gahtan points out, Section 330 seems to imply that "broadcasting stations" outside Canada can't attempt to influence person to vote or refrain from voting, while Section 331 talks about "non-interference by foreigners". I wonder how much energy/time Elections Canada will spend tonight monitoring the blogosphere. If there is a plan to keep an eye on what's happening, I sure hope they have a kick-ass RSS reader!

Update: CBC.ca provides a good primer on how it will cover the election to comply with Election Canada rules.

So what do you know, a VC deal in Canada. Avokia, which makes database middleware software, has raised $7.4-million from Globespan Capital, SAP Ventures, BDC Venture Capital and Ventures West. Avokia's CEO is Alan McMillan, who was Think Dynamics' CEO when it was acquired by IBM in 2003 for $50-million.