Andrew Baron sat down with Frank Barnako (the podcast is here), and it sounds like life at Rocketboom post-Amanda is not bad at all. Baron said traffic has jumped by 100,000 unique visitors a day to 400,000, and talks are going on to hire Joanne Colan on a full-time basis. As far as Congdon is concerned, Baron said he received a letter from her lawyers recently but it didn't get into what it featured. Baron said he's looking into some niche programming aimed at audiences of 10,00 visitors.

CNet has given Toronto-based Freshbooks some serious love today. Here's a bit of what reviewer Rafe Needleman had to say:

Kudos to my friend and mesh co-conspirator, Michael McDerment, for putting together a cool Web 2.0 service and, as important, a Web 2.0 business that generates revenue. Now, if were an investor.....
Update: It would be remiss of me not to congratulate another friend, Om Malk, on the relaunch of GigaOm.com.

Jozef Straus, who became a poster boy during the telecom boom for the rise (and fall) of JDS Uniphase, has popped back into the telecom spotlight as a strategic advisor to Enablence Technologies Inc. The beret-wearing Straus has kept a low profile since he retired in 2003 with US$150-million - most of it through exercising options when JDS was riding high. Meanwhile, JDS has gone through some tough times: the stock crumbled, sales tumbled and the fiber-optic company's operations in Ottawa shrank from more than 10,000 workers to a few hundred. Enablence is a start-up developing a chip that will reside inside an optical modem to provide high-speed connectivity of 1.2Gbps to households. My story on Straus and Enablence in today's Financial Post can be found here.