GigaOM

Susan Mernit reports that Topix.net has been acquired by a consortium that includes Knight Ridder, Tribune Media Company and Gannett, as they try and stay relevant in the fast changing world of content. This has been an interesting month for self-funded/angel funded companies. Flickr got taken out by Yahoo, and now Topix.net is being taken out. Congratulations to Rich Skernta. As Susan rightly points out, this is a much smarter deal that NY Times snapping up a has-been service like About.com. I was chatting with folks from iUpload and they pointed out that big newspapers are very interested in the distributed media. Topix.net can help them add a lot of local content smartly by marrying local blogs with newspaper content. I think Topix.Net adds a lot of open content from blogs to the news channels of these newspapers. The only thing which worries me most is that the old media guys could make Topix disappear.

Viruses, hackers, spam, junk, phishing… it is the wild west out there which is going to cause the Internet to buckle under its own weight. Professor Hannu H. Kari of the Helsinki University of Technology last year had made headlines when he postulated that the growth rates of viruses, worms, spam, phishing and spyware, and “bad people who want to create chaos,” would cause the Internet to “collapse!” In 2006. CIO magazine gets a whole bunch of security experts together and asks them if we can really put Humpty back together again. Some of the ideas are simply too loopy or reflect a bureaucratic mind set.

One of my favorite features in the whole social media space, PubSub link ranks is dead, gone, kaput, finish. The company pulled it because it got spammed and thus broken. Remind me never to take start-ups seriously, for you never know when something cool is going to vanish.

We’re sorry that it has taken longer than anticipated to complete our new and improved package of weblog metrics. In the very near future we anticipate going live with a set of weblog statistics (including LinkRanks) that will reflect interesting trends we see in monitoring over 9,000,000 weblogs

In response to my post yesterday, wondering if Jeff Hawkins was going to leave Palm One, Mr. Hawkins replies…

I have no intention of leaving palmOne or changing the amount of time I work there. I said so in my talk yesterday. Basically I split my time between palmOne and RNI and have been doing so for several years. What is changing is that I will spend less time at RNI so I have some time for the new business.

Looks like the arbitrage party VoIP has been having may come to a swift end. Today Level 3 withdrew its forbearance petition, though the company said it might file the petition later. Level 3 Chairman/CEO Jim Crowe in a statement said, that since Kevin martin had just taken over as the FCC chairman, the company thought it would be unfair to ask for a judgment on this issue.

In the petition, we asked the FCC to reaffirm that legacy interconnection fees called ‘access charges’ do not apply to a certain class of VoIP traffic. By statute, the agency was required to issue a decision in the matter by March 22, 2005.

I suspect, like most in the VoIP business Level 3 is realizing that Michael Powell is gone and Chairman Martin is no VoIP enthusiast and is going to take a harsh and critical look at VoIP.

Jeff Pulver adds: We, however, were at the FCC meeting with Level 3 and the FCC Commissioners late last week, and have had growing concerns that the FCC was not yet prepared to grant the petition. Perhaps the attitude was, pull the petition, build some good blood, live to fight another day, and hope for certain in the relative short term… I, for one, long for the day when the last-mile wireline carriers recognize that they need us as much as we need them - that creation of a unified, ubiquitous network of networks, with relatively easy transiting between and across platforms and technologies is in everyone’s best interest and no one should be extracting monopoly rents to reach anyone else’s captive customers.

The big news this morning in the wireless world, Symbian licensing Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology which allows Symbian-based products to interact better with Microsoft Exchange servers. Russell Beattie worries about the potential problems for Symbian.

No one wins in deals with Microsoft (except Microsoft). I’m not sure what the long view is here for MS, but I’m sure they have one and I’m sure it’s devious.

Maybe Symbian and MS are trying to kill RIM. Well two things - Symbian is working with Blackberry folks as well, and doing a deal with Microsoft is a prudent strategy since it means the Symbian platform will support whatever is hot in the market. Palm made that deal as well with Microsoft for ActiveSync. Having said that, has anyone used the ActiveSync over the air? If it worked as well as RIM email, it would have been a standard by now. So far only RIM (and to some extent Good Technology) has been able to give people an intelligent, easy to use wireless email experience. I don’t expect that from Microsoft, unless of course they put their Mac people in charge. For past two weeks I have been mucking around with Microsoft mobile phones, and despite what others might say, Microsoft’s wireless efforts at present are in “spring training” stage and “play-offs” are too far off.

More from WSJ, Mobile Tracker, MocoNews

Sometimes too much growth is not such a good thing. Especially when you have not scaled your systems to meet the rising demand from consumers who like your service. Latest example is Skype, which is now facing a unique set of problems - it is having a tough time accepting credit card payments from consumers who want its SkypeOut service. (One blogger cries foul!) Light Reading spoke to the company officials who confirmed billing issues, as company attempts to put anti-fraud measures in place. These complaints have been all over the Skype forums for a few days now. Previously some had reported SKAM problems and other quality and connecting issues with Skype’s money making part of the service. I am surprised Stuart hasn’t posted about this on his wonderful Skype Journal as yet. Meanwhile Skype has run out of UK numbers. Seems like SkypeIn is taking off as well.