We’ve been hearing rumors that eZee, one of the Austin Emerging 100 and a member of the Austin Technology Incubator, is ceasing operations. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but we’ll keep you posted if we hear something official.

We’ve received about a dozen emails from people asking us what is up at itzbig. I know it’s hard to believe, but Jim McGovern doesn’t invite us to the strategy sessions. If you’re in the know, feel free to leave a comment. Anonymous or otherwise.

The big story from SXSW Interactive this year is the keynote session, which was an interview of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg by BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy. The reporter became the news. The ballroom was packed, and I watched on a big screen in a separate room. As I listened to the interview, it seemed that the questions were a little bit odd, and they weren’t really getting to the types of issues that I think [...]

I had a chance to meet some great guys from Canada at SXSW, the team from BitStrips. They launched their website at SXSW yesterday. They describe it as YouTube for comics. The site allows you to create and re-use comic characters in comic strips that you can build, even though you may have no creative talent. To demonstrate how quickly and easily you can create your own bitstrips, the team created a comic about Sarah [...]

Austin-based SolarWinds, which makes network management and monitoring software, has been shoring up the board of directors lately. John Thornton of Austin Ventures was added in February, and Salesforce.com CFO Steven Cakebread was announced as another board addition in early February. It’s a pretty odd move for a private company. Unless of course you need enough outside directors to fill up an audit committee, a compensation committee, etc. It would be a big, bold move [...]

The rumors are swirling that Plaxo is on the auction block for around $200M, and Google’s offer is currently in the lead. With the likelihood of a democrat going into office come January, and an almost certain increase in the capital gains tax, M&A deals are going to go like wildfire in 2008. The pending MicroHoo deal was just the tip of the iceberg. What sort of deals might we see here in Austin?