Cisco acquisitions continue unabated

Cisco's acquisition of WebEx - in a $3.2 cash deal - is going to continue the networking giant's goal of promoting as many feature-rich (and bandwidth-intensive) Web applications as it can. It'll be interesting to see how effectively they mesh the online meeting tool with its existing Telepresence offering to enable a whole new level of virtual meeting capabilities.

Meanwhile, I'm kicking myself. A buddy of mine got me involved in CNBC's portfolio challenge, and my holdings are struggling. Since the purchase price was a 23% premium on WebEx's closing share price yesterday, that may have lifted me out of the basement. Meanwhile, my brother sits in the top 15% of players thanks to a holding in a defense contractor. No imagination, that guy...

I guess it goes without saying that Parks Associates does not recommend stock picks, which is probably a good thing, given my track record in this contest so far.