TechCrunch reported that a group of venture capital and private equity firms are joining forces in an effort to acquire Skype, a software application and service that enables video and voice calls, instant messaging and file sharing.

In 2005, eBay purchased Skype, but made a huge mistake in the terms of the deal by failing to acquire ownership of the software that defines Skype.  Instead, eBay licensed the software from Joltid Limited, a company owned by Skype’s founders.  This mistake continues to haunt eBay, who now finds itself in a legal battle over the software licensing, which I covered earlier this month.

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Trillian Astra, the multi-protocol instant messaging client, was officially released by Cerulean Studios.  Astra is available as a free download and is also upgradable to a pro version which includes more features.  The full announcement is available at the Trillian Blog.

Astra’s release came at a perfect time.  We reported just a few weeks ago that Astra was voted “Best Instant Messenger” in a poll conducted by Lifehacker.  Also, Digsby, an Astra competitor, was slammed in the media just days ago for utilizing their users’ computer resources in distributed computing projects with this fact buried deep in their license agreement.  Digsby has taken steps to remedy this situation, but trust is sometimes hard to regain.

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Trillian Astra was voted “Best Instant Messenger” client in a recent poll conducted by Lifehacker.  Astra’s 17,025 votes placed it 12% above Digsby, the second place finisher.  Rounding out the top five were Pidgin, Adium and Meebo, which actually placed below “Other”.

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