To call Acme Packet's (APKT) 25 fold rise the last two years parabolic would be an understatement. It's been more like a vertical lift-off starting at $3/share in early 2009 and hitting $77 on 3/4/11. The stock ricocheted off the top of its all time high last month, and you could have scooped it up for $67 on April 1st, but it has since bounced back to the $75 range. The digerati like this company and it comes as advertised. Its signature technology is the science of our time.

Back in the late 1990s George Gilder used to evangelize about the telecosm (infinite bandwidth) and how increased use of broadband would engulf us and dictate consumer and business behavior. Well that time has come. Acme Packet is serving notice that it is an elite class of technology company and is building a global franchise. The company seemed to be locked

As someone who’s day-traded stocks regularly for 15 years, I’m not a huge fan of “marrying” my money to a stock, and I usually try not to carry many, if any, positions overnight. Essentially, those are the pillars of trading—like the rules that the friendly TV serial killer Dexter learns repeatedly from his dad: get in and get out quickly, and avoid the risk of waking up to a major market swoon and a bunch of underwater holdings. Occasionally, though, I’ll find a company that sets off a little voice in my head, which says “buy and hold me, buy and hold me, buy and hold me.” Snap Interactive (STVI.OB) is one such company.

The reason I like Snap’s long-term outlook can be summed up in one word: Facebook. Snap is directly leveraging Facebook’s customer base for their dating application, AreYouInterested.com, and those dating app revenues have been growing at

Investors have recently asked my opinion on Level 3 (LVLT), inquiring as to if I continue to hold the stock. In my article in November 2010, the stock was trading at $1.12. At that point, I stated that I expected LVLT to hit $2 by April, 2011. As those who follow the stock know, it recently hit a high of $1.65. And currently, I think the recent pullback to the $1.30 range represents a compelling entry point. The stock offers investors much more upside reward than downside risk. My 12-month price target is $2.75 (over 100% upside) and my 3-year target is $5. Here are the key reasons behind my conviction:

Fresh off its recent secondary, Limelight Networks (LLNW) could well look to put some of that recently raised cash to work in some shopping trips. (It now has more than ample resources. Last week’s offering netted Limelight $77m, essentially doubling its cash holdings.) If it does look to do a deal or two, we expect that Limelight’s next acquisition will complement its core content delivery network (CDN) business. The company has already been broadening the range of services it can provide in the video ecosystem, most notably with the $110m purchase of EyeWonder’s ad campaign creation business in December 2009 and most recently with the tiny acquisition of Delve Networks, a provider of online video platform services.

One area Limelight could buy into is peer-to-peer (P2P) delivery, since the CDN industry is facing growing concerns about the ability to manage increasing loads of Internet video traffic. There are some providers

A quick look at year-to-date performance for data center related stocks highlights a few interesting things:

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The REITs category is the sub-sector with the most defined performance. All stocks basically achieved a 14% increase since the beginning of the year. It is interesting to note that Digital Realty (DLR) and Dupont Fabros (DFT) already reported Q4 2010 results, while Coresite (COR) will report quarterly results on Thursday, March 10.

The two network neutral players under our scrutiny, Equinix (EQIX) and TeleCity (TLEIY.PK), listed in London, are slightly positive, but their sub-sector is the worse performer so far, excluding the CDN category, which needs a specific analysis.

The best performances came from Savvis (SVVS) and Rackspace (RAX), both of which probably enjoyed the most from the cloud computing acquisition binge that positively impacted the stocks along with Internap (INAP) at the end of January. As a reminder, we

Internap (INAP) reported Q4 and full 2010 results on Thursday night, and the numbers seemed to be appreciated by the market, which greeted the company with a 6% increase on the following trading day, one of the best post-earnings performances among its peers.

A quick look at some of the highlights:

• Q4 revenues were about $60.0 million, a 6% decrease from the same quarter of last year ($63.5 million).
• Revenues for the full-year 2010 were $244.2 million, compared with $256.3 million in 2009, for a 5% decrease that was mainly attributable to the IP Services segment (-8%).
• Data center services revenues for the full-year 2010 decreased by 2 percent to $128.2 million; we'll see later on why this number must be analyzed in connection to some proactive churn in partner sites.
• GAAP net loss was $(3.6) million, or $(0.07) per share for the full-year 2010, compared with a GAAP net

Jack James is technology sector analyst for Camlin Asset Management, a Vancouver, B.C.-based investment firm that applies a catalyst-driven investment approach.

If you could only hold one stock position in your portfolio (long or short), what would it be?

One of our high conviction ideas for 2011 is Blue Coat Systems (BCSI).

Tell us more about the company behind the stock.

Blue Coat Systems is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and designs, develops, and sells products that optimize and secure the flow of information over a Wide Area Network (WAN). In 2010, revenue grew 11% to $496 million - a high for the company.

Blue Coat has over 15,000 customers worldwide in five major verticals: Finance, Healthcare, Government, Education,

Content stories are catching positive play in the financial media of late, and with Limelight Networks (LLNW) jumping higher in Monday's after-hours trade longs are not sitting on the fence. They're in.

Limelight, which provides content delivery network services, gained Monday evening after beating Q4 revenue expectations and setting its outlook in line to above the Street view.

Our history on LLNW is strong on the upside, and we would follow the trend and peg a long-side play on the shares Tuesday.

LLNW has recorded an earnings-driven after-hours gain in 8 of the last 12 quarters tracked in our MT Pro database. Also, 100.0% of the time (8 out of 8 times) the stock followed-through in the same direction by the close of the next day's regular session compared to the extended hours "effective close." When it followed through, the price closed further in the same direction on average by