TiVo becomes the latest Silicon Valley company to resort to laying employees off as it “manages through the challenges presented by a difficult economic climate,” as well as what it, perhaps euphemistically refers to as “a rapidly evolving retail consumer market.”
Perhaps “devolving” would be the more appropriate verb choice. Or does TiVo know something about other changes in consumer habits, in addition to the evidently growing consumer fad of, well, consuming less.
TiVo didn’t put a number on how many jobs were to be eliminated. The company had 495 employees at the end of its last fiscal year last January. The company did say that it expects to take mostly cash charges of about $1 million “primarily for employee-related severance benefits and out-placement costs, according to this afternoon’s filing with the SEC this afternoon.
Last month, I served as one of several judges for the TeleWho? contest being held by Plantronics. The idea was to solicit ideas for a term to replace “telecommuter” with something that reflected the way the digital era had changed our work habits.
Today, Plantronics announced the winner: Cloudworker!
According the Plantronics press release, the winning submission defined a “cloudworker” as:
“somebody who uses on-demand technology and collaboration tools, such as unified communications, to work anywhere and anytime, and uses the resulting freedom to enable a my-size-fits-me career path and lifestyle. The metaphor of the cloud extends well beyond cloud computing and software as a service applications to include work environments, distributed teams, and communication tools.” Read the rest of this entry »
HP today announced preliminary results for the fourth fiscal quarter 2008 with revenue of $33.6 billion, a year-over-year increase of 19% or 16% when adjusted for the effects of currency.
Hooray! The stock shot up 12 percent. According to the Associated Press story, the full numbers for the fiscal year 2008 (which ends in October for HP) came in above expectations. And HP maintained a relatively strong outlook for the first quarter of the 2009 fiscal year, which is the current quarter:
Wonderful, but…Take a deeper look, and there may be reason to re-cork that champagne.
As corporate romances go, we’d say the bloom is off the rose of the courtship between Brocade Communications and Foundry Networks. It appears that both parties have developed at least a few cold toes about the matter.
Recall that Brocade recently lowered its offer for Foundry amid rumors that it was having a hard time lining up a secure source of funding for the deal since it was announced in July, when Brocade offered to pay $18.50 per share in cash plus a fractional share of its own stock that boosted the value of the total deal when it was announced to $19.25 per share.
The complaint filed Monday contains the good, old-fashioned kind of allegations. You can read the full complaint here. In essence, the SEC claims that Cuban was an investor in the search engine Mamma.com. Back in 2004, the company briefed him on plans to issue a new round of stock, which would likely dilute shareholder value and cause the stock price to drop. Also, Cuban was ordered not to tell a soul.
According to the SEC, Cuban called his broker and told him to dump his Mamma.com shares. The stock dropped almost 10 percent the next day, and Cuban saved about $750,000. Nice (allegedly).
One of the tastiest morsels from the complaint comes from a conversation between Cuban and the Mamma.com CEO:
“The CEO prefaced the call by informing Cuban that he had confidential information to convey to him, and Cuban agreed that he would keep whatever information the CEO intended to share with him confidential. The CEO, in reliance on Cuban’s agreement to keep the information confidential, proceeded to tell Cuban about the PIPE offering. Cuban became very upset and angry during the conversation, and said, among other things, that he did not like PIPES because they dilute the existing shareholders. At the end of the call, Cuban told the CEO “Well, now I’m screwed. I can’t sell.”
Telik, the unprofitable Palo Alto developer of cancer and diabetes drugs that has built up an accumulated loss of $479.5 million, got some good news Friday, even if it is off a bit in the future. UBS, the financial firm, has agreed to buy Telik’s auction rate securities, which Telik has not had access to since the auctions for them froze up earlier this year. But Telik will have to wait unti Read the rest of this entry »
Selectica has a new major investor that put the San Jose developer of contract-management software on notice Thursday that it will likely be hearing more from it in the near future.
Trilogy of Austin, Texas, through its principal business Versata Enterprises, a provider of “enterprise software products and services”, revealed Friday having acquired a 5.1 percent stake in Selectica after spending Read the rest of this entry »
Carl Icahn placed a bet on Advanced Micro Devices in the third quarter, acquiring 1.6 million shares of the Sunnyvale chip maker, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday in which his investment company, Icahn Capital, periodically details its holdings.
Being a columnist can be a lot of fun. Except when it’s not. And there’s something about Fridays that can be particularly grim, even at times like this when it seems every day feels a little more bleak. Maybe there’s just more economic data released today. Who knows? There’s just something about the end of the week when the universe seems to want to serve up an extra dollop of bad news.
To demonstrate my point, here is a sampling of the subject lines that greeted me when I just logged into my email:
Challenger: TECH CUTS REACH HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE 2005
Financial Market Strategies - November 14 - Economy: Not Pessimistic Enough!
Consumer Sentiment Stays at Low Levels Last Seen During 1980 Recession
Retail Sales Decline Sharply for Fourth Consecutive Month
Telefonica’s sub growth slowdown could lead to price cuts; Pali Research Blog Posting
Online Consumers Plan to Spend Less in Stores, Slightly More Online
WSJ TECH ALERT: Sun Microsystems to Cut 18% of Work Force
And that’s just a few choice selections. It goes on.
It makes me long for a nice, heart warming piece of spam from a Nigerian prince.
At the Web 2.0 Summit last week, the most timely panel may have been “The Web and Politics.” Moderated by John Heilemann of New York Magazine, the panel discussion included Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post; Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco; and Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean and John Edwards.
The discussion covered the role that social networks and the Web played in the victory by Barack Obama and whether that’s permanently changed how elections will be run. The group also discussed how this election signaled a change in the way the press covers campaigns, how voters get their information, and what that means going forward. Read the rest of this entry »
TiVo becomes the latest Silicon Valley company to resort to laying employees off as it “manages through the challenges presented by a difficult economic climate,” as well as what it, perhaps euphemistically refers to as “a rapidly evolving retail consumer market.”
Last month, I served as one of several judges for the 
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