SiliconBeat

Gerald Burnett, chairman of the board of directors at Avistar Communications, personally guaranteed the repayment of funds borrowed and interest accrued under a $10 million line of credit the San Mateo maker of desktop videoconferencing and online collaboration tools has with JP Morgan Chase Bank, according to a regulatory filing Friday.

Avistar, which received a warning last month from Nasdaq that its stock was in danger of being delisted months after it regained compliance from a separate warning issued earlier this year, has been in a patent fight with software giant Microsoft and holding its own. The board voted its chief executive, Simon Moss, a bonus despite the fact that the company failed to achieve pre-established performance goals.

I’m always interested in the future of news, for personal and professional reasons. But I found this story about Digg to be particularly interesting. Can it be true that the Web 2.0 icon is doing this poorly as a business?

Black Holes: It Costs Digg $5 Million a Year to Run the Internet

The Use of the Internet by America’s Largest Newspapers (2008 Edition)

Design Agitator: Prototyping Terror: Mumbai in NY

MediaShift . Your Guide to Alternative Business Models for Newspapers | PBS

Silicon Storage Technology, the Sunnyvale maker of flash memory, said it is in the process of cutting 120 employees, or 17 percent of its staff, according to a filing it made Friday. The action is being taken “to streamline the organization going forward” so as to “to reflect changes in anticipated levels of business.”

With so many companies laying off employees, the chance for a change in “anticipated levels of business” going forward keeps getting better and better.

The terminations are expected to cost the company $2.8 million, “nearly all of which” is going to expected severance payments, which works out on average to about $23,333 per employee. The company expects to complete the layoffs by Dec. 31 — Happy New Year.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg (pictured) resigned from the board of directors at eHealth Wednesday “so she could devote more of her time toRan personal and professional obligations,” according to a filing the online health insurance company made Friday announcing her replacement on the board, Stanford Chief Financial Officer Randall Livingston.

Sandberg once served as chief of staff for the United States Treasury Department during the Clinton Administration under Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who has been named President-elect Obama’s chief economic advisor. Between Treasury and Facebook, she worked at Google, serving as vice president in charge of online sales and operations. She was also instrumental in launching Google’s philanthropic arm, according to her Facebook bio.

It appears that the job of leading JDS Uniphase is slightly less valuable on a cash basis these days. The new chief executive as of Jan. 1, Thomas Waechter, will be paid $700,000 a year in salary, $100,000 less than the current CEO, Kevin Kennedy, according to a regulatory filing Thursday. Waechter, who joined the company a year ago in October, is currently an executive vice president in charge of JDS’s communications test & measurement group.

Kennedy, who told the company in October he would be resigning, isn’t going far. Like so many executives, he’ll be retained as a consultant for awhile, and he’ll continue Read the rest of this entry »

Socket Mobile reported Thursday that it “effected a reduction of force” of 10 full-time employees and one part-timer last week, or about 12 percent of its staff. The move was made in order to, (sing along if you know the tune) “align its cost structure with current economic conditions in light of slowing business spending due to the current economic downturn.”

The Newark based company, which makes systems designed to help businesses go mobile, made the cuts Dec. 12. The filing Thursday followed by a day news that the company has a new major investor, Leviticus Partners of New York City which reported having obtained a 5.3 percent stake in the company.

One silver lining of the current downturn, at least as far as businesses leasing space goes,  is that rents are getting cheaper.

Vivus, the Mountain View pharmaceutical company, extended the lease it signed two years ago on its corporate headquarters at 1172 Castro Street and is getting the rent lowered from $1.85 per square foot to $1.64, lowering the current monthly payment from $26,338 to $23,349 starting Aug. 1 and expiring July 31, 2011, according to a filing the company made Thursday, and compared to the original lease.

Kana Software’s second largest shareholder, Kernan Oberting, reported buying a half million more shares recently, boosting his ownership in the Menlo Park company to 7 percent up from the 5.7 percent stake his investment firm first reported holding Nov. 21, the same day Kana’s hit a 52-week low.

His firm, KVO Capital Management, spent $304,391 buying 515,599 shares of Kana between  Nov. 25 and Dec. 16, paying on average Read the rest of this entry »

If LogicVision intended to deter Virage Logic’s unsolicited offer to buy the company for $1.05 a share by adopting a shareholder rights plan commonly referred to as a poison pill on Tuesday, the tactic worked like a charm.

Daniel McCranie, chairman of Virage Logic’s board, sent LogicVision’s board a letter the very next day withdrawing the offer: Read the rest of this entry »

The board of directors at Pericom Semiconductor of San Jose decided Tuesday to change some of the terms of its change-in-control agreements it maintains with each of its executive officers, “and certain other officers to be selected by” the company’s chief executive,” according to a regulatory filing.

Among the changes instituted were that severance paid out to executives will be changed from a pay-out of Read the rest of this entry »