SiliconBeat

Kana Software today filed news of an amendment to its loan agreement with Bridge Bank to “require” the Menlo Park maker of customer service tools to borrow $1 million from Agility Capital, which Kana did as of July 30.

The loan bears an interest rate of 15 percent Read the rest of this entry »

The management at Altera, the San Jose maker of programmable chips, “committed” today to cutting 87 jobs from its 2,700 person workforce, or about 3 percent of its staff. The cuts, expected to be mostly completed this quarter, are a result of Altera’s efforts “to lower its cost structure.” It will be the second round of job cuts this year following the company’s decision Read the rest of this entry »

A proposal on the agenda of Symantec’s Sept. 23 annual meeting calls for lowering the threshold of how much an investor owns of the company’s stock in order to have the right to call for a special meeting. Rather than listing the name of the stockholder putting forth the proposal, along with the number of Read the rest of this entry »

Infinera, the Sunnyvale supplier of digital optical networking gear to telecommunications providers, got some bad news Wednesday from one of its biggest customers. Level 3 Communications told Infinera Wednesday that it will start using another vendor of Read the rest of this entry »

Xtent, the Menlo Park development-stage medical device company that postponed a special shareholder meeting earlier this month at which it was to seek permission to liquidate its assets in order to give itself more time to discuss possible deals with interested parties, has evidently not made much progress in coming up with a deal.

The meeting, which was pushed Read the rest of this entry »

Shares of VirnetX, the developer of Internet-calling and instant messaging software that sued Microsoft in 2007 claiming the software giant infringed three of its patents, doubled in value today after the Scotts Valley company reported that the federal court hearing the suit had issued a “Markman” order that adopted interpretations of the patent claim language that it Read the rest of this entry »

Adept Technology, the Pleasanton supplier of robotics-based manufacturing equipment, said Tuesday it had received a $2.5 million order for vision-guided robots from “a leading international consumer electronics manufacturer” as part of a “major capacity expansion program,” according to a filing Tuesday with the SEC.

Adept expects the order to be fulfilled and booked as revenue during its fiscal Read the rest of this entry »

NeoMagic, the insolvent chip maker that ceased searching for new business last September, settled last week with its former landlord last week by agreeing to pay $35,000 over the next 60 days to settle the landlord’s claim of $2.04 million. Combined with a Read the rest of this entry »

West Marine, the Watsonville-based boating supply retailer, reported today that the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a final settlement of the federal agency’s investigation into certain of the company’s accounting practices.

The SEC alleged today in a complaint filed in a federal court in San Jose that Read the rest of this entry »

Salaries of the executive officers at Atheros Communications, which were reduced Feb. 1 in a cost saving measure, were restored Monday by the board’s compensation committee. Chief Executive Craig Barratt, who had his annual salary cut 40 percent to $204,000, will now be paid at an annual rate of $340,000. Other executives, who had their salaries cut 20 percent, also had their pay raised back to 2008 levels.

The committee re-evaluated the salary reductions light of better-than-expected results Atheros announced yesterday for its 2009 second quarter, and for its third quarter forecast earnings of from 29 to 31 cents a share, significantly higher than the 17 cents average analyst estimate in a Thomson Reuters survey were expecting. Shares of Atheros popped today, rising $1.83, or 8.1 percent, to close at $24.35.

It is certainly a welcome relief for the company, whose CEO warned in December that the “economic environment deteriorated significantly throughout the (2008) fourth quarter and consumer demand across multiple geographies weakened.”