Fewer IT jobs were lost last year
A study released recently by the American Electronics Association (AeA)
showed that in 2004 the U.S. high-tech industry lost 25,000 jobs,
dropping to 5.6 million. This decline in 2004 represents a considerable
slowdown in technology jobs lost, compared to the 333,000 jobs lost in
2003 and the 612,000 jobs lost in 2002.
Cyberstates 2005 found that all but four states lost high-tech jobs in
2003, the most recent year for which state data are available.
California and Texas lost the greatest number of tech jobs, shedding
some 67,800 and 32,900 jobs, respectively.
New York and Illinois were also among the five states that lost the most
high-tech jobs. Despite these losses, California and Texas remained the
leading cyberstates by employment, followed by New York and Florida.
California (916,000), Texas (446,000), New York (305,000), Florida
(259,000), and Virginia (244,000) led the nation in high-tech employment
in 2003.
Dillard new Envision sales director
Seattle-based Envision Telephony Inc., a maker of business products for
the contact center and the enterprise, named Tom Dillard as executive
sales director for the western region.
Most recently, Dillard worked for etalk, where he ran North American
national accounts and sales operations.
Parallel releases USB software
Redmond-based Parallel Technologies released its new USB software, USB
Info.
The company said USB Info allows users to view, browse, explore,
benchmark, test, and troubleshoot their USB devices.
USB Info's features include support for third-party USB 2.0 drivers and
controllers, benchmarking and performance testing of any USB device
including the individual components of USB composite devices such as
printer/scanner/copier-type products, cross referencing registry entries
with USB devices and components, and displaying all of the devices
related to USB devices such as USB drives.
PlayStream bought
PlayStream LLC, a provider of streaming media for small businesses, has
been bought by VitalStream Holdings Inc., a company that provides
similar services to larger companies. The cash and stock deal is valued
at about $2.75 million, based on current VitalStream prices.
VitalStream paid $500,000 in cash and 3.75 million of its shares.
PlayStream also gets 200,000 warrants to buy shares at $1.35 per share.
PlayStream founder George Grubb will become vice president and general
manager of the PlayStream division at VitalStream. The status of other
employees was not announced.
Empower signs audio technology pact
Redmond-based Empower Technologies Inc. signed an exclusive worldwide
license agreement for sales, marketing, and licensing of audio
technology.
The agreement with Mobile Dynamics Corp. is for exclusive worldwide
licensing rights to convert an existing active noise-cancellation,
acoustic reconciliation and modeling, equalization, and auto-gain
control software audio codec to a TI DSP-compatible audio codec or to
any other integrated circuit platform.
The resulting software audio codec can then be licensed by Empower for
royalty fees on a per unit basis, to consumer electronics manufacturers
for use in their audio product applications such as cellular phones,
automotive sound systems, home theatres or commercial audio products.
iHost partners with Orrtax Software
Bellevue-based iHost Networks announced a partnership with Orrtax
Software Solutions, also of Bellevue. Orrtax provides professional tax
preparers with federal and state tax preparation software and electronic
filing services for their completed returns. iHost Networks will offer a
new branded service, iHostTaxes.com, to the Orrtax customer base.
Therion Software sold
Storage area network software maker Brocade Communications Systems Inc.,
based in San Jose, Calif., acquired Redmond-based Therion Software Corp.
for approximately $9.3 million in cash and assumption of all of
Therion's outstanding stock options.
Therion is a privately held company that develops software management
products.
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