Sony Consolidates Gaming, San Diego’s Slow Recovery, Connect’s Hall of Fame Inductee, & More San Diego BizTech News

information technology services and communications products to the military and government agencies. Under Ray, Titan grew to more than 15,000 employees and $2.5 billion in annual sales before it was acquired by L-3 Communications in 2005.

—Connect reported that 84 high tech and life sciences startups were formed during the fourth quarter of 2010, a 13 percent increase from the same quarter of 2009, when 74 new companies were started. It was one positive sign amid many mixed signals as San Diego’s innovation economy continues to slide mostly sideways. Connect issues a report on San Diego’s innovation economy every quarter.

—A broader study of local leading economic indicators from the University of San Diego for February shows a big increase in economic activity, driven by an improving job market. But USD economist Alan Gin, who compiles the local index of economic indicators for the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, cautioned that San Diego County still has a long way to go to regain the 100,000 jobs lost after the recession hit in 2007.

—Randy Franks, who is managing director for the human resources firm Modis in San Diego, told me he’s been seeing a release in the pent-up demand for information technology workers. Franks says most of the programming in San Diego is done for software embedded in medical devices, wireless devices, and other electronic equipment.

—San Diego’s VMIX said it has adopted its video platform technology in a way that now makes it possible to rent videos on Facebook, and watch them on the social networking site, or on a smartphone, tablet, PC, or Internet-connected television.

—NASA halted work on an advanced zoom 3D camera system that was under development at San Diego’s Malin Space Science Systems for “Curiosity,” the name given to the Mars Science Laboratory rover managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. There isn’t enough time left to finish the work before launch. Michael Ravine, the advanced technology manager at Malin, told me by e-mail, “It was pretty disappointing to get that close but not quite finish them. The cameras we do have on the rover are still pretty good.”

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.