Websense Partners With Facebook, Qualcomm Shuffles Top Execs, ViaSat Satellite Set for Launch Next Week, & More San Diego BizTech News

There’s been a lot of tech news in San Diego over the past week, from Web 2.0 startups like SocialIQ that are identifying and measuring social media influencers, to changes in the executive leadership at established companies like Qualcomm. Our roundup begins now.

—San Diego’s Websense (NASDAQ: [[ticker:WBSN]]) said it has installed its network security technology on the Facebook platform under a new partnership that’s intended to help protect Facebook users from uploading malware from malicious websites. Websense said its security technology would kick in whenever a Facebook user clicks on a URL posted within Facebook. Websense said its cloud-based technology is designed to analyze such links in real time and warn users of unsafe websites.

—Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) announced a series of executive changes that will become effective on Nov. 12. The San Diego wireless giant promoted executive vice president Steve Mollenkopf to president and chief operating officer. Steve Altman, who has served as president for the past six years, will become vice chairman. Derek Aberle was promoted to executive vice president & group president. In addition to overseeing Qualcomm’s divisions, business operations, and other areas, Mollenkopf will continue as president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT).

—Carlsbad, CA-based ViaSat said the launch of ViaSat-1, the first high-capacity satellite dedicated entirely to Internet service, has been scheduled on Oct. 19 from the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The broadband satellite, which will enable non-urban Internet providers to provide basic service at 10 megabits per second (compared to existing capacity of 512 kilobits per second), represents a more-than-billion-dollar bet by the company.

—San Diego-based Legend 3D, which had almost 400 employees here in February, said it has reduced its workforce by “less than 10 percent,” according to a note relayed from Barry Sandrew, the company’s founder and chief technology officer. The layoff, which follows a 15 percent reduction in July, leaves Legend 3D with a local headcount of nearly 250 artists and engineers—close to the size of its workforce in mid-2010. Yet Legend 3D said it is still the largest 3D conversion studio for Hollywood films in the United States.

—New York-based Enterproid, which won Qualcomm’s incentive QPrize earlier this year, said it closed on $11 million in Series A funding to extend its engineering capabilities, expand distribution, and launch a series of global partnerships. San Diego-based Qualcomm Ventures (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) joined in the round, which was led by

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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.