Coral Jewelry weblog, Coral Jewelry

And the bulk of those cuts, nearly three-quarters, came during the last six months of the year, the report noted. That drove the tech sector to unemployment levels not seen since 2003, according to the report.

And the forecast for 2009 is not looking much better.

He added, however, he does not expect technology-related job cuts to be as severe as the dot-com bust, when 36 percent of all layoffs across a wide swath of industries came from tech.

“Through the first half of 2008, it looked as though the tech sector might be one of the few areas of the economy to remain resistant to recessionary pressures. However, the economy’s continued slide here and overseas saw consumer and corporate demand for technology products and services drop rapidly, and these firms were suddenly under pressure to make significant cost-cutting moves,” John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in statement.

Correction, 12:50 p.m. PST: This story initially mischaracterized a statement made by John Challenger regarding the severity of recent tech-related job cuts. He does not expect them to be as severe as those during the dot-com bust. Also the percentage figures cited within the various sectors reflect the increase in layoffs last year compared with 2007, and not the percentage of jobs cut.

Last year, 186,955 jobs in the telecommunications, computer, and electronics sectors were slashed, according to the report by outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

AT&T, for example, announced 12,000 job cuts last year, while Sun Microsystems unveiled plans to cut 6,000 positions, and Xerox 3,000 jobs.

Within the various sectors in tech, electronics firms saw losses of 73,447 jobs, an increase of 89.7 percent over the previous year; the telecommunications industry saw an increase of 72.5 percent; and cuts in the computer industry were up 61.3 percent.

Job cuts in the tech sector increased 74.2 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year, as the industry was battered by an unrelenting wave of layoffs, according to a report released Thursday.

“Cuts could reach even higher in 2009, as there is no evidence yet that the economy has hit the bottom of this downward portion of the cycle. We almost certainly will not see a repeat of the 2008 first quarter, in which tech cuts totaled just 17,345,” Challenger said in a statement.

And in the Silicon Valley, for just the month of December, the unemployment rate rose to 7.7 percent in Santa Clara County and 5.9 percent in San Mateo County. Nationwide, the unemployment rate reached 7.2 percent for the month of December.

When VCs smell a hot market, they fund a bunch of companies in that space and hope one or two make it. It’s a numbers game. Sometimes they hit it, most of the time, they don’t, but if they spread their fund around a bit, it usually pays off.

Now multiply that model by a few dozen VCs, throw in a host of corporate, institutional, and individual investors, and voila, you’ve got dozens of companies that are very well funded.

As bubbles go, I think this one’s going to be big. How big? You got me. But I think that global warming, alternative energy–and solar energy in particular–like Al Gore are all overblown. The energy crisis, on the other hand, is real, but nuclear energy’s the answer. And that’s all I’m going to say about that here.

The magnitude of the shakeout will be proportional to the gap between market demand and supply. In the case of the dot-com bubble–which also included Internet and telecommunications infrastructure, fiber optics, and communications chips–the shakeout was huge, affecting the public markets by almost a trillion dollars. The nanotech bubble, on the other hand, has been largely localized to the VC community.

On the public side, shares of First Solar have seen a Google-like rise to more than $300 since the company’s November 2006 IPO. That translates to a $22 billion market cap on quarterly sales of just $200 million. At least it’s profitable, but the price-to-earnings ratio of 100 is stratospheric in today’s market. Incidentally, members of the Walton family (of Wal-Mart fame) own roughly 49 percent of the company.

As for the nature of this particular bubble, I’m not sure if my crystal ball is better than anybody else’s, but my gut tells me that we’re already getting way out ahead of ourselves.

In solar energy alone, hundreds of millions of dollars of venture funds have been poured into the likes of Nanosolar, SoloPower, OptiSolar, HelioVolt, eSolar, SolFocus, Solel, Miasole, GreenVolts, Hydro Green, Infinia, Sopogy, Cyrium, SkyFuel, BrightSource Energy–the list goes on and on.

There are lots of recognizable names, as well, including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Microsoft founder Paul Allen, and Sun Microsystems founder and ex-Kleiner Perkins partner Vinod Khosla.

What do you get when you mix Al Gore, global warming, whacky environmentalists, skyrocketing oil prices, lots of venture funding, and irrational exuberance? An alternative-energy bubble.

What, you don’t believe that there’s an alternative-energy bubble? Then you’re just not paying attention. It may not be the biggest bubble in the history of technology–yet. And it may not be ready to burst–yet. But it’s a bubble, all right. All the signs are there.

What does all this mean to you? It depends on your risk profile. If you’re young, I say you need to take risks. Should a great opportunity arise with one of these companies, by all means, go for it. But if you have a good job with a good company, or you don’t have enough working years left in you to take significant risks, I wouldn’t jump ship for a hot solar start-up or bet too much of your portfolio on one of these deals.

All the usual suspects are in the game: big-name venture capital firms, investment banks, private-equity firms, energy companies, technology companies, individual investors, a new batch of investment companies focused primarily on energy, and even a hedge fund or two.

Still, no matter what they say publicly, they know they have to nail their strategy and business plans, if they hope to survive an eventual shakeout.

On July 21st, GCL Silicon Technology filed a registration statement with the SEC for an even bigger $863 million public offering. The Hong Kong-based company was founded just two years ago.

Still not convinced that it’s a bubble? Let me explain how this kind of thing works.

Free Field Installation in Germany

You don’t want to end up like Icarus, who got a little too exuberant and flew too close to the sun. Wings melt, bubbles burst–same result.

GT Solar, on the other hand, raised $500 million less than two weeks ago in the nation’s biggest alternative-energy IPO to date. But the stock is floundering, and the vultures are already circling around several securities class action lawsuits.

But that doesn’t mean the market demand will support all those companies–and all the capacity they need to bring online for their business models to work. The principals of all those alternative-energy companies know that, but that won’t stop them from doing what they’re doing.

(Credit:
First Solar)

“When there is a recessionary event, and people are counting pennies and researching purchases, this potentially has an upside for Google,” added Varian, who called the phenomenon “the Wal-Mart effect.” “We think this kind of effect could work to Google’s benefit potentially.”

The company also is eyeing new ad revenue from increasing use of the Internet by people with mobile devices.

Is a recession good for Google? ‘The Wal-Mart effect’
Taking the big-picture view, Google has been cheery about Silicon Valley’s prospects overall, but analysts skeptical of online advertising growth have reduced forecasts. The credit crunch and expected recession have sent tech companies’ stock plunging downward in October.

Updated at 3:22 p.m. PDT with further details.

Because of the paid-click mechanism, advertisers’ spending on search ads can be tightly linked to the success of specific ads, a factor Google executives eagerly point out when confronted by worries about advertisers’ cold feet. “Advertisers are willing to take all the clicks we can give them at the current cost per click. Even in tough times, that will continue to be true because nobody wants to turn away a customer,” said Omid Kordestani, Google’s senior vice president of global sales and business development.

After-hours trading sent the stock up 10 percent to $389.

“We had a good third quarter with strong traffic and revenue growth across all of our major geographies thanks to the underlying strength of our core search and ads business. The measurability and return on investment of search-based advertising remain key assets for Google,” said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in a statement. “While we are realistic about the poor state of the global economy, we will continue to manage Google for the long term, driving improvements to search and ads, while also investing in future growth areas such as enterprise, mobile, and display.”

Schmidt was careful to include plenty of cautionary statements in his conference call remarks. “It’s clear the economic situation is so fluid that we’re all in uncharted territory…It’s clear the global economic situation is worse than predictions just a month ago,” he said.

“We’re seeing an explosion in mobile search volume,” Schmidt said on a conference call to discuss earnings results. “The compound growth rate is one of the fastest growing things in the company.”

The company, through its acquisition of DoubleClick earlier this year, is trying to bring the same measurability to the more loosey-goosey world of graphical “display” ads, where costs are paid when ads are displayed and many ads are intended to promote brands rather than more specific actions such as buying a particular gadget.

(Credit:
Google)

Google's revenue continued to rise in the third quarter of 2008.

Search ad strength
Google makes most of its money through ads delivered alongside search results. Advertisers bid to have their ads placed next to results based on search keywords that people type into the search box, and they pay Google only once people click on those ads. One significant measurement from the company: the number of search ads on which people clicked increased 18 percent from the year-earlier quarter.

“As consumer budgets are squeezed, people use the Web for comparison shopping,” Schmidt said.

The company reported net income of $4.92 per share, excluding various items such as stock-based compensation, compared to expectations of $4.75 from analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Revenue was $4.04 billion, excluding commissions called traffic acquisition costs that are paid to advertising partners, compared to an expected $4.053 billion.

The company hired at a relatively slow rate, with employee head count increasing by 521 to 20,123, the company said.

Google easily cleared analysts’ profit expectations for the third quarter of the year, patting itself on the back for the results but offering a cautious qualifier about current economic conditions.

Using generally accepted accounting principles, net income increased from $1.07 billion in the year-earlier quarter and $1.25 billion in the second quarter to $1.35 billion in the third, the company said.

In Google’s second quarter, the company missed expectations for profit and issued a more cautious assessment of the online advertising market, sending the stock down to $478 or so. With the current economic pessimism, that price looks downright giddy: Google’s stock closed at $353.02 a share on Thursday, and Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal pointed out that a full third of Google’s employees have nothing but valueless “underwater” stock options that have greatly diminished incentive value.

However, he and chief economist Hal Varian were willing to raise expectations that Google could fare well in the current climate. Not only do advertisers prefer ads they can prove are profitable to run, but even consumers might put the company ahead.

Keeping expenses down
Not that Google is immune to ordinary business pressures. The company also is trying to keep expenses in check, though it continues to hire at a slower rate. “We kept tight control over costs,” Schmidt said.

“When we did the deal, we understood it would be controversial, that competitors would oppose it, and there’s a proper role for legal review,” Schmidt said. “We anticipated what turned out to be about a four-month (antitrust review). We’re hopefully nearing the end of that period. We’re in communication with the Justice Department and others.”

Schmidt offered no new guidance on the search-ad deal with Yahoo, a partnership the companies had expected to have begun by now but that they delayed for further antitrust review at the Justice Department.

CNET News.com’s Stephen Shankland contributed to this story.

No, you won’t drop dead from it. Norovirus is better known as one of the viruses that causes a nasty stomach flu. Symptoms only last about a day or two, but it’s highly contagious. Just to up the gross-out factor: Norovirus is found in the fecal matter or vomit of people who are infected. If they don’t wash their hands properly, they spread it when they handle food or drinks.

And you can rest assured that all ickiness will be removed from the Moscone Center, as the health department “is working with the organizers of the meeting facilities to make cleaning recommendations and to confirm the cause of the illnesses.” You think maybe it was Neil Young?

Sun Microsystems has bragged for 13 years now that Java security features keep the programming technology virus-free. Apparently, the same doesn’t hold for the JavaOne trade show.

The culprit specified in the alert was the norovirus.

The health department is requesting that people who believe they have a norovirus-related illness keep away from the Moscone Center until they have been symptom-free for 48 hours.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health put out a release Thursday with an alert that “several” people had become ill after attending or working at conferences at the city’s Moscone Convention Center between April 30 and Thursday. That includes the time when the JavaOne confab took over the space. JavaOne opened its doors on Sunday and ends Friday.

To clarify, this is a virus that makes you barf and gives you diarrhea. It’s not the kind of virus that sends Viagra-pitching e-mails to all your friends or treats you to a Rick Astley sing-along every time you turn on your computer.

Yes, yes, I know it’s one of San Francisco’s singles hotspots, but this is for the greater good. In the meantime, make sure you wash your hands.

(Credit:
Apple Inc.)

MobileMe's Web mail in box is far superior to the current .Mac offerings, but in the meantime (some) .Mac users are getting @Me.com messages delivered just fine.

Other MobileMe services still have yet to catch up, including the improved photo gallery and Web mail interfaces. The .Mac to MobileMe transition is expected to occur sometime around the July 11th release of the iPhone 3G, as it’s a selling point for transferring data and settings between the mobile device and home computers.

While Apple’s upcoming MobileMe service has yet to hit retail shelves and overtake the existing .Mac offering, it looks like some users are already getting early benefits of the updated platform including proper e-mail forwarding with the @Me.com alias. MacRumors is reporting that the transition has already begun to take place for some, but not all current .Mac subscribers, meaning if you’ve got a Yourname@mac.com and somebody sends an e-mail to Yourname@me.com it’ll still end up in the right place.

“There was never enough time for all the questions, and it wasn’t clear that the best questions were the ones actually getting asked,” Heath wrote in a blog post. “And since many of these talks were led by offices outside of Mountain View, it became harder for distributed audiences to participate.”

When I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York last week, many of the panelists and speakers invited the audience to ask them questions by submitting Twitter messages. A Google engineer named Taliver Heath has gone one step further by creating Google Moderator, an application that lets the audiences at lectures and discussions submit questions and vote on the ones they’d like to hear answered.

Google Moderator, earlier named “Dory” after the inquisitive fish from Finding Nemo, started out as an internal tool. It was originally intended for the audiences at Google’s “Tech Talks” series, then was extended to company all-hands meetings and other lectures at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

After a few requests, Google has now released Moderator to the general public as part of its Google App Engine platform, and it’s now available for free use. I’ll start by asking a question about Moderator: What if audiences are too busy reading and voting on question submissions to actually listen?

iLife '09 includes a new version of GarageBand that lets you take music lessons.

iLife ‘09 will be bundled with all Macs starting Tuesday and will cost $79 if you’re planning to upgrade from an earlier version. If you bought a
Mac after the new version was announced on January 6, you can upgrade for just $9.95. Mac OS X Leopard and either an Intel or 867MHz or faster G4 Mac are required to run the software, according to Apple.

The new software comes with updates to iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand that Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller detailed during Macworld. For example, you will now be able to sort photos by the faces of your subjects in iPhoto and take $4.99 lessons from famous musicians in GarageBand.

The latest version of Apple’s iLife–shown off at Macworld earlier this month–will ship Tuesday.

(Credit:
Apple)