Here’s our weekly roundup of recent Southern California technology news: Economy-relate layoffs continue to pile up: Tags: New More music moves at MySpace , with a new deal to distribute music from independents. San Diego’s RoyaltyShare , the firm which tracks digital royalties for record labels,  is also part of that deal.

Sun Microsystems finally makes good on their layoff of 1,300. - Tags: ibm google sun layoffs News microsoft dig Barack Obama is president for one day and here are the results: - Microsoft lays off 5,000. - Google might fire 1,000. -

In our Friday Southern California technology news roundup: The The economy continues to be in the news this week, as Broadcom is cutting 200 employees as it sees a glum Q1. But, TheWrap --focused on Hollywood and entertainment news-- announced funding from Maveron on Monday. And, Tags: california But, for some reason, a number of small, private SoCal firms are actually quite upbeat, including MaintenanceNet - reporting Q4 growth ; Central Desktop with "a record quarter"; Skweezer saying the fourth quarter bumped it to profitability ; mobileStorm also reporting a strong quarter ; not to mention iRise , which says the bad economy is actually driving the firm's growth . For

Santa Monica-based Mahalo, the search and news site run by Jason Calacanis, has cut 10 percent of the firm's staff, Calacanis said in a post on his blog Wednesday. Mahalo is venture backed by Burda Digital Ventures, CBS, News Corp., and Sequoia Capital, and provides human-edited search pages and news summaries. Calacanis said that the moves were due to a "challenging economic environment." According to Calacanis, the firm is "fairly certain" that advertising for the next two years will be "severely depressed."

The WSJ reports that News Corp's Fox Interactive Media division laid off about 5 percent of its work force, or about 100 people. Tags: jobs layoff interactive myspace medi Fox Interactive Media has reportedly laid off a number of staffers, and is restructing its MySpace unit, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Details were sketchy, however, MySpace told a number of publications that it is actively hiring and expects to have more employees at the end of the fiscal year than it currently has, despite the restructuring. ...Tags:

Electronics Arts is shutting down Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios , according to an internal note leaked to gaming news site Kotaku. Tags: electronic arts games content pandemic shutdown layof According to the note, Electronic Arts has laid off around 200 employees, and transitioned the rest to Electronic Arts' Los Angeles office. EA bought Pandemic in 2007, in a deal worth $775M. ...Tags:

Agoura Hills-based THQ , a developer and publisher of video games, said Wednesday that it is making "additional cost reduction actions" which includes the layoff of approximately 600 people, or 24 percent of the company's workforce. The bad news came in conjunction with its quarterly results, where THQ said it had net sales in the quarter of $357.3M, down significantly from last year when it had net sales of $509.6M. THQ said the move was a response to the continuing uncertainty in the market. The firm said that the cuts include a reduction in product development spending by an

The layoffs occurred yesterday, when employees were notified of the move. The news was first reported by Paidcontent . Los Angeles- and San Diego-based Veoh (www.veoh.com), an online video sharing site, has laid off 20 people, or roughly 18-20 percent of the firm's employees. A spokesperson

Hollywood-based, music-related blog and content firm Buzznet has reportedly cut employees, according to a report from Digital Music News. According to the publication, citing a representative of the firm, Buzznet has eliminated 10 employees, from a total of 89 staff. This publication has not yet confirmed the cuts with the firm.

If you’re like me, you’re tired of hearing about layoffs, the huge number of job losses due to the economy, etc. So, it’s nice to hear that there seem to be a number of local companies squarely in hiring mode. One of those companies is Aerovironment , which has locations in Monrovia and Simi Valley–the firm just sent out a media alert calling attention to the firm’s upcoming job fair in Monrovia.