Citrix, RIM, USC. I’ve got to imagine this makes tracking marketing spend challenging. Anything else you doing from a marketing standpoint that's working well? Our radio show, Tech News, powered by Make It Work has been a great success. It’s that same discussion around how you are using social media. What networking events in Los Angeles or Southern California do you go to? I’ve recently had a chance to reconnect with Eric David Greenspan ( LinkedIn , Twitter ) He’s the CEO of Make It Work a high quality, personal, high touch technology service provider for homes and small businesses.

Los Angeles-based ARTISTdirect , which operates a music focused information website and runs MediaDefender, which looks for copyright violations on the Internet, said Wednesday that it has appointed interim CEO Dimitri Villard as its permanent CEO. Villard--who is a member of the Tech Coast Angels, and is a co-founder and Chairman of USC Keck School of Medicine spinout Pivotal BioSciences--has been interim CEO since March for the firm. The announcement for the publicly held firm--which is traded over the counter--came alongside what the firm described as a "significant change" in its capital structure, including paying off its senior debt and converting its subordinated debt into common stock.

The firm is venture backed by Mission Ventures, Selby Ventures, and the Tech Coast Angels; the firm's technology is a result of CIA-funded research efforts at USC. Pasadena-based Big Stage Entertainment , which develops 3D avatar technology, said today that it has partnered with video game company GGL Global Gaming, to provide free game content on its web site. According to Big Stage, the deal will allow users on the site to insert the firm's 3D avatars into game photos and videos.

The EDAR effort was the winner of the recent Social Innovation Fast Pitch — an effort produced by Los Angeles Social Venture Partners ,  the Social Enterprise Institute, and USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. The Social Innovation Fast Pitch itself was modeled after the Tech Coast Angels’ popular Fast Pitch events, where entrepreneurs pitch their high tech startups in 60 seconds or less. There was a good front page article in the LA Times yesterday on the effort to develop mobile shelters for the homeless by a local foundation — the EDAR Foundation — which has some interesting ties to Southern California’s technology community.

Big Stage is a spinout of technology from USC, originally developed for the CIA. Big Stage is venture backed by Mission Ventures, Selby Ventures, and the Tech Coast Angels. Pasadena-based Big Stage Entertainment , the startup which uses photos to create animated, 3-D facial avatars of users, has added new content from a game from GGL Global Gaming. Big Stage told its users yesterday that they could now insert their avatars into content from Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, a video game published by Funcom.

Los Angeles-based Big Stage Entertainment, a USC spinoff developing avatar technology, announced a new effort to provide its technology to third parties. The firm said that it has signed on fellow Los Angeles startup VIDiGREET as its first client. Big Stage is venture backed by Mission Ventures, Selby Ventures, and the Tech Coast Angels; the firm's technology was developed at the University of Southern California. Big Stage said it has created BackStage, which will offer its 3D face modeling technology to clients and partners. VIDiGREET--a provider of

Last Week, Calabasas-based Masher Media announced it had received a round of angel funding from the Tech Coast Angels to fund its development of MyMiniPeeps (www.myminipeeps.com), a virtual world for children. interesting point that the Tech Coast Angels made in your funding announcement was the time it took to get from presentation to funding. We spoke with Sherry Gunther, CEO and founder of the firm, earlier this week to get a better look at the company and the dynamics behind the virtual world market nowadays--as well as why Sherry decided to make the jump from the world of entertainment media to online.

It's been awhile since we last caught up with Los Angeles-based Language Weaver (www.languageweaver.com), a venture-backed firm which develops language translation software, so we sat down the other day with Mark Tapling , the President and CEO of the firm, to hear more about where the company is nowadays--plus its strategy for growth and an exit. Language Weaver is backed by Palisades Ventures, the Tech Coast Angels, and The Athenaeum Fund. What's What's new with Language Weaver? Mark Mark Tapling: Since you last did an in depth interview with us in 2007,