When I drill down on that term, you can see why with posts like: Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals Lops A Third Of Company THQ Lays Off 100 Employees, Closes San Diego Office Citrix Cuts 10 Percent; Santa Barbara Hit And it's also interesting to see what geographies are being associated with "Layoffs" more often than others: Layoffs Woodland Hills Layoffs San Diego Layoffs Santa Monica Layoffs Los Angeles I guess this is a sign of the times. The Scott Sanfilippo Interview Media Optimization Firms Are Red Hot In Southern California in 2009 Proliferate

Woodland Hills, CA. Frequency: Varies Cost: ~$80 for evening mixers, $300 for 2-day conferences Review: Added 9/15/09 by Todd Zebert Name: Web 2.0 (Entrepreneurs) gid=2208499259 (also has subgroups), Self-description: "This group is for Individuals interested in being part of the next web business boom. Frequency: Varies This is will be a continually updating post. I'll be creating additional lists for educational, chamber of commerce, etc. Organizational representatives: please contact me directly for updates, etc. Attendees: If you have

Woodland Hills-based MetaDolce Technologies, a developer software for web search, said Thursday that it has launched a new product which will allow web sites to accept "natural language" queries for visitors. According to the firm, the software allows web sites to provide a way for visitors to ask questions and get "real" answers, rather than dealing with irrelevant search results. According to the firm's web site, MetaDolce's co-founders were both most recently at Intuit; the firm's co-founder and CEO, Moshe Meppen, has also served at Interlink Electronics; the firm's CFO and co-founder, Kevin Driscoll, was also at Intuit, and has served at Walt Disney Company and Mattel.

Woodland Hills-based FatTail , a developer of software for managing online advertising for web publishers, announced today that it has launched a new, self-serve display ad selling system called PageGage Direct. According to FatTail, the new software allows advertisers to book ads, including banners, rich media, video, and mobile ads, on publisher web sites. The new software is a web-based system which allows advertisers to browse available inventory and book their own advertising, and is FatTail's first move into self-service ads. The firm's prior products

Woodland Hills-based Gumiyo , which develops tools for enabling mobile web sites, has scored a new customer. According to accounting and advisory firm CNM LLP, it has partnered with Gumiyo to deliver collateral, advertisements, business cards, and other media via SMS from its web sites. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. CNM LLP is run by Tony Radaich, who was formerly a partner at Ernst & Young in Southern California.

Woodland Hills-based FatTail , a developer of software tools for publishers to manage their advertising sales efforts, said over the weekend that the firm has launched a new product, PageGage RAFT, which will allow publishers automatically buy search traffic. The firm's product creates keywords and links into search engines to drive more visitors to specific pages on a publisher's website, so that the meet the traffic goals of their advertisers, who typically commit to a certain ad budget and impressions--all which are driven by web page traffic. According to the firm, the new tool combines ad contract data and website content information to help publishers boost traffic to fulfill their advertising contracts.

Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal has launched a new, online marketplace for local advertising, saying Monday that it has created a new "ReachLocal Xchange" platform which will allow websites to tap into local advertisers. The new program--similar to Google's AdSense program--links ReachLocal's ads into publisher web sites directly, rather than through Google or Yahoo's online ad networks. According to ReachLocal, the new technology platform is targeted at both major and "long tail" Internet publishers, who want to tap into local online ads. ReachLocal said that the program

Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal , which operates a service to help small and medium sized businesses place online advertising, said this morning that it is adding a online display advertising product to its mix. The firm said its new offering, ReachDisplay, will help local advertisers place online visual display ads on multiple web sites. The service is an expansion of the firm's existing services, which are focused on keyword-based search advertising and related tracking and analytics of those ads. ReachLocal helps local businesses--who otherwise would not have the knowledge

Woodland Hills-based FatTail, a developer of online advertising management software, announced this morning that it has raised $3M in a Serie A financing round led by Velocity Interactive Group. FatTail develops software used to manage the sales of advertising on major publisher web sites, including managing RFPs and ad inventory. Velocity Interactive Group is the venture firm headed by former AOL CEO Jonathan F. Miller and former Fox Interactive Media's Ross Levinsohn.

entrepreneurs, professional service and corporate executives, the tech/media/entertainment/Web 2.0 Ideas of Interest * Cross cloud deployments * Security in cloud deployments * Datacenters * Virtualization * Test driven deployment * GPU computing * Decentralized datastores * Scientific computing " Frequency: Unknown Cost: Unknown Review: None Added 10/6/09 by Todd Zebert Name: LA Web Application Developers Meetup Sites: web.meetup.com/34 Self-description: "Join us at Los Angeles's biggest meetup for web application developers (software engineers who build websites).