Adobe cuts 9 percent of workforce

In today's podcast: Adobe cuts 9 percent of workforce; Logitech to acquire HD video company; and Clearwire claims 173,000 WiMax subscribers.

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Adobe Systems will lay off 680 staff, or 9 percent of its workforce, in its latest move to cut costs, the company confirmed Tuesday. The job cuts will be made worldwide and are designed to bring Adobe's costs in line with its 2010 budget and "the realities of the business environment." Adobe also reduced the workforce at Omniture, which it has just acquired, by 9 percent at the close of that acquisition.

Logitech plans to acquire LifeSize Communications, a company that makes HD video communications equipment, for US$405 million in cash, the companies said Tuesday. Logitech, whose video business is focused mainly on webcams, hopes the deal will allow it to offer video communications systems for other settings besides the desktop. LifeSize targets a wide range of customers including enterprises that want installations in their boardrooms, small and medium-sized businesses, and home office workers. LifeSize has 9,000 video conferencing customers in 80 countries.

Wireless broadband provider Clearwire had about 173,000 WiMax subscribers at the end of September and should be able to offer service to 120 million potential subscribers in the U.S. by the end of next year, the company said Tuesday. The count of WiMax subscribers covers both markets where Clearwire is setting up shop for the first time with its WiMax service, called Clear, and those where the new technology replaced earlier pre-WiMax wireless broadband networks. It includes subscribers who bought the service from Clearwire as well as from resellers such as Sprint Nextel and Comcast.

Google has invented a new programming language designed to reduce the complexity of coding without compromising the performance of applications. Called Go, the language has been tested internally at Google but is still at an experimental stage, so the company is releasing it Tuesday as open-source code in the hope that it will get help with its future development. Go aims to improve on the way existing programming languages manage dependencies, which are the software components that applications re-use, such as libraries. The language also is designed to handle multiprocessor work particularly well, thanks to its concurrent programming model.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.