San Diego serial entrepreneur Michael Robertson is going to have to find something else to do now that Gizmo5, the VoIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) company he founded in 2003, has become part of a certain search giant to the north. We have that news and more.

—Google confirmed that it’s buying San Diego-based Gizmo5, a six-year-old company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. The service will become part of the Google Voice number-unification service. Google did not disclose the purchase price, which media reports put at about $30 million. Gizmo5’s 6 million users will still be able to use the service, according to a statement. But Google is suspending new Gizmo5 signups, and existing users can no longer sign up for a call-in number.

—Platformic, a Web-based startup that enables customers to create and manage their own websites, said it is adding social media capabilities. The two-year-old San Diego-based company, which has targeted broadcast companies, says its expanded software-as-a-service product will help a broadcaster’s audience share photos, create their own user profiles, and create personal blogs on the broadcaster’s Platformic-powered website.

—Qualcomm’s No. 2 executive opened a regional mobile technology conference in San Diego by providing an overview of steps the chipmaking giant is taking to help ease the pressure on wireless network bottlenecks as mobile data traffic soars. Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer told the 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference that in the year 2014, worldwide mobile data traffic in one month will exceed mobile data traffic for all of 2008.

—Technology innovations that help companies optimize their profitability will likely lead to the next wave of analytics-based software startups, according to Stephen Coggeshall of San Diego-based ID Analytics. Another hot area will be analytics that can help forecast consumer behavior, said Coggeshall, who was participating in a discussion about new opportunities in analytics during the San Diego Software Industry Council’s annual forum on analytics.

—Israel’s Panoramic Power won $250,000 and became the first winner of the top QPrize, the incentive prize competition launched earlier this year by Qualcomm Ventures. Panoramic Power is developing energy-monitoring wireless technology that enables a company or institution to deploy so-called “smart grid” technologies within their existing facilities.

—The San Diego-based Cannon Power Group said is getting $19.4 million in federal renewable energy grants to help fund construction of a giant wind farm in eastern Washington state, about 110 miles east of Portland, OR. The $1 billion Windy Point/Windy Flats project is expected to generate enough electricity for 250,000 homes.

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San Diego-based VMIX, which specializes in video hosting technology and services, has raised $2 million in additional venture capital, according to a regulatory filing with the SEC today. When I checked in with VMIX about two months ago, CEO Mike Glickenhaus was in the second year of heading a new VMIX business strategy that’s focused on serving media companies. The company previously raised $21.5 million in venture funding from JK&B Capital, Mission Ventures, ATA Ventures, and Enterprise Partners. A spokesman says all four participated in the latest round as well.

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San Diego-based MojoPages, an online business directory that includes consumer reviews, said today it has raised $5 million in a Series A round of venture funding led by Austin Ventures, the venture fund based in Austin, TX. Founded in 2007, MojoPages says it plans to use the funds to expand its private-labeled local search solution for media properties, to attract new partners, and to develop its position in the expanding local search market.

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San Diego’s Loop’d Network, an online media network for action sports, has raised $800,000 in funding from its existing private investors and Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels, a new investor. The startup founded in late 2007 says it plans to use the funding to accelerate development of its innovative business strategy, which combines e-commerce, social merchandising, and online advertising. The Loop’d Network says it became profitable in December, 2008, and says it gets 750,000 unique monthly visitors, a 450 percent increase over the past six months, according to Comscore.

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One of the corollaries of hiring a new CEO is that sometimes the corporate mountain moves instead of the guy at the top, which may be a factor in an announcement today by Utah’s Sorenson Media.

The Salt Lake City-based developer of video compression and encoding software said today Sorenson has opened a new San Diego office that will now “serve as the central hub for the company’s business operations.”

The company founded in 1995 by James Lee Sorenson recently hired a new CEO, Peter Csathy, who has led several high-growth digital media ventures, including SightSpeed, (acquired by Logitech in late 2008) MusicMatch, (aqcuired by Yahoo! in 2004) and eNow, (acquired by AOL-TimeWarner in 2006.)

Sorenson Media’s Squeeze video compressor and optimizer software is one of the industry’s leading video encoding tools. Squeeze is one of the basic video software tools used by hundreds of millions of online surfers when they make or watch videos.

In Sorenson’s press release, Csathy says that the San Diego staff is expected to triple in number within a year. Sorenson Media currently has approximately 10 people in its San Diego office. The company has about 25 employees in Salt Lake City, and a spokesman says that staff also is expected to grow.

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The San Diego Venture Group today named TheSportsTV.com as the winner of its ninth annual “PitchFest” business plan competition. The startup, which was awarded $20,000, was among three finalists that made presentations to 280 people who attended the venture group’s annual meeting on Dec. 3.

TheSportsTV.com is a Web site that enables amateur athletes to post video and other information for coaches, college recruiters and professional scouts.

The competition was open to any Southern California-based startup that had raised less than $2.5 million in venture capital funding. A screening committee winnowed the field to 10 semi-finalists, who presented their business plans to a panel of venture capital judges in November. The panel selected two other startups as finalists: BidMyAtoZ.com, an online platform for bidding on household services; and LifeModeler Inc., which creates computerized models for orthopedic procedures.

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Venture and private equity firms apparently have clamped down on much of their funding activities in San Diego, but some local firms were able to take advantage of state and federal sources of cash last week. We also saw the Food and Drug Administration give Amylin a break and Qualcomm’s top executives offer their outlook for next year.

—One significant development for San Diego’s biotech community is that the state’s stem cell agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, opened its spigot for funding business ventures. The change is important because the institute has doled out more than $614 million through 229 grants since it was created in 2005, with all but one grant going to academic scientists at non-profit universities and research centers. Last week the institute awarded six grants to life science companies, and four with operations in San Diego got a total of more than $3.3 million.

—San Diego’s Cohu, which has traditionally been one of the most cautious players in the semiconductor industry, agreed to pay $80 million in cash to buy German rival Rasco from Dover Corp. Cohu makes thermal pick-and-place test handling machines used by chipmakers to test the performance of semiconductors with wire leads. Rasco specializes in gravity-feed machines that test smaller chips used increasingly …Next Page »

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A spokesman for San Diego’s DivX (NASDAQ: DIVX) confirms today the online digital video provider has laid off 21 employees, or nearly 10 percent of its San Diego workforce. We first saw the layoffs reported at TechCrunch. DivX disclosed earlier this month that its chief technology officer resigned, and it’s not clear if these cutbacks were part of that restructuring. DivX said in mid-November its financial results would be hurt after Yahoo terminated a two-year advertising contract.

Check for updates to Xconomy’s San Diego layoff tracker here.

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San Diego’s DivX (NASDAQ: DIVX) says its chief technology officer Markus Moenig has resigned to “return overseas and explore new entrepreneurial opportunities.” The company said Moenig’s primary focus, which was integrating H. 264 digital video technology, has been realized in its soon-to-be released DivX 7 product. The vice president of engineering, Jim Reesman, will lead DivX’s global engineering organization.

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It’s one of the biggest acquisitions of the year in the Northwest. Getty Images, the Seattle-based creator and distributor of online photos and video, is buying New York-based Jupitermedia’s online images business. The acquisition of Jupiterimages is worth $96 million in cash, and will help Jupitermedia pay off its bank debt, according to a statement today.

This is at least the second bid that Getty has made to acquire its smaller rival; a proposed deal in early 2007 fell through. Meanwhile, 2008 has been a busy year for Getty. In February, the company announced it was being acquired by an affiliate of private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman. The $2.4 billion acquisition was completed in July.

Getty Images was founded in 1995, and was among the first companies to license images via the Web. As of 2006, Getty was an $800 million dollar public company with 21 offices worldwide. Today’s acquisition would seem to solidify the now-private firm’s position in the online stock-photo and multimedia marketplace.

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