Paying bills is for the little people. Not Alex Vieux, publisher of the Red Herring, who has left a trail of stiffed vendors behind him — hotels, software makers, and consultants. The latest to go unpaid: Red Herring's dental and vision insurance plan. A former employee still getting benefits through COBRA tells us that on a visit to his eye doctor, he was told he no longer had coverage. A plan administrator told the ex-Herring that even though his COBRA bills had been paid on time, Red Herring hadn't paid the insurers — so forget seeing dentists or optometrists. For now, Red Herring's current and former employees still have regular medical coverage, but that's it. Oh, and what's this we hear about unpaid taxes? A sick business indeed.

Here's John Rogers. He's morally and financially bankrupt. He's a once-convicted felon with addiction problems and a taste for threatening strangers and lovers. And his dream is dead.

Jason Young, CEO of technology publisher Ziff-Davis, couldn't solve the company's $225 million debt problem. That means a round-trip back to bankruptcy court, whiled it restructures yet again. What it has left to restructure is an utter mystery.

These court documents show who stands to lose the most if Pay By Touch shuts down, besides its already ill-fated hundreds of employees. We like to think of corporations scheming to screw over the little guy. But Pay By Touch's bankruptcy filing shows us this: They spend just as much time trying to screw over the big guys. Big guys like Verizon ($135,000) and Oracle ($111,000).

San Francisco-based social network Piczo lost 12 employees, or a quarter of its staff, in the months since November. One former Piczo exec says the company reduced its headcount in order to refocus on its European efforts. Trouble is, Piczo's U.K. traffic is down 56 percent in the last year. And the company just isn't making much money, former director of operations Parker Ranney told News.com. What's to blame for Piczo's downfall?

Rackspace management called Tumblr's David Karp yesterday and pleaded for mercy. The Web-hosting service even offered to cut bandwidth chargeds from $2 a gigabyte down to 40 cents. (Other Rackspace customers, take note.) Didn't work. Karp, who runs today's favorite blogging tool for emo hipsters, dropped the hammer anyway. In the end, he tells us, it wasn't even Rackspace's winter and fall full of fail that led him to quit the service.

Yahoo maintains 28 "official blogs." Eight of them haven't been updated in a month, Internet gadfly Steve Baldwin notes on his blog. Here's the rundown.

A tipster tells us that he was approached by Red Herring to work as a reporter from his "home office," probably something similar to the job listed on the Herring website for a wireless reporter. He turned the job down very quickly, but says that he later talked to the fellow who ended up taking the job who was having "difficulty" getting paid. No surprise there, given the "difficulties" the magazine has had recently. "What pissed me off most was that they were approaching people when they had to know they were in such financial straits."

I cracked. I read Uncov's latest on Pownce. I still don't know what Pownce is. More important is the post's Alexa chart.

Google is cracking down on copyright-infringing videos uploaded to its site. Sort of. A copy of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" on YouTube has a yellow box which reads, "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled." This is bad news for Songza, the Web jukebox which rips the audio track from YouTube videos.

In a shareholders' conference call yesterday, Pay By Touch CFO Robert Sigler told investors the company plans to raise $150 million in 2008. This after Pay By Touch management has already burned through over $300 million since its founding and cost some 250 jobs just this fall. Tell you what, I hope Sigler and returning COO Eula Adams find their investors. Beause whoever they are, maybe I can find something to sell them, too. (Photo of the Brooklyn Bridge by absolutwade)

Eula Adams, who's returned to trouble payments company Pay By Touch as its COO, said during a conference call for investors today that at least two independent investigations into alleged illegal acts by officers of the company came up empty:

Failing biometrics company Pay By Touch has shed 250 employees in the last "couple months," COO Eula Adams said on a call for shareholders today. Of that 250, Adams said new management "took out" 90 employees in the last couple of weeks. The cuts came to "non-core" Pay By Touch initiatives in "healthcare, online, government," Adams said.

The financially and morally bankrupt John Rogers remains involved with the company he founded, Pay By Touch employees learned during an all-hands meeting Friday. Though the company no longer employs the once-convicted felon and confirmed bully, Rogers will remain on the board of directors. How could this be?

Failed biometrics payments firm Pay By Touch has filed voluntarily for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell subsidiaries ATM Direct and CardSystems, employees learned during an all-hands on Friday. During the meeting, Pay By Touch COO Eula Adams asked employees to remain positive. Then he virtually assured that wouldn't happen by explaining the company's payroll situation.

Nothing spreads holiday cheer like a rosy rash of firings as employees are starting to break out the eggnog. However they may try, there was no fooling CEO Ed Colligan into dispelling rumors he planned to heap coal — pink-slip shaped coal — into 100 stockings. The AP has confirmed that Palm has laid off 10 percent of its work force this week. These 115 souls were sacrificed to "focus and better align resources behind core initiatives" and "to ensure that our expenses are in line with projected revenues." Bah humbug to you, too, Ed. (Photo by lhoon)

Napster CFO and VP Nand Gangwani will leave the company at the end of the year. The "personal reason" cited? A killer commute. "Mr. Gangwani has been commuting from his home in the Bay Area to Los Angeles for the last four years," the release reads. Hmm. Why are we more inclined to believe Gangwani's departure has more to do with Napster's three-year share-price tumble from $10 in 2003 to $2.36 at yesterday's close — and that his commute showed he was never that committed to the company in the first place? Last we checked, homes were cheaper in southern California.

Nick Douglas described MingleNow, ad network BlueLithium's answer to MySpace, as "Yelp meets Cheers." A more accurate description, I suspect, was "excuse for a bunch of San Jose nerds to fly around the world for parties." The expense-account game is over. Yahoo, which acquired BlueLithium for its ad technology, not its wannabe social network, is shutting MingleNow on January 7, and suggesting users go to the Yahoo-owned Flickr or Upcoming instead. Which, come to think of it, is what BlueLithium's investors probably wish its founders had done in the first place.

AT&T still operates 65,000 payphones in 13 states — more for the advertising they can stick on the sides than for the calls they generate. Even that won't sustain them much longer, the WSJ reports. AT&T said payphone revenue is small and declining, and it wants to get out of the business by the end of next year. The first coin-operated phone, installed in Hartford, Connecticut, went into operation in 1889, 13 years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the device. The payphone killer isn't the iPhone alone, of course. The CTIA estimates that there are 251 million wireless customers in the U.S. — or 84 percent of the population. (Photo by Mayr)

Michael Barnes, the president of NorhTec, a computer hardware maker, says he's been royally stiffed by Pay By Touch, the troubled biometrics company now under court supervision. Stiffed to the tune of $3 million in promised orders, including more than half a million dollars in unpaid shipments. Former Pay By Touch CEO John Rogers left behind not just 750 angry employees with jobs on the line, and investors whose $300 million in funding looks unlikely to return much. To that list of aggrieved parties add suppliers like Barnes, who filled orders for the failing company but say they haven't been paid. Perversely, Barnes is rooting for the company to make a comeback, if only so he'll have a chance of getting what he's owed. Here's Barnes's story: