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Infected Flight Wins The Disrupt Europe 2014 Hackathon Grand Prize, Appilepsy And Seeusoon Are Runners Up
It doesn’t get more exciting than this. Yesterday, we welcomed hundreds of hackers at Old Billingsgate in London for the Disrupt Europe Hackathon. They all have worked tirelessly for the past 24 hours in an awesome dungeon-like venue to come up with a neat, funny and smart hack. We could all feel the excitement in the air when the 89 teams took the stage to present a short one-minute demo… Read More
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Movie Nights Lets You And Your Friends Find And Agree On A Film To Watch
Trying to figure out what film I want to watch at home from the thousands I can pick on various VOD services is a pain. The only thing more annoying is trying to find one that my husband and I can both agree we want to watch (love you, Marc). A app presented today at TC’s Disrupt Hackathon called Movie Nights has created a way to solve that problem: it lets two parties enter either… Read More
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With Laplock, You Get A Text Message When Somebody Unplugs Your Laptop
Fresh off the hackathon dungeon, Laplock is a nifty little app developed at our TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in London. Martin Saint-Macary and Ivan Maeder worked tirelessly for the past 24 hours to build an easy-to-use software lock for your Mac. Here’s how it works. At heart, Laplock is a menubar app for your Mac. You install it, enter your phone number and/or Yo account, and… Read More
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#Gamergate Shows Tech Needs Far Better Algorithms
If Gamergate teaches us anything — beyond, of course, vastly obvious observations about the toxicity of certain Internet demographics (which is hardly new news) — it’s that algorithms and formulaic behaviour can and are being gamed. Read More
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The Disrupt Europe Hackathon Kicks Off At Old Billingsgate In London
The Disrupt Europe hackathon began just a few hours ago at Old Billingsgate in London. Participants are now gathered in The Vault, the venue’s ominously-named underground area — but earlier, when everyone was still waiting for the doors to open, Mike Butcher and I walked the line and talked to a few of the hackers about why they’d came and what they’re planning to… Read More
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Jolla Does Angry Birds Themed Android Launcher To Fling Its Sailfish OS Further
Jolla, the Finnish smartphone startup that expanded the MeeGo open source project into its own Sailfish OS, has released its first Android launcher — to give users of Google’s mobile platform a taster of what its alternative OS has to offer. Read More
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Octopus Ventures De-Cloaks — Reveals Its ‘Evergreen’ £60m Early Stage Fund
Octopus Ventures (CrunchBase listing) has become one of the most active early stage investors in the UK, backing many early individuals and businesses which went on to greater heights. These include backing Alex Chesterman all the way from Screen Select to LOVEFiLM and then from the early stages of Zoopla through to IPO. Another example is William Reeve, also from Screen Select and the… Read More
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Virtual Fitting Room Startup Metail Raises Further $12M — Shunning UK VC Money Along The Way
“To be brutally honest, I’m not enamored with the UK VC scene and don’t rate it very much if at all from a technology business success perspective,” says Tom Adeyoola, co-founder and CEO of Metail. “The big UK tech business successes weren’t founded on VC money.” His company, which offers virtual fitting room tech to major clothes retailers so that… Read More
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Playlists.net Acquired By Warner Music Group
In early July we reported exclusively that Spotify community and playlist sharing site Playlists.net was in acquisition talks, with one suitor — a prominent music industry company — in the lead. Well, today comes official confirmation that the UK startup has indeed been acquired by WEA, the artist and label services company owned by major record label Warner Music Group. Terms of… Read More
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Mailcloud Raises $2.8m For Real-Time Email And Messaging For Teams
Mailcloud, where users connect their email account and organise their entire history of emails, files and content into folders sorted by person, has raised seed funding, bringing its total funding to $2.8 million. The funding is from Octopus Investments, with Bessemer Venture partners completing its first seed round in Europe. The round also includes Xavier Niel’s Kima Ventures… Read More
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Arago Secures $55M From PE Firm KKR To Automate Enterprise IT
KKR, a private equity firm, is investing about $55 million in Arago AG, a company that develops artificial-intelligence software that companies can use to cut costs. The Germany based company is headed up by tech legend Chris Boos and Dr. Bernhard Walther. The main competitor to Arago is IPSoft. Boos says the market opportunity is $1.2 trillion. Read More
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Google’s Schmidt Stands Firm On Not Applying Europe’s Search De-Listing To Google.Com
Google’s Eric Schmidt has held the line against extending European search de-listing requests to Google’s .com domain. As it stands successful requests made by private individuals under the ruling for information to be de-indexed by Google in a search associated with their name are only implemented by Google on European sub domains, such as Google.co.uk or Google.de, not on Google.com. Read More
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Join Me In Wroclaw And Krakow Next Week
As you prepare for your flight to London for TC Disrupt I will encourage you – nay, implore you – to join me in Wroclaw and Krakow before and after the main event in the UK. I will be speaking at TechSaturdays in Wroclaw on Saturday, October 18 where we’ll hold a small pitch-off. The winner will get a Start-up Alley table at TC Disrupt in any city (including London if you… Read More
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To Stay In The Game, European VCs Wake Up To Offering Services And Software
As the European tech startup market becomes yet more crowded with investors and accelerators, those investors are realising they are – gasp! – going to have to start working harder to differentiate themselves from their peers in the venture community. For some, that means offering more seed stage investment, for instance. But money, famously, can’t buy you all the love, so… Read More
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WonderLuk Is Using 3D Printing To Power An On-Demand Fashion Accessories Marketplace
Custom 3D printed clothes that fit like a glove and mean you’ll never have the tedium of traipsing into a changing room ever again are still likely years out. But the fashion space is dabbling with 3D printing technology. And there are other moves afoot to harness the power of on-demand additive manufacturing to produce custom designs. Read More
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BBC Uses WhatsApp For An Ebola Health Alert Service In West Africa
While Snapchat may reportedly be talking to a dozen news organisations for a “Snapchat Discovery” service, another big name in mobile messaging is also breaking new ground with big media. The BBC today started a new account on Facebook-owned WhatsApp to update people with the latest information about Ebola. The BBC says its service is aimed primarily at reaching WhatsApp… Read More
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Our Finals Judges For The TechCrunch Disrupt Europe Startup Battlefield Competition
A central part of any Disrupt event is the Startup Battlefield competition, and at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe there will be no exception to this. At this event, new companies introduce themselves to the world that day, with most launching to the public right there and then. Some companies that have launched from the Startup Battlefield include Yammer, Dropbox, Mint.com, Tripit and CloudFlare… Read More
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KweekWeek Books $3.25M Seed Round To Bridge Gap Between Event Ticketing And Discovery
You could be forgiven for thinking that Eventbrite, hot on the heels of its latest $60 million fund raise, has pretty much sewn up the long tail of event ticketing. Meanwhile, mobile-first apps like Yplan are innovating smartly around event discovery — a space Eventbrite also has its sights set upon. However, London-based startup KweekWeek sees an opportunity to bridge the two by offering… Read More
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Wi-Fi Sharing Community Instabridge Wants To Become Your Phone’s Default WiFi Manager
Instabridge, an Android app that wants to replace your phone’s default Wi-Fi manager and give you access to a crowdsourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots, has bagged a $1 million seed round. Funding is being led by European VC Creandum, with participation from GP Bullhound, and a number of angel investors, including Niall Murphy (former CTO of TheCloud), Scott Bannister and Felix Hagnö… Read More
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Bookatable Tests Foodies’ Appetite For iBeacons In UK, Shopkick Passes 7,500 Beacons
iBeacon, the Bluetooth Low Energy technology that is being used by businesses to push offers and other messages to customers’ smartphones when they are in the physical vicinity of a small pinging device, is starting to see some decent traction. Businesses like Shopkick (recently acquired by SK planet for $200 million) have now rolled out some 7,500 of the devices across its retail… Read More
