Microsoft went big on pushing cloud services this week at its Build conference, but today it was dealt a blow for how it might get to market them in Europe. BSkyB, the pay-TV broadcaster part-owned by News Corp., won a judgement in the England and Wales High Court against the U.S. software giant, for infringing the “Sky” trademark. → Read More
It’s not every VC that publishes annual stats on things like deal-flow, average size of investment, average founder salary, number of exits and startups dead-pooled. But openness — within no doubt carefully crafted limits — is part of London-based Passion Capital‘s brand after it set the bar with its inaugural report last year. → Read More
The well-worn theory known as the 1% rule dictates that the number of people creating content within an Internet community represents only about 1% of the people consuming it. In other words — shock! horror! — most people consume a lot more content than they ever contribute. Reflecting a similar pattern, whereby only 25% of its users are uploading playlists versus the 75% who use the service… → Read More
The emergence of NumberFour in Berlin – which has today announced a $38m Series A round – throws up a few interesting points worth briefly dwelling on. It may be the case that we are looking at a tipping point in the European tech startup scene, which will play out over the next few years. Indeed, this business platform may be Europe’s answer to the global consumer platform created by Google and… → Read More
NumberFour, founded in 2009 by former senior Yahoo executive Marco Boerries in Berlin to re-engineer small business processes, has secured an enormous $38 million in Series A financing led by Index Ventures, specifically Mike Volpi. Volpi Participating in the round is Allen&Co, T-Venture/Deutsche Telekom, Andreas von Bechtolsheim, former Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Klaus Hommels and Lars… → Read More
Chalk up another point for the growth of apps coming out of Israel that are focused on consumers, but draw on the country’s better-known heritage for producing big data and enterprise startups. Wibbitz, a platform that draws on natural language technology, artificial intelligence and some clever algorithms to automatically translate texts into videos, is today launching a consumer-focused app. → Read More
Microsoft continues to throw money down the Windows Phone well, perhaps buoyed by signs its ongoing marketing and platform support efforts are shifting the needle a few fractions. Today more evidence — presumably — of Ballmer’s money-throwing commitment to make its smartphone OS stick: carrier Telefonica has announced it will be collaborating with Microsoft to “promote and foster sales” of WP8. → Read More
Contentful, a startup out of Berlin, is today releasing a beta of a platform that it hopes will be the future of how companies manage their content in a multi-screened world, where nearly any physical object has a shot at being a piece of “hardware.” It is also announcing a seed round of an undisclosed amount from Balderton and Zendesk backer Point Nine Capital to help further that vision. → Read More
India pushed past Japan to become the third largest global smartphone market in Q1, according to a new report by Strategy Analytics. The analyst notes it’s the first time ever that India has moved up into third place. The top two worldwide markets for smartphones remain China and the U.S. → Read More
Video — as Instagram’s recent launch, Yahoo’s would-be and actual acquisitions, and others’ new content initiatives show — is a hot property today, with more people than ever before consuming video online, and advertisers scrambling to catch that wave. While Google’s YouTube is by far the biggest player in this space, video — like the medium itself — is a moving target that will see a number… → Read More
The European data protection activists behind the Europe v Facebook (evf) campaign group, that has long been a thorn in Facebook’s side in Europe, have filed new complaints under regional data protection law targeting Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo for their alleged collaboration with the NSA’s Prism data collection program. → Read More
It looks like it may be back to the drawing board for Google on the European competitive front: hundreds of publishers and publishing trade associations today are coming out in force to ask the European Commission and its Vice President Joaquín Almunia to “reject outright” Google’s draft remedies, which Google submitted to the EC as its offer for rebalancing competition in search and other… → Read More
It’s not too often that a startup from ‘down under’ up roots to join an accelerator in Europe and then gets funded before graduating. Enter online book publishing platform 7write, which originally hails from Australia but has since relocated to the Netherlands after being accepted into accelerator Startupbootcamp’s Amsterdam program. Graduating teams don’t present until Demo day this Friday, but… → Read More
You can’t really keep a good entrepreneur from continuing to launch companies. That appears to be the case once again with Stephen Rapoport. Rapoport previously built and sold the apartment-sharing site Crashpadder to Airbnb, but has since got itchy feet once again after exiting a few months ago. And what started out as a hobby business to keep him interested before the next big thing has turned… → Read More
The latest Facebook data breach — which exposed personal contact information Facebook had harvested on 6M of its users — is a reminder that even if you’re not handing over all your contact data to Facebook, Facebook is obtaining that data anyway. And even if you’re not on Facebook yourself, your contact data likely is because it’s building a shadow profile of you by data-mining others. → Read More
Aiming to help users double-down on their password security is 1mylogin, which offers a cloud-based password manager. Today the UK startup has announced that its raised a further $500,000 or so in funding, capital it will use to market its relatively new business offering soft-launched last month. → Read More
Google Voice remains a pretty useful service if you want your voice mails turned into text messages. However, it’s ability to do so accurately is a little hit and miss. Indeed, there are numerous websites that contain hilarious Google Voice transcriptions, often on Tumblr blogs. Plus, Google Voice is only available in the US. VoxSci is a service which has been operating for a while in the UK, but… → Read More
Rocket Internet, the Samwer Brothers’ Berlin-based e-commerce startup incubator, is taking its Latin American ambitions up to the next gear. Easy Taxi, a Hailo-like app for calling up taxicabs, is today announcing a $15 million round of investment from Latin America Internet Holding (LIH). LIH is Rocket Internet’s holding company in the region, and it is part-owned by Millicom, an emerging markets… → Read More
Back in April we were told that London’s highest concentration of tech companies in the East – dubbed Tech City by the UK government – would be getting high speed mobile connectivity. Well, it turns out Carrier EE (the only with with a 4G network right now) is delivering, partnering with the Tech City Investment Organisation, and is switching on a network of “double-speed” 4G hotspots. However… → Read More
In the wake of the latest notice from a major internet company revealing that user data has been compromised — Facebook’s admission of a security bug compromising data from 6 million users — the European Commission today is publishing new, Europe-wide rules that will require ISPs, carriers, broadband providers and others to report to both national regulators and to subscribers more specific… → Read More
Are you in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, or Slovenia? Have I got a treat for you. In an effort to spread the good word about TC in the rest of Europe, I will be rolling through Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana at the beginning of July for a series of informal meet-ups. If you’re in those cities, I want you to attend! → Read More
Meet Rapiro, the kit robot with a space inside its kawaii head to accomodate the Raspberry Pi microcomputer. The gizmo is the creation of Shota Ishiwatari, the Japanese gadgeteer who came up with a brain-wave controlled cat-ear headband and a heart-rate controlled wearable wagging tail, among other ‘only in Japan’ creations. → Read More
In other video news this week, the video editing app Givit has announced its integration with Dailymotion, the second largest social video site globally after YouTube. It is the first U.S. app to be built into the France-based Dailymotion’s API. → Read More
We’re still a ways away from electric sheep roaming the fields pretending to bleat but robotics researchers continue to look to nature for four-legged inspiration. Meet Cheetah-Cub, a European Commission-funded research project, out of Swiss University the École Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne’s biorobotics lab, that’s about the size of a house cat. → Read More
We’re gearing up for Disrupt Europe this October in Berlin October 26-29 – the very first time that our flagship event is coming to this part of the world. And we want all the startups out there in Euroland to throw their hats into the ring to be a part of it, by applying for a place in the Battlefield — our on-stage competition to find the most promising startups, showering them with… → Read More
A new video-focused startup has just launched a second-screen offering, partnering with TV broadcaster Sky to allow TV viewers to legally share real-time clips of its content. There’s just one supported show at launch — Sky Living’s Britain & Ireland’s Next Top Model — but Grabyo says it is due to launch with another major UK broadcaster “shortly”. → Read More
From the painstakingly obvious why did nobody think of it before department: London-based early-stage VC Passion Capital has updated its standard Term Sheet so that it’s written entirely in plain English. For those of you who have never had to navigate a venture capital Term Sheet, the document outlining the terms of any proposed investment, they are usually worded by the legal profession, and as… → Read More
GrabCAD, the online community and cloud-based collaboration tool for mechanical engineers and other stakeholders involved in designing physical products, is adding Android to its arsenal today. Like the company’s existing iOS offering, the Android app enables users to view any of the 200,000 or so 3D models shared by the GrabCAD community, as well as access files stored privately. → Read More
Bambuser, the upstart mobile video service that has carved out a name for itself as a crucial tool for eyewitnesses to record and transmit footage of major events — be they political uprisings, bombings or a star sighting — is today announcing another step along the route to becoming a part and parcel of the traditional media world. It’s taking an investment from the Associated Press, the… → Read More
Because fashion never goes out of style, fashion portals continue to bring in the money not just from consumers looking for the next big thing — be it style or bargain, and ideally both — but also investors keen to ride the wave. The latest example is Rad, a Paris-based startup that focuses on hipster clothes and accessories and likens itself to the online equivalent of Urban Outfitters. Today… → Read More
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