Here’s a crash-bang follow up to last week’s LeWeb tech conference in Paris. Today, the trade event giant Reed Exhibitions announced that it has bought a majority stake in the franchise from Loic and Geraldine LeMeur, who founded the event in 2004 in Paris and have grown it to be one of the bigger tech conferences in Europe. → Read More
At LeWeb Paris this morning, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for its Developer & Platform Evangelism Group, just took the stage to discuss the state of the Windows 8 developer ecosystem and Microsoft in general with Techonomy Media’s Founder & CEO David Kirkpatrick. Guggenheimer has now spent more than 18 years at Microsoft and was the head of the company’s OEM Division before taking… → Read More
At LeWeb Paris this morning, Nest Labs’ Founder and CEO Tony Fadell took the stage with the Iliad Group’s founder Xavier Niel to talk about his advanced thermostat and the Internet of Things. → Read More
LeWeb Paris is less than a month away and conference organizers Loic and Geraldine Le Meur just posted this year’s schedule. The theme of the event, which is scheduled to run from December 4th to 6th, is “The Internet of Things.” There is a clear focus on connected hardware, with speakers like Nest‘s Tony Fadell and Fitbit‘s James Park, as well as representatives from companies like Lifx… → Read More
LeWeb’11 is right around the corner. For those who do not know what LeWeb is — it is Europe’s number one tech event. This year they already have some amazing speakers lined up. Some of those include ones we’ve even seen at our very own Disrupt events. Those speaking at LeWeb’11 include: Eric Schmidt, Sean Parker, Kevin Rose, Marissa Mayer, Brian Chesky, and Dave Morin just to name a few. You can… → Read More
If the words Path and Milk mean something to you in more ways than one, or you happen to have heard of a few little companies called Airbnb, Flipboard or Instagram, boy do we have a treat for you. For this week’s TechCrunch Giveaway, we’ll be offering you a way to get up close and personal with some of the greatest minds in today’s startup scene: a ticket to LeWeb’11.
And if those names didn’t… → Read More
It kind of feels like it was only yesterday that we were all watching Loïc Le Meur parade across the stage at LeWeb dressed up in Angry Bird gear. Yet, Géraldine and Loïc Le Meur have already announced the dates for year’s edition of the infamous Paris-based tech conference.
While in previous years LeWeb has always been a 2-day event, looks like the team has decided add another day to the menu… → Read More
Yesterday, I noted that we were giving away two free tickets to LeWeb ’10. But I was quick to point out that while the free tickets, normally priced at around 2,000 euros, are a great deal, you would still have to pay for your own travel to Paris and lodging for the conference, which takes place on December 8 and 9. Well guess what? You can cross lodging off of that list.
Airbnb has graciously… → Read More
Now that the craziness of the week is over, we can sit back and reflect on how great TechCrunch Disrupt was once again. And yes, even in the post-AOL acquisition world, we’ll keep on holding them — though sadly, not until next year at a place and time to be determined. But if you can’t wait that long, we’re happy to announce something that might interest you.
As you probably know, LeWeb is the… → Read More
I’ve spent a wonderful week in Paris, attending the infamous Le Web conference put together by Loic Le Meur and his amazing wife Geraldine. But while the event kicked off only on Wednesday, I arrived in the French capital on Sunday noon, and my motivation wasn’t tourism.
I was cordially invited by the organizers of the Traveling Geeks tours, who bring together bloggers and industry pundits from… → Read More
I’ve spent a wonderful week in Paris, attending the infamous Le Web conference put together by Loic Le Meur and his amazing wife Geraldine. But while the event kicked off only on Wednesday, I arrived in the French capital on Sunday noon, and my motivation wasn’t tourism.
I was cordially invited by the organizers of the Traveling Geeks tours, who bring together bloggers and industry pundits from… → Read More
TechCrunch writer Paul Carr forced me to write about his on-stage panel discussion at the Le Web conference, and as usual when people threaten me with violence, I was happy to oblige. But it was really a good thing he twisted my arm, especially considering the fact that there was more than one TC’er in the panel: TechCrunch Europe editor Mike Butcher was also very much present.
The other panel… → Read More
So the Le Web Startup Competition is over for another year. Instead of sitting on the sidelines reporting the event, as I was last year, this year TechCrunch Europe was asked to co-organize it with Le Web. So, together with Loic Le Meur, Ben Metcalfe and Geraldine Le Meur we filtered down the hundreds of applicants to the final 16.
Although we didn’t concentrate exclusively on it, it was nice to… → Read More
[UK] Hyperwords is a Firefox plugin that has already received glowing reviews. It’s a nifty little program that could completely change the user experience online, if it actually manages to be as intuitive as it promises. The selling point is that users can command text online and control the browsing experience in new and interesting ways. → Read More
[Denmark] One thing that’s sometimes overlooked on the tech scene is content. But whether you like it or not, content is what makes the web go around. Or without it the internet environment would clearly be a bit less interesting. Wordy is a start up that among other things wants to step in and get rid of all the rambling blog posts out there. It’s a service that allows anyone producing text… → Read More
[UK] Mendeley wants to be the Last.fm for research papers. The company offers a free academic desktop software for managing and sharing research papers and a website where you can back up the data and connect to like-minded researchers. For anyone working on a thesis this might seem like a godsend.
The service automatically extracts data from research papers and can also generate bibliographies. → Read More
[US] Superfeedr wants to help you out with all your feed needs and hope to be “the lube for the real-time web”. Interesting. The service promises to collect up to a 1000 feeds for free and push them to users in real time, which in reality means less than 15 minutes.
The service turns feeds into one standardised format and users can add any atom or RSS feeds they want, but also follow Flickr, … → Read More
[Ukraine] LiqPay is a startup that wants to compete with Paypal by allowing its users to withdraw and send money with their mobile phones for free.
The service allows users to send money from Visa or MasterCard cards to an account linked to a mobile phone number. Money can then be withdrawn or transferred by sending SMS invitations to clients, customers or banks. → Read More
[US] Are you constantly attached to your iPhone? Do you like to stay fit? Why not combine the two? That’s the thought behind Fitnesskeeper an app for smart phones that allows runners, cyclists and other outdoorsy sporty types to track their process and training.
The app is an extension of RunKeeper that does pretty much the same thing, only for runners. If RunKeeper’s success is anything to go… → Read More
[Denmark] Sports predictions is a service that might make all the football geeks out there salivate a bit. The site hopes to attract sports geeks and betting fans by promising to deliver scientific premier league predictions. → Read More
[UK] Kukunu is a London based start up that aims to replace traditional travel agents. The founders Gerald Goldstein and Itamar Lesuisse wants to help people build their holidays online, with the tag-line ”travel is better when you plan it yourself”. Most reasonably tech-savvy people already know this and can find their way around all those price comparison and hotel review sites out there. → Read More
Online shopping has come along in leaps and bounds since 1994 when the first e-commerce transaction actually occurred — but as dotcom bombs UrbanFetch and Kozmo proved, delivery can be the most painful point in the ecommerce chain. Enter Shutl, which today launches an on-demand delivery platform that aggregates transportation carriers. Think of it as cloud computing for the logistics industry… → Read More
[FRANCE] Another startup pitching on their home turf is Storific, which is all about getting companies and customers talking to each other using the de facto social media avenues we know as Twitter and Facebook.
It’s your classic ‘opt-in for great rewards’ model that drives the plethora of email newsletter services which most companies still rely on as their mainstay of direct communication with… → Read More
[FRANCE] Sokoz is a quick-fire real-time, reverse auction platform in beta that makes bidding for online goods dangerously fun for the shopping-addicted. The site is available in French and English.
Each auction starts with a top price which begins to fall until either the reserve price is reached or all units of the product are passed. Like a shopping channel TV show, live sales begin at a… → Read More
[IRELAND] CloudSplit, a real-time analytics tool working towards private beta, helps businesses understand where their cloud computing costs are going and hopefully saves them from the shock of a massive bill when the PUT and GET requests come thick and fast. This is pretty exciting stuff, when you consider that Amazon itself doesn’t have a solution like this for its own customers.
You may… → Read More
[RUSSIA] Here’s something that ought to get personal productivity geeks a little bit hot under the collar. Task.ly, not yet launched, approaches to-do management with the same re-engineering focus that Google Wave’s creators took to email.
The prototyped product looks very exciting. It incorporates some fairly obvious features that make a task management app kick butt, like having a desktop-like… → Read More
[FRANCE] French startup Tigerlily offers a white label Facebook Page management system that makes community management a heck of a lot easier than Facebook intended.
In essence, the tool set encompasses flexible contest and quiz widgets to customize a Facebook Page, and is targeted at media groups, large brands and their agencies and marketers. The FPMS uses ‘Share’ buttons on the individual… → Read More
[FRANCE/US] Stribe is a plug and play service to instantly create a social network on any website — not unlike competitors Ning, socialthing and meebo. It was founded in March 2008 by Kamel Zeroual, Gaël Delalleau and Demba Diallo, who launched Stribe at TechCrunch50 in September this year.
The B2B offer is simple — site administrators can copy and paste a bit of javascript, and hey presto… → Read More
[UK] With the mass of social networking sites and tools out there comes the dire need for aggregators to unite the threads and bring order to the chaos.
One of the latest such offerings is FriendBinder, an aggregator launched in beta in September that combines all your friends activity across multiple social networks including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, Last.fm and… → Read More
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