GoCardless, the Y Combinator-backed payments startup based in the U.K., has raised a $3.3 million Series A round of funding, led by existing investors Accel Partners and Passion Capital. The company had previously raised $1,5 million in seed funding in early 2012, following its participation in the Y Combinator Summer 2011 class. Founded in 2010 by Oxford graduates Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Blomfield… → Read More
Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has just announced the winners of the UK spectrum auctions for 4G spectrum on the low-frequency 800MHz band, used for LTE and other mobile broadband services. The list is an attempt at playing fair: it includes fixed line incumbent BT; major mobile carriers Vodafone, Telefonica/O2, and EE; as well as smaller mobile upstart Three. → Read More
Google is bringing the Nexus 4 to another carrier in the UK, expanding availability to Three after debuting the device with O2 as its initial partner in that country. The Android 4.2-powered smartphone will be available starting December 13 on Three, either on a £35 per month contract with an upfront cost of just £29 on the One Plan, or pre-paid for £399.99. → Read More
Government sites get shut down all the time by hackers either worming their way through firewalls or via DDoS jobs. Today, it looks like someone decided to mess around a little with a site instead: a job posting on Directgov, the site that serves as the main online interface between government departments and the public, today advertises that the UK’s “Secret Intelligence Service” is seeking a… → Read More
BoingBoing just pointed out a nice piece about Grant Shapps, UK Conservative Party Co-Chair and Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield. The Conservative Party has fallen under scrutiny for being too cozy with Google and their practices this year but this seems to offset that considerably.
Shapps runs HowToCorp, one of those ubiquitous link farm services that promises to create heady amounts… → Read More
Google has about 1,200 employees in England and made £395 million in revenue there last year (that’s just under $620 million). It did, however, only pay £6 million in taxes in England last year. Unsurprisingly, that’s not sitting well with a number of British politicians and according to The Independent, Google could face a more formal investigation into its tax schemes by next spring. → Read More
Two years after it was meant to go live, and with a list of backers that includes the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Arqiva, BT and TalkTalk, YouView today finally crashed the UK TV party. Available by the end of July with a selection of major retailers, the service is based around an all-in-one set-top box that you can use without a subscription, which includes 100 digital TV and radio channels… → Read More
Don’t copy that pole vault! According to the London 2012 Olympic “conditions for ticket holders,” you are not allowed to take pictures or video of the events nor are you allowed to “exploit” any video on social networks.
Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may… → Read More
Big news from the UK this morning: Vodafone, one of Europe’s biggest mobile operators, has made a formal offer to buy up the assets of Cable & Wireless Worldwide for £1 billion ($1.7 billion), a deal that catapults Vodafone into running its own fixed line network in the UK and specifically will give it a much bigger view to winning enterprise business — a big challenge to BT and a mark of… → Read More
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron recently joined social networking sites LinkedIn and Foursquare in an effort to expand his digital presence and better connect with both citizens and businesses alike. On LinkedIn, Cameron will network with “people and businesses the PM meets regarding U.K. business, enterprise and manufacturing,” according to the official blog post from the PM’s… → Read More
Oh boy. The Sun has the story of a man who bought the Nintendo 3DS for his young son, but had to return the device because it made him ill. Nintendo has already recommended that the console not be played by children under the age of seven, and that everyone else should limit 3D-playing time to 30 minutes per session. Not good enough, claim some folks. What’s the point of getting a 3DS if you’re… → Read More
There’s a plan in the UK that would, if enabled, lead to ISPs blocking access to specific Web sites in order to cut down on piracy. It takes all of two seconds to understand why this is a silly idea, and thankfully a prominent consumer rights group there has come out against it. → Read More
Anti-Twitter people should probably click elsewhere for a few minutes, for it looks like the micro-blogging service is one step closer to making its way to the floor of the British House of Commons. I long for the day when our very own congressmen can tweet “distinguished gntleman from ohio wrng about budget, follow me 4 truth.” → Read More
You’ll be paying $250 when you pick up your Nintendo 3DS this weekend, but how much does it cost Nintendo to put the thing together? An estimate puts the total parts cost to Nintendo (not counting R&D, marketing, etc.) at just less than $100. These Apple-like levels of profit we’re talking about here. → Read More
The UK’s Digital Economy Act, designed to, among other things, stomp out Internet piracy once and for all, has run up against the High Court. Two of the country’s ISPs, BT and TalkTalk, will argue on Wednesday that the law is basically an unenforceable load of nonsense, and that it should be torn up and completely forgotten about. We’ll see. → Read More
t’s one thing when one of us here stand up for Net Neutrality, but when Sir Tim Berners-Lee does it you really ought to pay attention. Why? Oh, you know, because he invented the World Wide Web. You wouldn’t be able to click-click-click around the Web if it weren’t for him. Shocking: he supports Net Neutrality. What does he know, right? → Read More
Who do you trust most when it comes to recommendations: an algorithm or your friends? Or perhaps a mixture of machine learning and your social graph. That’s something that a lot of startups are trying to figure out right now.
LoveThis.com, which launches out of Beta today, is firmly in the social camp with its ‘black book’ of your friends’ recommendations, from websites and apps, places to eat… → Read More
More bad news in the endless struggle against malware. Tens of thousands of people in the UK were victimized by malware that was embedded in advertisements present on several big Web sites, including the Vue movie chain and Autotrader. It just goes to show you that even supposedly trustworthy Web sites can infect you with malware, as we’ve mentioned in the past. → Read More
The UK is much further along with having adult discussions about Internet piracy. The result of those discussions may be controversial, such as that subset of the Digital Economy Act that requires ISPs to monitor all traffic sent over their infrastructure for infringing content, thereby exposing themselves to “you didn’t do enough to stop this” lawsuits, but at least they’re having a… → Read More
Kudos to O2, the Telefónica-owned mobile operator, for planning a country-wide free Wi-Fi network. That country just so happens to be the UK, the home of “dark forces.” Hmm. The network should be fully operational by 2013. → Read More
Wow. Remember a few months ago when thousands of e-mails had leaked from ACS: Law’s computers, ACS: Law being the anti-piracy firm that was tasked with going after illegal file-sharers? Of course you do. Well now it seems that one lawyer from ACS: Law, Andrew Crossley, has given up the fight against said illegal file-sharers, but not for any altruistic reasons: “I have ceased my work…I have… → Read More
GigsWiz, the direct-to-fan ticketing service, is officially launching in the UK today. Conceived originally as a sort of analytics for bands to help them identify “fan hotspots” and therefore where next to perform, the service provides artists with better tools for promoting and selling tickets to gigs via social media and their own websites.
In other words, it’s an attempt at making sense of the… → Read More
In a move that gives real estate startup Zoopla more local muscle, the company has signed a “long-term strategic partnership” with regional publisher Archant.
The deal will see Zoopla power Archant’s online property channel homes24.co.uk, giving even more exposure to estate agents utilizing the property search engine. As well as operating a number of property websites of its own – many through… → Read More
TransferWise launches its online currency exchange today, which hopes to give the banks a run for their money, along with disrupting the consumer-end of the money exchange market as a whole. The headline proposition is that the platform gives anyone access to the same mid-market exchange rates that banks get on their interbank market, with TransferWise charging a flat fee of £1 for each… → Read More
Video game piracy cost some £1.45 billion ($2.31 billion) in lost sales last year, as well as around 1,000 lost jobs. So says the Association of UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), which cautioned that even those impressive numbers are on the conservative side. That’s console piracy, mind you, which yet again throws a wrench in publishers’ arguments that piracy is only a problem on the PC, so… → Read More
Shopperhive has launched today as yet-another price comparison site for the UK.
Founded by Marcin Rosinski, an employee at TwitJobSearch, which has its own “in-house incubator program”, the site’s main pitch is that along with a proprietary shopping engine it aggregates video product reviews from YouTube and the like, as well as finding any available discount codes.
These are found using… → Read More
Are Segways dangerous? Personally, it all depends on the driver; whether or not they’re skilled, intoxicated or texting can have a lot to do with the safety of said transporter. But that no longer matters for riders in the UK because just a few days ago a UK judge ruled the Segway unsafe for sidewalks. So where is the Woz supposed to ride? → Read More
It’s hardly an original idea: Natter has launched as yet-another-attempt to create a “safe’ Chatroulette-style video chat site.
Just like Andrey Ternovskiy‘s creation, the site lets strangers find each other via webcam, only this time – and similar to vChatter, which also powers social network Bebo’s own take on the idea – users have to log-in via Facebook, therefore insisting on a certain amount… → Read More
In what we’re sure will amount to a social media orgy, noted author, comedian and British cultural icon Stephen Fry is announcing the formal launch of Pushnote on Twitter at 2pm today. Fry, who became an investor in the UK startup in June of last year, has over 2 million followers on the microblogging service.
(Update: Still no tweet as promised by the PR company for Pushnote. Make of that what… → Read More
In what we’re sure will amount to a social media orgy, noted author, comedian and British cultural icon Stephen Fry is announcing the formal launch of Pushnote on Twitter at 2pm today (he’s running late). Fry, who became an investor in the UK startup in June of last year, has over 2 million followers on the microblogging service.
Pushnote, which was soft-launched the same month (see TCEU… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
