Louisville-based startup Red e App, a real-time private mobile messaging platform for enterprises with a high proportion of mobile workers that lets them send secure, trackable internal communications, has closed a $750,000 Series A round led by early-stage Louisville-based VC fund Yearling Fund II. → Read More
FastPay recently announced that it has placed $100 million in credit with digital media companies.
That’s $100 million used to deal with the common cash flow challenge in the ad business, where it can take 60 days or more to get paid by the advertiser. That can be a problem if, for example, you need to pay the publisher in 30 days. So FastPay provides the funding to help companies deal with… → Read More
Spun, a mobile app pulling together news stories relevant to your city, is announcing several content deals with well-known publishers, including A+E Networks, AskMen, Gothamist, Untapped Cities, The Awl Network, CultureMap, and “dozens” more.
These deals are another way to make sure the app has plenty of locally relevant content and also suggests that content will cover a pretty broad… → Read More
Word has come through that Nokia has completed its sale of luxury phone brand Vertu to EQT VI. But TechCrunch has heard sources that Anssi Vanjoki, the 20-year Nokia veteran who resigned back in 2010, will be named the new CEO of Vertu. → Read More
CANDDi, developers of analytics software that lets websites create profiles of individual visitors, which can then be used to customize the site and improve conversion, has announced that it has picked up a £370,000 round of funding led by repeat investor Northstar Ventures (£250k in mixed debt and equity from its Accelerator fund), with participation also from a number of strategic angels… → Read More
The ongoing investigation into Facebook’s transparency on user data and privacy by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner has come to a positive conclusion for the social network. The DPC, whose decisions had wider-ranging implications for all of Facebook’s business in Europe, had made several recommendations earlier in the year to bring Facebook’s policies in line with that of data protection… → Read More
Don’t mess with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia when it comes to Internet freedom, because he will use harsh words to lash out at you. Today, according to the BBC, Wales had some choice words for the British government and their snooping practices on citizens. Basically, he called them “technologically incompetent.” Yikes.
A quick bit of background here, the British government has been working on a… → Read More
Even though Digg was once known as the next big thing in social news site, it was torn down and sold in small pieces. Yet, part of the concept still lives on. The search engine Blekko just launched ROCKZi, a visually compelling way to consume and interact with the fresh content that users care about the most. After selecting the category that you want to read (Geekery, The BiZ, Glitterati…), you… → Read More
As a fat, lazy blogger, I find myself often buying clothes online only to discover that XXL for a designer in Spain is basically a XXS for babies in America. The resulting shape and return fees were enough to drive me to distraction – until I saw this wild robot call the FitBot.
The robot – which is finally in production – essentially takes your measurements and reproduces them in real time. → Read More
An Irish women’s charity, Women’s Aid, linked to some articles on the Irish Examiner (like this, this, and this) and thought that all was right with the world. Heck, that’s how the Internet works, right?
It turns out that according to the Irish Newspaper Licensing organization, you need to pay to link to the newspapers. And there the troubles begin. → Read More
UK tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail, has decided to raise the issue of Google’s influence on the UK government, after uncovering the fact that Conservative Party ministers have held meetings with Google an average of once a month since the General Election two years ago. There have been 23 meetings between Tory ministers and Google since June 2010, with Prime Minister David Cameron meeting Google… → Read More
European newcomer Shavenu is now offering shaving blade subscriptions to scruffy Brits, Canadians, and Deutschlanders using the DollarShaveClub.com model that set the shaving world alight last month.
For £1 per month, a pack of 5 two-blade cartridges is sent to your home every month with a handle in the first package. Unfortunately, this competitive price does not include shipping cost. If you… → Read More
Maybe even dating sites deserve to find a special someone at one point in their lives… it looks like Badoo, the UK-based dating site, has joined forces with rival Hot or Not.
The two have yet to issue a formal release of any kind, but Hotornot now boasts the same amount of registered users as Badoo (146 million+), and Hotornot now directly refers users to Badoo’s terms and conditions… → Read More
London’s claim to being the hub for tech startups in Europe got a boost last week, when Google opened the doors of its latest effort, Google Campus, a seven-story centre for startups, which it has launched in partnership with several existing organizations, and big ambitions to galvanize some of the tech activity that has already marked out London to take it to the next level.
The company is… → Read More
Just as Amazon is launching a new versions of the Kindle in Europe (but not the Fire tablet, yet), one of its big competitors is taking one more step in its bid to enter the European market: Barnes & Noble has incorporated a new company, Barnes & Noble Digital Media GmbH, in Germany.
B&N incorporated the German company on March 15, just around the time that the U.S. company came to… → Read More
The European antitrust investigation of Google, originally filed November 2010, looks like it might be entering the next stage of its development.
The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), a consumer-rights group that represents 42 regional groups in 31 countries, says that it expects the Competition Commission to release its findings “within days” and possibly by the end of this week.
For… → Read More
It’s been on the rocks for months now, but now international video game retailer Game Group looks like it is finally sinking: today the company announced that it is formally entering administration — another sign of the woes hitting more traditional parts of the gaming world as people turn to new services like cloud-based gaming and mobile apps for their playing fixes.
PricewaterhouseCoopers… → Read More
One more sign of the mobile money space continuing to grow up: some significant consolidation underway. Today, the UK-based mobile banking specialists Monitise announced that it is buying Clairmail, a U.S.-based competitor, for $173 million, as part of its global expansion.
The combined group says it will serve 13 million customers world-wide, processing some $10 billion of payments weekly, and… → Read More
Another big content partner for Microsoft and its Xbox Live Platform, and another win for those in favor of all TV eventually going over-the-top rather than through a pay-TV provider: the BBC has now made its popular catch-up/on-demand TV and radio service, iPlayer, accessible via the Xbox console, free of charge.
Although we’ve seen the BBC make some moves to offer iPlayer in international… → Read More
France has developed something of a reputation in trying to tax larger companies on the Internet to use the funds to help out smaller players. The latest development in that scheme: a proposal to tax large booksellers to help French independent bookstores impacted by the rise of online giants like Amazon.
This is a development on a model that has seen proposals to tax online ads from the likes… → Read More
With real-time translation of text common on the web and instantaneous speech-to-text gaining popularity, it seems that transliteration is cool again. But less obvious, and more difficult, methods of input are yet to be implemented. Case in point: sign language. The complicated and often contextual gestures form a vast visual vocabulary that isn’t easily captured or interpreted.
A team of… → Read More
Even as the UK government seems keener than ever to promote the technology sector as an engine of much needed growth – especially startups – there’s a programme right under its nose which has been running for years which needs help, and now. Young Rewired State has been running annually on very low funding for a while.
The philanthropic arm of Rewired State, YRS is a network of developers aged… → Read More
I must admit I didn’t immediately get Llustre. It looked like another ecommerce play, super-focused on curation and editorial – where was the potential for scale? I looked again. They’d raised £750,000 (just over $1 million) from a host of experienced angel investors, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. There must be more to it than meets the eye? Perhaps it was the latest in a new trend of… → Read More
Songkick – which allows users to follow music artists, their live music events and book tickets – has raised a $10 million B round of financing from Sequoia Capital. This is Sequoia’s first ever investment in a U.K.-headquartered start-up. The round takes Songkick’s total funding to date to around the $17 million mark. Previous backers include Y Combinator, SoftTech, The Accelerator Group and… → Read More
In recent times we’ve seen the rise of many businesses predicated on the idea that a user subscribes to an ecommerce service instead of buying a la carte. Thus, BirchBox delivers beauty product samples every month. Stylistpick sends fashion, Shoedazzle sends shoes. The list goes on. But what if you had a similar service but there was no need for shipping items in the post, plus it had wider appeal… → Read More
Android has become the most popular platform in smartphone sales, and that domination is slowly but surely making itself felt in other aspects of the mobile experience — just as Google would have wanted it to be.
Some figures out from the number-crunchers at StatCounter have found that Android’s native browser has finally overtaken Opera to become the world’s most popular mobile web browser. → Read More
When it comes to fashion, women have embraced products that were originally designed for men. Flip through any J.Crew catalog and you’ll encounter the Boyfriend Jean, Boyfriend Blazer, unisex ankle boots, and of course the classic men’s shirt paired with skinny jeans.
When it comes to tech? Not so much. In the predominantly male tech world, products are usually, by default, designed by men… → Read More
There’s an old saying in London. You wait an hour for a bus and then three come along at once. Thus, for the last few years people have been asking me when London would get a large technology conference which catered for startups. Admittedly I had a good go with GeeknRolla, which has now been replaced by the London Web Summit on March 19. But now London is being spoiled by yet another event: Le… → Read More
Mola.com (meaning “cool” in Spanish), a Palma de Mallorca based startup accelerator/incubator has raised €1.2M three months after announcing it’s official launch. The funding comes from Bernardo Hernández, angel investor and currently Global Head of Marketing for Emerging Products at Google; Javier Gómez Navarro, ex Minister of Tourism in Spain; and Luis Chicharro, ex Executive VP Ibersuizas. → Read More
Only yesterday we reported that Evi, a new iPhone (iTunes link) and Android app (link) which was incredibly Siri-like – and some say it’s better – had gotten a call from Apple that it was about to be pulled from the App store. Why? For being – as far as we could figure out – too much like Siri, and maybe, well, just too good.
Today, the buzz at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is that Apple… → Read More
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