Is the trend for smart TVs that connect to the Web and run apps a big mistake? Anthony Rose, the co-founder of hot social TV app Zeebox, took to the stage at MIPCube to suggest the future of television lies somewhere very different. Read more »
Plans by the British government to give intelligence agencies access to details of every phone call, email, text and website visit made in the country have drawn plenty of anger from across the spectrum. Here’s what people are saying about the controversy. Read more »
With Apple and Nokia at each others’ throats over control over the upcoming nano-SIM standard for mobile phones, the ruling body that was set to decide between them has instead postponed its vote for at least a month. Read more »
PayPal has only taken tiny steps into the increasingly busy Russian market — but now the American payments service is working on a partnership with Russia Post that could prove a dramatic boost. Read more »
Britain’s Conservative government has once again demonstrated its close links with Google. Is it a simple infatuation with power, or a potential minefield? Read more »
Unlimited music service Rdio concedes it will have to fight incumbents as it prepares to launch across the whole of Europe. Read more »
Songkick says that its decision to develop a Spotify app is paying dividends, bringing 100,000 new users to its concert-finding service in the last four months. Read more »
Eighteen months after France implemented one of the world’s first working three-strikes anti-piracy systems, the agency responsible says it has succeeded in reducing illegal downloading of content through P2P services. Read more »
A British parliamentary committee is asking Google, Twitter and Facebook to filter their services and protect individuals’ privacy. But as the web services start to push back, they may have already sealed their own fate. Read more »
Europe and America have different views on freedom of speech and privacy. But with British and French legislators both challenging the idea of a free and unfettered web, can there ever be a transatlantic accord? Read more »
Russia is now Europe’s largest Internet market — but it’s still a daunting and confusing place for startups. But as the CEO of young, successful incubator Fast Lane Ventures, Marina Treshchova,may have a few answers on how to do Russia right. Read more »
Two senior figures have checked out of one of Russia’s most successful internet companies in a matter of days. Is it natural turnover for Mail.ru, or are analysts who suggest the company may have reached its peak right? Read more »
Piano Media, the online news payment system introduced across Slovenian and Slovakian publishers in May and February wants to launch in three more countries this year. Read more »
Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies — a significant backer of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other Silicon Valley darlings — is raising a new $1 billion fund. So where will this tranche of money go? Read more »
A year ago Airbnb clone Wimdu was getting ready to launch. Now CEO Arne Bleckwenn is presiding over hockey stick growth and international expansion, just as the peer-to-peer travel sector starts to heat up. Read more »
French data watchdog CNIL has sent Google a list of 69 questions about its new privacy policy that it must answer within three weeks. But the poser that Europe really wants to find an answer to is a simple one: why? Read more »
With Russia recently becoming Europe’s biggest internet market, retailers are fighting over who can dominate proceedings. Now flash sales site KupiVIP is pumping $50m into online shopping rival Shoptime to try and crack the nascent market. Read more »
Swedish startup Tripbirds wants to bring its stylish approach to bear on the social travel market. But with so many services around, and so few obvious winners, is there even a market worth competing for? Read more »
French startup Jolicloud has spent the last few years trying to do ambitious things with cloud-based computers, operating systems and portable desktops — but it’s failed to get much mainstream traction. Can its new service for centralizing your data change all that? Read more »
One of the faces behind the Nabaztag — the pioneering French Internet of Things gizmo — is back, with a new spin on the idea of objects you can program to react to the web. And guess what? He’s running a Kickstarter project to get it made. Read more »
PeerIndex, a service started by a former Reuters and Economist journalist to measure Twitter users’ influence in topics, is taking on its first full round of venture funding. Read more »
In the summer of 2010 I caught the startup bug. Some close co-workers and I had day jobs that paid reasonably well but weren’t quite as fulfilling after almost a decade in the same business. We were really tired of using bad CRM in our sales […] Read more »
“Google is a crack dealer” is a phrase Larry Page never wanted to hear: but as the company’s relationships with developers begin to fracture across the board — from the web to mobile to apps — it is losing its grip on its own destiny. Read more »
British watchdogs have told Groupon that it needs to clean up its act, after a record number of complaints about the way the company advertises its offers and behaves towards users. Read more »
Is there any way to stand out among the glut of social, local, mobile services? Everplaces and Circleme, two new European startups just coming out of private beta, certainly hope so — and both are attempting to put their own twist on the combination of people and places. Read more »
Just days after launching a revamped website, music subscription service Rdio is set to announce that it is launching in the lucrative British market — a move that will continue its rivalry with Spotify and others. Read more »
Orange and Publicis hit the headlines this week for underpinning a €300m venture fund targeting European startups. But in fact only a third of that money is actually fresh funding that will end up in the hands of continental businesses. Read more »
Europe’s digital commissioner Neelie Kroes has a mixed record of helping the continent’s web entrepreneurs. But now she’s opening up to questions from the floor, with a new initiative aimed at finding ways to get Brussels to do a better job for startups. Read more »
Spotify is claiming that its long-delayed launch in Germany has been caused by internationalization issues — an attempt to distract from the difficulties of negotiating with the country’s notoriously hard music rights collector, GEMA. Read more »
Bethnal Green Ventures thinks it can have an impact on the big issues with an accelerator program for support technology companies working on social and environmental problems. Can it work? Read more »
CNN might yet end up as the owner of Mashable but it’s not imminent despite a single-source report from Felix Salmon at Reuters. The rumored price tag of $200 million is raising eyebrows as well. Read more »
After threatening to sue each other for copyright infringement in December, the largest players in China’s fast-growing online video market have now emerged aiming to join forces to milk what could become a prosperous market sector. Read more »
Wrapp, the mobile app that lets you send gifts to your Facebook friends, is pressing ahead with its expansion by launching in the UK with partners including Asos and Pizza Express. Read more »
Sequoia’s $10m round of funding for concert database Songkick puts a lot of pressure on the London startup. But CEO Ian Hogarth says he’s ready to cope with everything that’s coming — and plans to make his site the hub for music on the web. Read more »
London concert site Songkick has just become Sequoia Capital’s first British investment, with a $10 million funding round that underscores the level of interest that venture capital’s most prestigious firms now have in Europe’s burgeoning startup scene. Read more »
Germany’s IdeaCamp, a short mentoring program for budding entrepreneurs, is causing concern among Berlin’s startup community. Why? Because it asks attendees to give up a fifth of any business developed as a result of its three-day workshops. Read more »
Social gifts startup Wrapp says it is massively speeding up its expansion plans as a direct response to a copycat funded by the notorious German Samwer brothers — and the company’s CEO is warning retailers that doing business with the clone could prove costly. Read more »
After the Court of Appeal in London told Britain’s two biggest Internet providers they must abide the controversial antipiracy rules brought in by the Digital Economy Act, some experts suggest it could spark a SOPA-style protest. Is it likely? Read more »
UK ISPs will have to write warning letters to illegal downloaders identified by rightsholders, after the ongoing protests of two of the largest ISPs were apparently finally floored by a court ruling on Tuesday. Read more »
Ad delivery technology firm Videoplaza is unveiling a new built-from-the-ground-up system that it says can help advertisers and media companies make money without having to cope with the headache of managing every new device that comes on the market. Read more »
