The decision to back a new $9 million round of fundraising for LA-based fashion website Nasty Gal shows exactly how deep Index Ventures — one of Europe’s most successful VCs — is invested in the market, and how big they’re betting online fashion will be. Read more »
In the never-ending quest to provide easy sound bites and press-friendly stats, startups often flirt with numbers that just don’t make sense. Case in point: London-based kids’ website Moshi Monsters, which has a very strange piece of numerical wizardry. Read more »
With big data and a little bit of knowhow, it could be possible for any smart startup get a truckload of national press. Read more »
It’s become almost cliche to say that the Samwer brothers, Europe’s most successful — and notorious — internet entrepreneurs are publicity shy. A series of exits to the likes of eBay and Groupon have made them millions, but they have tended to keep away from the […] Read more »
The rising number of startup accelerators across Europe can leave budding entrepreneurs bamboozled. Step forward UK investment group NESTA, which is compiling a detailed list of the continent’s programs. Read more »
With Google and European officials clashing again, this time over the company’s new, simplified privacy policy, is it simply a one-off moment of friction — or part of an inevitable slide towards all-out conflict? Read more »
Germany’s Rocket Internet — an incubator notorious for its habit of copying other businesses — rarely opens its doors. But we got a rare peek inside one of its new projects, the kitchen service HelloFresh. So what is it like working for the Samwer brothers? Read more »
With the launch of Google’s new privacy policy — which gives it the ability to share personal data across all of its services — European regulators are questioning its legality. Here’s what the web is saying about the spat. Read more »
Location-based photo sharing app Color famously flamed out after raising millions of dollars in funding. Now, with them out of the picture, French service Sharypic wants to step into the gap and provide photo sharing for events. Can it compete in a crowded market? Read more »
Cambridge-based low-cost computer Raspberry Pi has finally gone on general sale — and the device is proving so popular that the group is struggling to keep its website up and running. Read more »
Hot Berlin startup Gidsy, which lets people find and book tours, lessons and other offline experiences, is opening the doors on a service in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Read more »
European politicians have just voted up proposals to slash roaming charges for mobile users who stray across the continent’s borders. But it’s drawn a violent response from Vodafone boss Vittorio Colao who thinks it could create “hell” for operators. Read more »
New Research in Motion boss Thorsten Heins says that Europe — where the BlackBerry’s market share remains higher than in the U.S. — can save it from the brink of disaster. But he’s wrong: the reality is that the only thing that can save it is itself. Read more »
London-based peer to peer currency exchange Transferwise has passed €10 million in transactions, saving customers nearly half a million Euros in fees that would have otherwise landed in the hands of the banking industry. Read more »
Monoqi, the European competitor to design flash sales site Fab.com, launches this week. What makes it different? CEO Simon Fabich says it’s a “curated design platform” that sports a less commercial taste than its American rival. Read more »
Searching for a new lease of life, Mozilla is joining forces with Spanish operator Telefónica to build handsets that have web technologies at their heart. But can Mozilla succeed where Palm failed? And is there room in a difficult market for more players? Read more »
Despite being known as Europe’s answer to Square, the payments service iZettle has only officially been available in Sweden since launching last year. Now that’s changing, with news of a rollout across Norway, Denmark and Finland, and the first step toward a British service too. Read more »
After a patent dispute in Germany between Motorola and Apple, local users of iCloud and MobileMe have now had push email functions disabled. But don’t be surprised if the same problem wings its way across the Atlantic soon. Read more »
Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica — the world’s third-largest mobile firm — saw profits cut in half after a troubled year. With Nokia, Siemens and Deutsche Telekom all facing a torrid time, is the writing on the wall for Europe’s mobile businesses? Read more »
Om has called 6wunderkinder “one of his favorite new companies”, and there’s good reason. The startup is one of the leading lights in the burgeoning Berlin scene, and impressive take-up claims for its first app could spell good news for its second, more fully-featured offering. Despite […] Read more »
The tools that have revolutionized the way we live are only just starting to have an impact on scientific research. Now ResearchGate — the “Facebook of science” — is hoping to speed up the change, with a new round of investment from Founders Fund to make it work. Read more »
Berlin is famous for its thriving music scene — and now local startup wahwah.fm is taking on the idea of pirate radio with a social, mobile app that lets you broadcast to your friends. Read more »
Cloud collaboration software company Huddle is launching a new sync option for its hundreds of thousands of business users — centered on a smart matching algorithm that makes sure you only get the files you need Read more »
Finnish startup ThingLink has been trying to find ways to encourage users to get excited about its “rich pictures.” Now it’s hoping it may hit the mother lode by helping advertisers and marketers build interactive images inside Facebook pages. Read more »
Search engine Yandex is looking to extend its dominance in Russia through a deal to access Twitter’s firehose — allowing users to search millions of incoming tweets in real time. Read more »
In a move that echoes Amazon’s purchase of Zappos back in 2009, Russian web store Ozon is buying online shoe seller Sapato.ru — a deal that Ozon CEO Maelle Gavet says will turn it into a “powerhouse online retailer”. Read more »
French startup Pearltrees just scored another $6 million to help scale up its social curation service that helps people save, sort and share what they find on the web. But with dozens of services in play, is this a bubble waiting to pop? Read more »
Europe’s most notorious cloners have built their reputation by copying big American companies. But now they appear to be readying a new rival to small Swedish startup Wrapp — a change of tactics that has ‘surprised’ Wrapp CEO Hjalmar Winbladh. Read more »
Remember Crazy Frog? The bike-riding amphibian and his irritating, ubiquitous song symbolized the premium ringtone market a few years ago, before fading into obscurity. The frog has disappeared, but one startup thinks it has found a way to evolve the idea for the modern mobile user. Read more »
Roku has filled a vital gap in its lineup by announcing the addition of a channel for the BBC’s popular iPlayer service, just as it starts shipping its media streaming boxes to Britain for the first time. Read more »
Advertisers and publishers have swarmed over QR codes as they try to add interactivity to analog media. Now the Swiss team behind retooled mobile app Shortcut hopes they can help make the black-and-white glyphs a thing of the past. Read more »
London-based art discovery service Artfinder is set to step up its plans for taking high culture to the web, after bringing in a second round of funding from Northzone, Greylock, and Wellington Partners. Read more »
Embattled Nokia is hoping it can become faster and more competitive by shifting the heart of its manufacturing operations to Asia, a move which will see 4,000 jobs cut in Finland, Hungary and Mexico but will be seen as long overdue. Read more »
More details have emerged about Google’s intriguing plan to open a co-working space in London’s trendy startup district — but businesses and the authorities should be careful of reading too much into the move. Read more »
Italian computer scientist Massimo Marchiori became famous after inspiring the code that underpins Google. But is his new search engine Volunia — the ‘innovative’ new service he launched today — solving a problem that anybody has? Read more »
One of the world’s most popular BitTorrent search engines has closed down voluntarily, as the domino effect brought on by recent moves against Megaupload and the Pirate Bay starts to hit other filesharing sites. Read more »
Swedish iOS studio Toca Boca has become a hit with parents and kids around the world, thanks to its smart suite of simple, open games. Now it plans to open a U.S. office and target the American market in 2012. Read more »
Peter Sunde, one of the Pirate Bay founders convicted of aiding copyright infringement, has told GigaOM that the group could go to the European court, after Sweden’s top judges refused to hear their appeal against a guilty verdict handed down in 2009. Read more »
A new portal that lets British citizens access government services online has just launched in beta. It’s fast, easy, accessible — and should save the tax payer bundles of cash. Is this a model for the future of connected government? Read more »
Tim Cook has made his first major appointment at Apple — by handing over control of the company’s retail stores to a British businessman who has built his reputation largely through pile-em-high tactics and aggressive expansion. Read more »
