When should children learn to code? Estonia’s Tiger Leap Foundation wants children as young as six to be enrolled in coding classes — all part of a national program that has already turned this tiny country into a technological powerhouse. Read more »
Two of the biggest taxi service startups are preparing to go head-to-head as San Francisco’s Uber and London’s Hailo gear up for launch in New York. Who will win? Evidence so far suggests it’s a tough game, but the British company may just have the edge. Read more »
Should websites charge users or advertisers? Russia’s number-two operator does both, but has this year seen payments from its user base quickly become its top revenue line, in a positive sign for Russian content payments. Read more at paidContent »
Family member locator apps will grow into a big business as tracking services gravitate from specialized devices to the smartphone, according to Berg Insight. Sixteen million people use a GPS or cellular tracking service today, but smartphones will drive that number to 70 million in 2016. Read more »
Real-time bidding is gaining traction with publishers keen to wring more out of their online inventory. Now rival French publishers are joining forces for a united pitch to advertisers. Read more at paidContent »
Huge technology trade shows like IFA are meant to parade the biggest products around. But what if the biggest isn’t the best? What if intimacy, personalization and customization are the things we crave? That’s what I argued at a fringe event in Berlin last week. Read more »
Umpteen hardware and software brands are re-making Android in to their own mobile operating system, scrubbing any trace of Google. Russia’s government could be the next to jump aboard. Read more »
Facing off against Sainsbury’s with a string of digital content vendor acquisitions, Tesco is now buying e-book store maker Mobcast for £4.5 million to translate its success in the aisles to the net. Read more at paidContent »
People love to hate clone artists like Berlin’s endlessly cash-hungry Rocket Internet, but is this really a clear-cut debate? And where should we draw the line? Read more »
Wi-Fi, 4G, smart grids and the Internet Of Things are leading to a radiowave logjam, the European Commission fears. It wants license holders to hand over spectrum usable by a new generation of waveband-sharing technologies. Read more »
Many companies are already targeting advertisers and publishers with their interactive imagery tech, but Roombeats hopes to differentiate itself through a clear focus on advertising and by internationalizing itself from the start. Read more »
Simon Fox may be exiting a traditional company plagued by declining analogue content, but that will remain his top challenge, after news publisher Trinity Mirror named him its new CEO. Read more at paidContent »
Carrier bundling will help grow music subscription income by 46 percent a year, one analyst forecasts. Spotify continues on that road by allying with Deutsche Telekom in Germany. Read more at paidContent »
Berlin is making great strides towards becoming a serious home for startups and entrepreneurs in Europe. But while it’s getting support from businesses and even government, the biggest fly in the ointment could be the delayed, embarrassing shambles that is Brandenburg airport. Read more »
Google’s use of its homepage to advertise its own products and display pop-up birthday reminders for its Google+ network on its homepage may seem like just an annoyance, but each step the company takes toward promoting its own offerings raises more red flags for antitrust regulators. Read more »
European technology companies looking to go public usually desert their home turf and head to the U.S. — creating an echo chamber that has made some local investors angry. Now reports suggest that the British government may be trying to reverse that trend. Can it work? Read more »
Despite the threat of new copyright laws targeting headlines and story snippets, LinkedIn rival Xing is reportedly testing out a news aggregation email service. If done right, that could help with user retention and growth. Read more »
Blaast, which puts a subscription spin on the provision of key apps to low-end phones, has signed up more carrier partners in Asia and is planning a data-frugal app for Android users in developing markets Read more »
The trailblazing firm may need more VC cash to cover its losses as it builds a global streaming behemoth, a disclosure reveals. So who gets what value from Spotify, and how could that change after another investment? Read more at paidContent »
In the great international online food delivery land-grab, Berlin-based Delivery Hero has just doubled its total amount of raised capital. According to co-CEO Fabian Siegel, that means profitability – and probably more acquisitions. Read more »
Samsung just won its first European infrastructure contract, opening up a region its never competed in before. The Korean vendor still has a long way to go to reach its goal of being a top 3 mobile equipment maker, but establishing itself in Europe can’t hurt. Read more »
France-based unlimited-music service Deezer is fast expanding in to new global markets. But the expansion doesn’t yet appear to have upgraded its subscriber count. Read more at paidContent »
Indiegogo, which is considering letting users of its platform give equity for funding, reckons the change will mostly benefit small businesses who want to raise cash from potential local customers Read more »
Ouch. France’s top mobile network, Orange, has been suffering from a bug that left a huge chunk of users unable to access their voicemail — just a few weeks after a software glitch rendered vast parts of the company’s network unusable. Read more »
Sony is bringing its new Google TV set-top box to Germany, where it could soon compete with the Roku box. The question is: With Netflix and Hulu both absent from the German online video market, which services are Germans going to watch with these devices? Read more »
Supermarkets already dominate much of physical entertainment retail – now they are arming themselves to compete on internet screens. In the latest chapter, Sainsbury’s is tapping Rovi to fight Tesco’s Blinkbox, while Tesco cans music downloads for We7′s streams. Read more at paidContent »
Online advertising is now a multi-billion dollar industry. But it still languishes far behind ye olde television commercials for effectiveness, consumers say in a new survey. Read more at paidContent »
After longstanding grumbling from the German capital’s tech community over its lack of recognition, the Berlin senate has launched a campaign to push the city as a startup center of note. Read more »
The company doesn’t think it’s a great idea for search engines to have to pay to reproduce headlines and story summaries in their results. But that’s nothing on the crazy earlier draft of this proposed law. Read more »
Local is hot, at least for Axel Springer. The German publisher is buying a local portal, meinestadt.de, as a vehicle to gain exposure for local online classified advertising. Read more at paidContent »
The UK publisher of 230 local newspapers has set ambitious digital growth targets for its new CEO’s turnaround. So far, Johnston’s online gains are going slow from a low base. But the most interesting part of its strategy may lay ahead. Read more at paidContent »
A shortcut offered to Britain’s biggest mobile operator could allow some UK users to get their hands on 4G services well ahead of next year’s expected rollout. But the decision has drawn a splenetic reaction from rivals who say the deal could massively distort competition. Read more »
The redesigned Loopcam now plugs into Facebook’s Open Graph and allows the uploading of third-party-created animated GIFs. What’s more, the founder suggests the user base is now ‘widely’ past the six-digit mark. Read more »
Jolla, the mobile startup staffed by former Nokia executives who want to keep the company’s MeeGo software alive, says it will use existing technology to bring in apps from other platforms — including Android. Will it be enough to boost the plucky company’s fortunes? Read more »
European cloud adoption has happened slower than in the U.S., but there are signs that it’s about to rapidly accelerate. At Structure:Europe, cloud luminaries will talk about how they see this change unfolding and what’s motivating it. Hint: It’s not just about saving money. Read more »
It turns out you can’t conquer the whole world in one go after all. But, even if low margins have forced the Samwer brothers out of Istanbul, for now their successes are easily big enough to compensate. Read more »
Where’s the party at? That’s the question Vamos is trying to answer with an iOS app that aggregates and overlays Facebook event data on a map, for real-time and hyperlocal discovery Read more »
The ‘Airbnb for activities’ is now open to anyone who wants to offer tours and experiences anywhere in the world, and has also just rolled out more social functionality Read more »
The newspaper is an ardent advocate of free and open online journalism. But that doesn’t mean it won’t charge on devices where and when it can. Read more at paidContent »
The Swiss startup wants to exploit professional data held on Facebook, Twitter and GitHub in order to create a friendly recommendation system that doesn’t require new profiles or networks. Read more »
