Paris is following London by starting to provide free wireless access to subway travelers, thanks to a new initiative from WiFi service company GOWEX. With similar moves in New York as well, is this boost in transport connectivity a trend? Read more »
Private car hire service Uber is preparing to hit the British capital just in time for the Olympics, and the reality is that London, with its iconic black cab service, has the potential to make — or break — Silicon Valley’s latest transportation darling. Read more »
Bad news for Netflix’s international aspirations, as Amazon-owned rival Lovefilm announced a U.K. rights deal to show 20th Century Fox movies on its streaming service. But with antitrust authorities hovering over the movies-on-demand market, things are still up for grabs. Read more at paidContent »
Starting Wednesday, Hotel Tonight users can use the app for the first time to book a last-minute hotel room in London. The company is staffing up its London office and has hired a respected travel industry veteran as it prepares for further expansion into Europe. Read more »
UK politician Louise Mensch has got a ton of publicity for her new startup, Menshn — a Twitter-like messaging service that has pre-determined topics for people to talk about. But here’s the thing: it’s an idea that’s rotten from top to bottom. Read more »
Education startup Codecademy — which promises to help anyone learn to program with its game-like online courses — is stepping up to the international market with a $10 million round of funding from new backers including Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Read more »
With more than $1 billion in tickets sold through its platform, Eventbrite is on a tear — and co-founder Kevin Hartz says it’s now ready to spend some of the $50 million it raised last year on a massive global expansion. Read more »
British mobile operators have come in for criticism recently for ‘overblocking’ — incorrectly identifying sites as adult content and censoring them from ordinary web users. After GigaOM fell foul of one network’s filters, we asked for answers. And now they’re trickling in. Read more »
First LinkedIn, then eHarmony, and now possibly Last.fm. As the number of sites falling victim to password hackers continues to grow, the questions are flooding in about how these incidents are connected, and who might be the next target. Read more »
With the London Olympics just around the corner, the event’s addiction to crass sponsorship and commercial exploitation just gets worse and worse. The latest victim? Mobile network O2, which has effectively been stripped of its sponsorship of The Millennium Dome for the duration of the event. Read more »
Gig listings startup Songkick has started its expansion into broader music services, with a new feature called Tourbox that lets bands manage and promote their live dates across the web, through integrations with the likes of YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud and Bandcamp. Read more »
70 years ago Bletchley Park in England was home to a team of computer pioneers who were breaking Nazi ciphers to try and win the war. This weekend, it’s playing host to a different generation of geeks as Europe’s largest mobile hack day prepares to land. Read more »
One of the world’s premier startup conferences, Paris-based LeWeb, is heading to London this month. But organizer Loic Le Meur says he was thinking about heading to San Francisco, not the UK — until the British Prime Minister made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Read more »
Whether they’re outraged, scrabbling in terror, or simply hoping it goes away, it’s the privacy rule that European startups can’t ignore. But what exactly is the European cookie directive? As the rules come into force in the U.K., we take a look at the details. Read more »
Eric Wahlforss, the co-founder of sound-sharing platform SoundCloud tells GigaOM where the company is going — including a new mobile-friendly version and the potential for TV integration — and explains what it’s like being an impromptu ambassador for the Berlin startup scene. Read more »
The team behind London-based photo app developer Lightbox are joining Facebook. But it’s a long way from Instagram’s billion-dollar deal: in fact, while the company’s employees are rejoicing, users and investors appear to have been left out in the cold. Read more »
Neil Rimer of Index Ventures thinks one of the big problems for European startups — the lack of local exit opportunities — is all of its own making. But who has the guts to take up his challenge and go public in London? Read more »
London’s increasingly competitive taxi app space has a new player launching officially on Thursday: Ubicabs, which wants to grab a slice of the British capital’s lucrative transport market. Investor Sean Phelan explains why he thinks it can succeed. Read more »
It’s fun pitching cities like Berlin against the Valley, but it’s an artifical contest that makes little sense these days. Two investors believe it’s time to ditch the territorial debate and start building European startups that cross borders. Read more »
With the summer approaching, Europe is a busy place with lots of events to enjoy. Here’s our pick of three this week that you may find interesting or useful. Read more »
Britain looks set to re-open the question of how adult internet content is regulated, as embattled Prime Minister David Cameron scrambles for ways to shore up support from the conservative heartland. Read more »
A year into its life, Passion Capital has established itself as one of London’s premier seed investors. Here’s what the trio behind the business have learned since making the change from entrepreneurs into serious investors. Read more »
Organisers want to stop athletes and spectators from publishing photos, video and audio from this summer’s London Olympics, in an effort to protect Big Media rights outlay – but that doesn’t mean the Olympics doesn’t have a social media strategy… Read more at paidContent »
Another Russian company looks set to list on the London exchange — this time the country’s second-largest mobile operator, MegaFon. It follows Mail.ru, which used London to become a real force in the technology industry. What makes the British capital so alluring? Read more »
London-based social network Badoo is trying to jettison its saucy reputation and crack the lucrative American market — where its outsized Spanish-speaking audience is driving growth and expansion. Read more »
The British government is trying to boost London startups with its so-called “Tech City” initiative — but some worry that it could destroy the very thing it hopes to promote. We sat down with the man in charge to find out what he thinks. Read more »
With British unemployment levels running above 8 percent, a community-organized jobs fair that wants to get people working with startups has announced it is back for a third time. Read more »
VC firm Earlybird has raised a $100m fund that will be largely focused on Berlin — and partner Ciarán O’Leary says the German capital could become as important as Silicon Valley by playing to its single-minded strengths. 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 »
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 »
Airbnb expects a ton of bookings during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, but it wasn’t the only game in town. So the U.S.-based startup is taking out some of the competition, with the acquisition of Crashpadder, which is its biggest competitor in the U.K. market. 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 »
A new Facebook app called Pipe will let users transfer large files to their friends, through a peer-to-peer service that makes novel use of Adobe’s AIR technology Read more »
Recruitment is a painful process that often deals nasty surprises to companies and applicants alike. Somewhere, a new service in early beta, wants to stop that happening with its About.me-style take on the hiring process. 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
