Europe
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Playlists.net Acquired By Warner Music Group
In early July we reported exclusively that Spotify community and playlist sharing site Playlists.net was in acquisition talks, with one suitor — a prominent music industry company — in the lead. Well, today comes official confirmation that the UK startup has indeed been acquired by WEA, the artist and label services company owned by major record label Warner Music Group. Terms of… Read More
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BBC Uses WhatsApp For An Ebola Health Alert Service In West Africa
While Snapchat may reportedly be talking to a dozen news organisations for a “Snapchat Discovery” service, another big name in mobile messaging is also breaking new ground with big media. The BBC today started a new account on Facebook-owned WhatsApp to update people with the latest information about Ebola. The BBC says its service is aimed primarily at reaching WhatsApp… Read More
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Wi-Fi Sharing Community Instabridge Wants To Become Your Phone’s Default WiFi Manager
Instabridge, an Android app that wants to replace your phone’s default Wi-Fi manager and give you access to a crowdsourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots, has bagged a $1 million seed round. Funding is being led by European VC Creandum, with participation from GP Bullhound, and a number of angel investors, including Niall Murphy (former CTO of TheCloud), Scott Bannister and Felix Hagnö… Read More
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Bookatable Tests Foodies’ Appetite For iBeacons In UK, Shopkick Passes 7,500 Beacons
iBeacon, the Bluetooth Low Energy technology that is being used by businesses to push offers and other messages to customers’ smartphones when they are in the physical vicinity of a small pinging device, is starting to see some decent traction.
Businesses like Shopkick (recently acquired by SK planet for $200 million) have now rolled out some 7,500 of the devices across its retail… Read More
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Berlin’s Orderbird, A Tablet-Based Sales Platform, Orders Up Another $10M
Companies like Square, Groupon, PayPal and Amazon are all vying to be the primary tech partner for merchants at the point of sale in the U.S., and as more companies replace their legacy equipment with low-cost tablets, the race is heating up elsewhere, too. Orderbird, a startup out of Berlin, is today announcing a further round of $10 million to continue building out its own tablet-based… Read More
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Skylable Secures Investment From Sunstone For Open Source Storage
In the rarified world of ‘private data clouds’ a handful of companies dominate. On the open source side, Red Hat acquired Ceph for $175m and Gluster for $136m. Then there was EMC, which acquired ScaleIO for $200m.
Now a UK company thinks it has come up with a new kind of open source storage technology designed to build private data clouds.
Skylable Sx claims it has had 110,000+… Read More
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BlackPhone Co-Founder Jon Callas On Mobilizing Privacy For The Mainstream
BlackPhone co-founder Jon Callas is in London to give a talk at IP Expo — pitching the concept of a secure yet capable smartphone to IT decision makers who, wind back the clock a few years, would have unquestionably bought BlackBerry. Now there are a lot more question marks over that sort of business buying decision, given BlackBerry’s downward trajectory. And where there’s… Read More
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Mobile Ad Startup AppLovin Acquires German Ad Network Moboqo
AppLovin is setting up its European expansion by acquiring German-based mobile ad network Moboqo. Palo Alto-headquartered AppLovin helps mobile developers find new customers by targeting ads at people similar to the existing user base, then it continues engaging those customers with personalized, retargeted ads. Co-founder and CEO Adam Foroughi told me a few months ago that the… Read More
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EU Hangs Up On Fixed-Line Call Regulation Amid Mobile And Broadband Shift
Here’s an interesting sign of the times and the huge rush of mobile and broadband usage. Neelie Kroes, the outgoing VP for the European Commission overseeing communications and technology, has just announced that the EC will no longer regulate fixed-line calls, effective immediately, so that it can focus more of its attention on mobile and broadband — services that are seeing… Read More
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Employee Relocation Startup Move Guides Scores $8.2 Million Series A
Move Guides, a London startup that offers ‘talent mobility’ software in the cloud to help companies manage the relocation of their employees, has raised an $8.2 million Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Existing investor Notion Capital also participated, along with individual investors Andy Leaver (ex-VP EMEA and APAC, Workday) and David Windley (ex-CHRO Yahoo!). Read More
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