Skype’s Linux version will soon become open source software – and maybe run on every smartphone, TV set-top box or other gadget powered by the free operating system.
It could also become part of multi-protocol messengers like Pidgin or eBuddy or Meebo.
Or at least that was the hope for some hours today after a French user got the following answer from Skype customer support.
[UK] Orange UK will begin selling the iPhone on November 10th, just eight days time. But it won’t usher in the price war that many had predicted (although I wasn’t one of them) now that 02’s exclusive has ended. Instead, Orange have chosen almost without exception to match its rival’s existing iPhone pricing. The retail monopoly has been broken but Apple’s supply monopoly remains in place and it shows.
[UK] The fashion industry prides itself on being able to predict what will be hot next season. Get it right and there’s serious money to be made. Get it wrong and warehouses and clearance stores are left with stock that nobody wants.
Up until now, however, making that call hasn’t been an exact science but thanks to Twitter that could be about to change. Or so says London-based Stylesignal, whose newly launched software-as-a-service (SaaS) product Trend Science claims to be “the world’s most accurate forecasting service”, and it’s, in part, powered by Twitter.
[Germany] With only days away from the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, how best to mark the occasion? Rebuild it or at least a virtual two kilometer stretch. That’s the approach being taken by Metaversum, the Berlin-based company behind virtual world Twinity, who have constructed a replica section of the wall in-world.
Visitors to Twinity’s virtual Berlin will be able to travel back to 1989 to explore a two km-long, true-to-scale section of the Berlin Wall, from the Reichstag, past the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, ending with a realistic replica of Checkpoint Charlie. Along with the wall itself, visitors can also access various multimedia content, including video and audio guides at seven key points describing the building of the wall, important dates in its history, witness accounts and, of course, the climatic events of 1989. The exhibition is a collaboration between Metaversum, the Berlin Senate and media partner Berlin.de.
[Sweden/UK] Stockholm-based Videoplaza have recruited blinkx’s former European Director of Business Development, Gavin Morgan, as its new UK Commercial Director. In his new role, Morgan will be charged with growing the ad server company’s client base and increasing revenue in the UK.
While at AIM-listed blinkx, which claims to be the largest video search engine, Morgan helped forge partnerships with the BBC, MSN, Ask.com, Miniweb, Rambler and Radian6, among others, and so certainly from the outside he looks to be a good catch.
And potentially, a significant loss for blinkx, a company that, let’s just say, we haven’t heard much from of late.
[Spain] A few weeks back, I met with Ícaro Moyano, in Tuenti’s Euro-chic offices – free drinks, comfy sofas, and game room included. I had just had lunch with a friend, who doesn’t have a lot of knowledge about the Web. However, as I mentioned Tuenti in passing, she lit up. “Oh, Tuenti? I know Tuenti. My daughter spends hours online on Tuenti”. Her daughter is 15 and Tuenti is without a doubt, the social network on the tip of every Spanish youth’s tongue. If you’re 15-25 in Spain, you and you’re social life reside and play in Tuenti. Facebook is for the slightly older crowd (sorry Mark!).
Tuenti is a Spanish grown start-up that’s seen exponential growth. Note I haven’t said successful. I believe they have yet to reach that point. But they appear to be on their way.
[Denmark] Despite the recession, ecommerce online is booming, especially in fashion, as consumers are flooding online to bag bargains and fashion sites too are getting better and better at presenting their wares.
Nordic consumers (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) have put fashion on the top of their shopping list, with 13 million online shoppers in this region, with double-digit growth rates
Now Danish company Boozt is now benefiting from this upswing as fashion retail brands increasingly find it hard to keep up with the pace of technology. The Malmö-based Boozt, with a Danish CEO, Henrik Haagen, has also now secured €2 million in VC from SunStone Capital.
[Germany] You could say StudiVZ, the German Facebook clone has a few problems on its hands – and some unwelcome publicity.
Back in August Facebook officially became Germany’s biggest social network, increasing reach by more than 50% from March to July 2009 taking it to 6.2 million unique users in Germany. By contrast StudiVZ had 4.28 million uniques (though it continues to claim 6 million registered members). Even it’s spinoff aimed at post-university adults, MeinVZ, is ailing.
Then StudiVZ became the subject of some high profile hacks which showed up its lax attitude to security.
In particular was that by a 20 year old man who used crawler software to harvest detailed user information from all of the “VZ” sites (owned by VZ-Netzwerke), copying 48,000 profiles in just four hours. Bizarely he asked for just €80,000 and threatened to sell the information to gangs in Eastern Europe. The plan didn’t come of however. He turned up to the VZ offices to collect the cash, where the Police (doh!) were waiting.
But today the story just took a sinister turn.
It’s Halloween, and nowhere more obviously so than in San Francisco.
This is my first 31st October as a resident of the United States and I have to say, the effort you yanks go to in celebrating the ancient Celts’ holy evening is truly astounding. Every corner store, diner, dry cleaners, police station, library and undertakers has embraced the – uh – spirit, adourning their windows with spray-on cobwebs and pumpkins and sparkly witches hats and coffins. (Although, to be fair to the undertakers, the coffins are sort of a year-round thing.)
We celebrate All Hallows’ Eve in the UK too of course, and like most things on our side of the Atlantic it’s just as commercial, albeit with more irony and a better accent. But the real difference back home is that Halloween is an evening – just one evening, not a whole fucking month – aimed squarely at kids. Here, by contrast, it seems to be something far more grown-up. Something far more – well – creepy.
We interrupt normal programming to bring you an issue that’s affecting our ability to create a better tech ecosystem in Europe. At TechCrunch Europe we’ve been trying to help really energize the startup tech community across Europe – which suffers from the difficulty of being disparate and spread out – with a series of organised meetups.
These are unlike casual networking events just in a bar. They feature speakers, lots of pitches from startups (no startups pay to pitch of course, ever) and live video streaming for those who either can’t make it or who want to tune in to get a glimpse of what the tech scene is like in that country. That live feed has gone onto TechCrunch.com and brought hundreds more to visit the place we’re in.
Now, we’ve done this so far in plenty of places, such as Helsinki, Paris, Stockholm, Barcelona and more recently Berlin and Munich. Frankly I didn’t think we’d be doing anything anyone on the local scene hadn’t already done at some stage. However, without exaggeration I’d have to say the reception in each place has been incredible. Clearly there is something about the the TechCrunch brand that brings all the right people together in the one place: entrepreneurs, startups, angels, VCs and other interested parties.
So we’d like to do more – visit more European cities, do more events. But – and here’s the point of this post – we are fighting against Europe’s high venue costs.
