Tag Archives: European startups

European Internet companies, web 2.0 startups

EU clippings…

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eu-internet-news.jpg>> Chipwrapper – set of tools to search the sites of major UK newspapers [BBC, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Guardian, Independent, ITN, Sky News, The Sun, The Telegraph and The Times] includes a Google CSE, a Yahoo! Pipe for the Headlines and IE7 / Google Toolbar plugins.

>> Zemanta from Slovenia [one of the six start-ups that won funding at Seedcamp last week] – a ‘content intelligence’ platform that can analyse text and propose relevant links, images, keywords and related content. Could be a handy tool for bloggers (when other languages have been added to the Slovenian version)…

>> EU trains to get broadband internet by 2008: a combination of satellite, GPRS, UMTS and Wi-fi will provide a continuous connection, even at top speeds of 300 km/h, between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne.

>> MyP2P: Dutch live streaming sports site [how legal / for how long?] – might be worth a shot if your struggling with TV coverage of the new season’s highlights… Rugby World Cup, Euro 2008 qualifiers, Champions league etc.

>> BBC IPlayer Will Support Mac and Linux – glad to see ‘Auntie’ came to her senses on that one.

Tribler reloaded

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tribler-logo.png “Harvard releases innovative P2P video software” these titles abound at the moment, concerning Tribler, the p2p file sharing client…

A news release issued by Harvard University last week, was distilled by the New Scientist, and produced the title: Bandwidth could be a new global ‘currency’. Tasty little soundbite and prime candidate for a few front pages, you might think ? You’d be right.

Tribler, lest it be forgotten, was developed by a team of researchers from two Dutch Universities – Delft University of Technology (one of the top tech institutions in Europe) and De Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who launched a beta version in March last year. It is good news that Harvard has teamed up with Tribler though, a leg-up for a system with high ideals, designed to encourage fair sharing, wont go amiss.

“Using bandwidth as a kind of currency helps to encourage better habits,” said Dr Johan Pouwelse, an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology, Amsterdam and co-creator of Tribler. Dr Pouwelse has been working with associate professor David Parkes from Harvard University to add an accounting system to Tribler to encourage users to upload as often as they download. “In our model your TV would use “TV watching minutes”, our form of P2P currency, to download content,” said Dr Pouwelse. “The TV would connect directly to the internet and provide video on demand in HDTV quality. “After you watch a program on TV, the system would automatically share this program during the night with other people, until your ‘TV watching minutes’ credit is healthy again,” he said.

The Tribler software (free) combines a modified version of the BitTorrent file-trading algorithm and adds on YouTube and LiveLeak, plus the VLC player and codecs. It also has a thing called intelligent taste recognition.

Social networking technology is also inlaid which helps to police the system and encourage fair sharing. “In the case of sharing and playing video, our network-based system already allows a group of ‘friends’ to pool their collective upload ‘reserve’ to slash download times”, says the Harvard statement – p2pnet

Will cutting down on download times be a big enough carrot to accept the policing, however friendly ? “the ability for users to“gossip” or report on the behaviour of other peers. Their eventual goal is to find a way to create accurate personal assessments or trust metrics as a form of internal regulation.” But then, I suppose that’s more or less what social networks have been doing for a while now…no?

YouTube demo video

Harvard download page

Who is that Deezer in the lawsuit?

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“Deezer is the first juke box on demand totally free in the world!” that’s according to Deezer.

Brief recap: BlogMusik – French mp3 streaming site – is closed down by SACEM (equivalent to ASCAP or BMI in the US, or SOCAN in Canada). BlogMusik sheds skin, becomes Deezer. Deezer signs a deal with almighty SACEM (first of its kind in France – publicity revenue sharing – exact terms kept secret). Deezer’s on a roll, signs deal with Free – France’s 2nd largest ISP – to provide users with unlimited streamed music (nearly 200,000 tracks to date) for nowt!

Sun shines from Deezer’s backend…

Meanwhile on the other side of town… Universal Music France teams up with France’s 3rd largest ISP (neuf.fr – same parent company, Vivendi) to launch a Windows DRM-based, unlimited music job. Universal don’t take kindly to the Deezer/Free deal announced just 2 days after their ‘heavily marketed‘ ‘First of its kind‘ – ISP deal. Universal decides Deezer are unlawfully exploiting the Universal music catalogue and say ‘remove them or we’re all in court’.

“It’s a logical position for Universal to take, Deezer is in the wrong from an “intellectual property” point of view” says SPPF boss (which regroups the independant labels in France), Jérôme Roger.

Sun to set on Deezer ?

No, not now, not after the SACEM handshake & the Free deal. Apart from being the second most important ISP in France, Free are “the last independent one, probably the most innovative and net-savvy” [#]. Although it does seem strange that Deezer have yet to strike a deal with any of the major labels like EMI, Warner or Sony-BMG, nor the SPPF for that matter.

‘Free music financed by ads’ is a model that will be adopted by many, or so they saying. YourFreeMusicDownloads is up with more than a million tracks and 500 more added daily. A few more are on the horizon, Qtrax, Spiral Frog and Airtist for example. Free music with artists still being renumerated – everybody’s happy, no ?! Except the major labels of course…what a shame. As a slashdot reader notes: “Hopefully this will prove to be enough of a viable business model in France that the RIAA/SoundExchange will take note and head down a different road than their current one…”

For the latest news on the U.S.A. SoundExchange scuffle | Internet Radio Saved – For Now

BlogMusik/Deezer has been around sinces June 2006, created by Daniel Marhely & Jonathan Benassaya, it’s available in 16 languages.

slashdot [#]


EU clippings

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>> The Filter will be expanding thanks to a £2.5 million cash funding from Peter Gabiel and Eden Ventures. Exabre, the U.K. based music recommendation technology company, who released a new version of the program last week, are said to be preparing The Filter’s software for recommendation services beyond music, such as video and film.

“The first wave of the digital revolution was about the freedom of choice, trying to make everything accessible to anyone, any place, any time. I think the second wave will be about freedom from choice. It will be able to filter and focus so that you get more of what you want,” Peter Gabriel said.the-filter.PNG

The Filter is a playlist creation program that allows you to build playlists from the music stored on your PC. The engine can identify 5 million songs and the Filter’s user base is reported to be growing at 25,000 a month. The Filter works by using Bayesian mathematics and it was developed by physicist Martin Hopkins.

>> A PirateCinema House showing free downloaded films in Finland, has been raided. The Cinema in Helsinki was closed down and one of the organisers arrested, according to radiatum.com ! Is there a serious lack of crime in Finland, or was it a well planned and reasonable reaction against those dirty film junkies spreading despair and addiction?

>> A new mp3 search engine from France - FranceRadio.netfranceradio.PNG

“Great site with a clean and fast interface” according to GHacks

>> Jooce is a new Flash based web OS/Desktop from Paris – Techcrunch write-up

>> Speaking of Paris – cestsoparis.com (as in, ‘c’est so Paris’) is a French site that has short video lessons on street French as well as general info about the French capital.

WAYN – here’s looking at you kid

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wayn.pngThere are start up stories and then there are good start up stories. WAYN (Where Are You Now) has a beginning that makes for the good kind. Maybe it’s because of these beginnings that the ‘doing good’ continues and not just for the bottom line. Amongst the recent Press Releases and blog posts about a partnership with Kayak.com or being chosen for the Top 100 European start-up companies etc. there’s a good story about the WAYN club –wayn-where-are-you-now.png

It was launched as a forum by the founders of WAYN to showcase public opinion and raise awareness of world issues that are important to its members.

“A truly astonishing expression of the reach and strength of WAYN members’ convictions is the online petition demanding an immediate end to the slaughter of Dolphins off the coast of Japan. Announced in the middle of March as one of the ‘Make a Difference’ campaigns, over 50,000 members across the world signed the petition in the first week. Other campaigns, highlighting WAYN members’ concerns, will follow. »

Building platforms for like-minded communities (travel in this case, WAYN has become the world’s largest online social networking and travel community with over eight million members) then helping them to heave in a right direction for the environment is putting the tools of Web 2.0 to very good use, I’m sure you’ll agree. An Earth 2.0 isn’t on the cards however many Stanford students you get to work on it.

Which reminds me of the World Wild Life announcement made last month:

“The global conservation organization announced that from today more than 150 of its projects will be added to Google Earth, the satellite imagery-based mapping product”.
“People interested in conservation and the environment now will be able to visit WWF projects in some of the world’s most threatened and biologically diverse places from their home computers,” said WWF International’s Director General James Leape.

“We’re pleased that the WWF has chosen Google Earth as a platform for sharing their incredibly important conservation work,” said John Hanke, Director of Google Earth and the Google Maps.

POSH home page – open source NetVibes-like

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posh.gifPortaneo, another Parisian web company offering Ajaxified start-page packages akin to NetVibes & Webwags, have just taken a boulevard perhaps less travelled but in the long run one that could prove to be more interesting, by giving away the source code of their web portal – available for download here. Continue reading →