The U.K. launched the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership today to build trust between the private and public sectors when it comes to sharing information about cyber attacks. Alongside that launch, the government has introduced the “fusion cell,” a cyber security center at a secret location in London.

The CISP unites U.K. government entities, law enforcement, and the private sector in a veritable social network for security information sharing. The BBC refered to it as a “secure Facebook,” where companies can choose when and with whom to share information about an attack they are experiencing — sometimes in real-time.

“No one has full visibility on cyberspace threats. We see volumes of attack increase and we expect it to continue to rise,” a government official told the BBC.

The pilot program that came before CISP, called Project Auburn, brought in 80 different companies. Today, at the launch of the program, 160 companies are participating. Of course, more companies are encouraged to join.

The “fusion cell” will act as a technical center to monitor and act on any attacks in progress.

Of course, the intent here is to build trust between the government and private sector — an issue being faced all around the world, especially in the United States. The U.S. government has made its own attempts to spur information sharing, although no one has brought a real, workable solution to the table just yet.

Photo of London via Shutterstock

We are working with UK Trade & Investment to showcase the United Kingdom's thriving start-up and investment scene through a series of posts and video interviews at SXSW. Check out all of the coverage here. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity.

Tapping the vast potential of U.K. entrepreneurs and the UK business environment  is General Assembly, a New York-based global education network that last summer opened up its first office in London.

The organization, in partnership with UK Trade & Investment, wants to connect  up entrepreneurial innovation by offering people classes, events, talks, and workshop on topics like  business fundamentals, data analysis digital marketing, mobile & web development, and design. Some of the classes include things like tutorials on how to get better SEO, an introduction to Adobe Photoshop, and even how to break into the digital music industry.

“What makes the U.K. particularly attractive as a tech hub is its strong infrastructure as well as its legacy across multiple industries,” said Matt Cynamon, director of General Assembly Europe. “As a result, the talent being attracted to the entrepreneurship community posses a strong knowledge base in fields like finance, fashion, media, advertising, and design.

“The combination of this rich history of talent, decreasing barriers to entry in technology, and the UK’s international diversity, make it ideal for the creation and emergence of new businesses,” he said.

General Assembly’s main goal is to break the current model of education by offering people less of a prix fixe menu and more of a buffet that allows you to put whatever you want on a platter.

Cynamon said in the U.K. office’s first year alone, it’s taught over 300 classes, turned over 100 skilled practitioners into teachers, and launched 12 long-form training programs — numbers that the group expects to double in the coming year.

To meet this growing demand for General Assembly’s brand of education, the group is reinvesting in London by opening up a brand new campus. It will also increase its efforts in the U.K. by helping both startups and big companies connect with General Assembly graduates.

The group is also launching its first truly global program March 25, according to Cynamon. The program itself involves a 12-week, all-day web development program that will take a group of 60 complete novices from New York, San Francisco, and London and transform them into full-fledged, junior level web developers.

Ease of doing business is a key  element of the UK Government’s regulatory and policy frameworks. The UK’s business friendly environment combined with the support available from UK Trade & Investment ensures that if you are planning to enter the UK and European market you will be able to get your business up and running quickly and easily.

“We plan on repeating the program regularly and growing it to include locations like Berlin, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Los Angeles,” Cynamon said. “Our ambition is to meet the increasing demand for quality web developers in the U.K. as well as across the globe.”

Find out how the UK can help your business grow.

Image via General Assembly

We are working with UK Trade & Investment to showcase the United Kingdom's thriving start-up and investment scene through a series of posts and video interviews at SXSW. Check out all of the coverage here. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity.

Banner ads are the grandfather of all online ads that have come since. But, unlike their descendents — targeted ads, text ads — they haven’t evolved when it comes to how they’re served up to internet users. A new London-based startup called OnScroll is seeking to change that — and reap hidden revenues in the process.

To visualize the problem OnScroll strives to solve, think about your average browsing experience. Let’s say you’re reading The New York Times’ website. You see some banner ads on the top of the page and on the sidebar. As you read an article, you scroll past some ads and reveal new ones.

But what if you didn’t make it that far down the page? The ad that was hiding at the bottom would still have counted as “served” based on the current system, and an impression would have been counted (basically it assumes your eyeballs saw it, even if they didn’t). The more eyes that supposedly see an ad, the more it costs to place, the more agencies and brands pay, etc. Given how many ads are NOT seen a year — due to scrolling, slow loading times, missing plug-ins, high bounce rates, etc. — the system seems fairly broken.

How broken? Very, according to OnScroll. So it’s drawing a clear line between “served ads” and “viewable ads” — a.k.a. the ones that were actually seen. The startup argues that an ad should only be counted as viewable if 50 percent of it is seen for at least one second. Given this, OnScroll reports that 54% of banner ads are never seen, totaling a staggering $11.7 billion in wasted annual ad spend.

“Advertisers and agencies have known about this issue for a while, but now as technology evolves we’re all seeing how much waste there really is out there,” says OnScroll Co-Founder Babac Vafaey. “Publishers who want big brands that usually advertise on TV to jump to their sites need to offer higher value. We can potentially monetize ads in areas where publishers didn’t even know they could.

Vafaey recently returned from the U.S. where he met with advertising agencies at SXSW. Slowly but surely, Onscroll plans to test the waters in the U.S. market.

“The U.S. is always ahead of the market when it comes to anything online and especially online advertising,” says Vafaey. “So in 2013, we believe this year will be crucial to industry stakeholders adopting a new metric for buying advertising and better advertising. We want to be a part of this.”

London, as it turns out, is an excellent place to launch an advertising startup. The UK is Europe’s largest mobile content market, with over $1.5 billion spent on mobile apps, content and services each year, according to data collected by UK Trade & Investment. It’s also Europe’s largest e-commerce market: 32 million UK consumers spent $117 billion online in 2012.

And as a global entertainment hub, London is second only to Los Angeles, with deep pools of talent in design and technical development. That means OnScroll is in a good position, geographically speaking, for expansion either into Europe or into the U.S. — or both.

Currently in private beta, OnScroll is a tool for publishers and agencies, enabling them to access analytics of user behavior, place their ads intelligently based on this data, and accurately gather impressions to report to prospective advertisers.

“Basically, we’re analyzing users’ behavior on a given page to the extent that we can determine the highest percentage chance of where and how an ad will be viewed,” says Vafaey. “Then we can actually measure how long an ad is being seen and give people a whole lot more information than they had before.”

Today, the team is looking at more hard work before the product is ready for prime time. Vafaey expects the private beta to yield promising results and for the company to scale up rapidly thereafter. He also foresees a funding round in the near future for the startup, which up to now has been privately backed.

“I come from the publisher end of the business, and advertising is often based all on perception — perception of value,” Vafaey says. “We want to put some insights behind this perception. As the advertising industry evolves and buying and selling ads becomes more automated, we want to help publishers and agencies dynamically place and price their ads.”

Note: You too can find out how the UK can help your business grow — first hand — by winning a business trip to the UK. To find out more visit: www.ukti.gov.uk/competition.

Accel London IV will be dedicated to companies in the IT, software, Internet, and consumer sectors, with three-quarters allocated to early-stage companies and the remainder for later-stage deals. According to unnamed source, it will invest 80 percent of the pool in Europe and Israel and the rest in the U.S.

Accel is perhaps most well known for being an early investor in Facebook. The firm has also made investments in big name companies like Spotify, Rovio, Dropbox, Cloudera, Etsy, Trulia, Groupon, and Kayak, which went public last year and sold to Priceline for $1.8 billion.

The firm has offices around the world in Silicon Valley, New York, London, China, and India. The latest London fund is expected to officially close in March, but Accel has not yet responded to request for comment.

While buzz exists here in the U.S. about emerging markets and the potential for European startups, there is less access to venture capital across the pond and many entrepreneurs prefer to come to Silicon Valley to seek out funding and connections.

Bloomberg cited data from the London-based research group Preqin Ltd. Fundraising that there are 26 Europe-focused funds, as opposed to 84 North American-focused funds, and that venture investing in Europe fell by almost 55 percent in 2011.

But some exciting things are happening in Europe. Sweden and Germany are hot spots for tech, design, and innovation, and the Prime Minister and Major of London unveiled a plan into December to build a £50 million ($78 million) coworking space in London.

Accel has made some good bets over the years and in 2011 carved out a $100 million “big data” fund, correctly anticipating that enterprise tech, IT infrastructure, cloud computing, and big data would be a hot sector in the years to come.

With this latest fund, Accel seeks to cement its position as a premier venture capital firms on the continent. Other notable players include Index Ventures, which announced its sixth fund of $473.8 million (€350 million) in July and e.Ventures.

For more funding news as it happens, subscribe to our Deals Channel feed. You can also follow VentureBeat on Twitter, @venturebeat, to view funding news as it’s published.

Hadoop-based startup Cloudera nabs a massive $65M funding round

Cloudera has pulled in $65 million in its fifth round of venture capital funding, bringing the company’s total funds to $140 million. The Silicon Valley company was among the first to commercialize Hadoop, the open source computing framework that makes it easier for large corporations to manage large volumes of data that cannot be stored in a traditional database.

Accel Partners, the venture capital firm with a $100 million fund dedicated to big data startups, led this series E round. The round was announced at a closed meeting of Cloudera execs at its Palo Alto headquarters led by CEO Mike Olson. According to AllThingsD, this deal values Cloudera at about $700 million, which puts it in strong position as the company edges toward an initial public offering. Cloudera has not yet made a formal announcement about the funding. Read more on VentureBeat.

Naya Ventures gives birth to “naya” $50M fund

Naya Ventures has pooled a $50 million fund dedicated to early-stage companies in the mobile and cloud markets. The firm was founded in 2011 by serial entrepreneurs who wanted to apply their industry experience to building an investment portfolio, creating a network of resources, and providing guidance to startups. The current portfolio consists of eight companies: GlobalOutlook, Glympse, Zoomingo, Motivity Labs, SinglePoint, M2 Junction, nfluence, and Boxfish. Naya is headquartered in Dallas with offices in Silicon Valley, Seattle and Hyperabad, India. It focuses its investments on US and India-based companies. Read more on VentureBeat.

London calling: Developer hub rings up $5M to foster software innovation in Europe

European developer community Skills Matter is adding $5 million into its fold. The mission behind the organization is to promote continuous learning and innovation in software. Comprised of 35,000 members, Skills Matter holds training and events where developers can improve their programming skills, collaborate, and make connections. The investment was led by Beringea, an international growth capital firm with offices in London. Read more on VentureBeat.

Rangespan gets $5M to help itself and brands spread their wings

Rangespan, a London startup that operates data infrastructure to help retailers expand the online range of their products, is nailing down a $5 million round of funding. Rangespan’s “customer demand predicting algorithm” RangeRank predicts the sales potential for products, and helps brands figure out their optimal product range (the who, what, where, when, why, and how much of distrbution).

Rangespan also offers a vendor platform to help retailers launch new products, with tools for supplier integration, item data formatting, order progress visibility and more. Clients like Tesco, Argos, and Asda use the services, and this round will be used to develop RangeRank and grow its retailer and supplier networks. It was led by the ventures team at Octopus Investments, which typically puts between £250,000 to £5 million into early stage companies based in the UK.

Zettaset closes $4.75M to make Hadoop understandable to common folk

Big data company Zettaset filed with the SEC for $4.75 million in new funding. The platform makes the administration of data analysis software Hadoop easier for regular employees who don’t have an extensive technical backgrounds. Zettaset handles many of the common issues with Hadoop deployment and offers tools that make massive amounts of data manageable, understandable, and secure.

In 2011, Zettaset changed its name from GOTO Metrics and raised $3 million from Draper Fisher Jurveston and EPIC Ventures in its first round of funding. Investors from EPIC Ventures, as well as Highbar Ventures and H.I.G. Ventures were listed on the filing.

Much-hyped ClearStory Data bags $12M to replace the traditional dashboard 

ClearStory Data, the much-hyped data analytics startup, has pulled in $9 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures. Its still early days, but the company is positioning itself as the next evolution from the typical analytics-heavy dashboard, which provides only a “rear-view mirror” look into your data. Silicon Valley-based ClearStory is one of a dozen technology startups that would support data services teams employed by large corporations, or replace data scientists altogether.The product is still being baked by the company’s 20-person team, and will not be generally available until 2013. Read more on VentureBeat.

AppFirst nets $8.7M for its birds-eye view of computing stacks 

WIth flying, as with DevOps, visibility is key. Pilots need to have all relevant information at-the-ready to make informed decisions and get the plane where it needs to go. Data startup AppFirst provides a platform that IT teams use to monitor all their applications. It launched its dashboard in September that gives a unified view of data from every layer of a business’ computing stack.

Three months later, AppFirst has closed its second round of funding with Safeguard Scientifics. With this $8.7 million investment, AppFirst has secured $15 million in venture capital and will apply it to scaling marketing and sales efforts. FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, and Javein Partners invested in the first round.

The mission behind the organization is to promote continuous learning and innovation in software. Comprised of 35,000 members, Skills Matter holds training and events where developers can improve their programming skills, collaborate, and make connections. It produces workshops, talks, meetups, hackathons, and training courses, as well as videos and a quarterly open source journal. Subjects include a range of technologies, including HTML5, Android, iPhone, NoSQL, Scala and F#, Java, .net.

Founded a decade ago, Skills Matter seeks to establish the UK as the “#1 place to learn and contribute to software innovation.” London has a burgeoning startup scene, and this announcement comes tandem with the unveiling of the Prime Minister and Mayor of London’s plan to spend £50m building a co-working and startup space. Skills Matter has over 2000 events planned for 2013, and this investment will contribute to spurring London’s technology community, as well as nurturing more engineering talent which is in high demand these days.

The investment was led by Beringea, an international growth capital firm with offices in London.

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London has always been a capital of innovation, growth and adaptation – and over the past five years it has forged itself into one of the largest tech startup cities in Europe, if not the world.

Tech City or Silicon Roundabout, depending on your penchant for monikers, is located in London’s East End, around the junctions of City Road and Old Street. In just three years, the number of technology startups has grown from 15 to over 300 – with large tech brands such as Amazon, Google, Intel, and Twitter all setting up shop there.

So, why now are we seeing this technological gold rush occurring in London – and what is the city doing to nurture and develop its newest industry?

Accelerators, incubators, investors, and coworking spaces

The presence of coworking community spaces is one of the driving forces behind the launch of so many early-stage startups in London. By collaborating in a shared environment, individuals are exposed to expertise and resources that would otherwise be missed if starting in a closed network, or worse still – on your own.

One of the best-known coworking spaces in London is TechHub. Occupying two locations, the shared space helps create an atmosphere of collaboration and innovation. The concept of shared working is a simple one – take a large open space, and rent individual desks to startups on a monthly basis. This shared work environment enables startups to have a central London office at a fraction of the cost of having their own space.

Accelerators and incubators take this up a notch, by offering more organized programs to grow a startup’s product and also their overall business model. A number of accelerators, such as Springboard, also offer early-stage funding and events to showcase their startups to other members or investors.

The London talent pool – unemployment leads to startup stars

Alongside the startups, a big advantage London has is that it is chock-full of talent. In a recent speech, Amazon UK Managing Director, Paula Byrne said, “The number one reason that we located the new Amazon Development Centre in London is because we believe that the capital is brimming with world-class tech talent.”

Traditionally, a large majority of London’s tech workforce has been involved in government and public sector projects. However, with the economic downturn and mass unemployment since 2008, there is now a plethora of talented developers and designers building their own products and services.

Twin these with a wealth of marketers and entrepreneurs, and you can see why now is the time for business to boom.

Cutting-edge cultural fit

Walking around London’s tech city, you will find two things. The first is great technology companies, but the second a world-renowned fashion and art scene.

A truly great product marries cutting-edge backend technology, with first class front-end design. In this way, the best tech products strike the perfect balance between form and function. Because of this crossover, Tech City attracts creative people. These individuals are at the cutting edge of what looks good and what works. When they expect this in their work, it is expected in their social life too.

A once grimy district of London is now host to some of the greatest shops, bars, galleries and restaurants in the country, and while the culture was birthed out of the people of the city, new people are being drawn into it in a self-perpetuating explosion of tech and style.

This combination of skills, style, and business, makes London a unique place to work.

Governmental support, but where are Silicon Valley style exits?

Something that is fairly unique to London is the support the UK government offers. UKTI, a government body set up to help grow UK business, has recently created a spinoff department called TCIO or Tech City Investment Organisation. The organization’s purpose is to bolster the work done in Tech City and to connect tech businesses with the resources needed to succeed. It also provides events and promotions to help raise awareness of the tech industry in the UK.

Despite this support, and although the city has attracted some big-name venture capital firms, including Index Ventures and Accel Partners, and a number of large tech corporations – Google, Amazon, and Intel to name a few, UK success stories are still few and far between.

The US has output scores of billion-dollar tech companies; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, but the UK is lagging behind substantially. UK investments such as Spotify and Skype have done incredibly well, and Wonga.com is well on track to be another, but compared to Silicon Valley,  Tech City has some major catching up to do.

Attitudes are changing, however, and we are slowly beginning to see the “can-do” thinking prevalent in US tech market emerge in the UK too. Breaking down years of conservative practices takes time, but the future is bright.

With continued support and international investment – I have no doubt that the UK tech industry, and London in particular, will be remembered as a place of innovation that went a long way to bring the UK out of recession.

Will Moore is head of digital at London PR agency Clarity. This post originally appeared on VentureVillage, one of VentureBeat’s syndication partners.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google Maps now has transit stop schedules for more than one million locations, meaning that if you need to get from Tower Bridge to Trafalgar Square, Google can get you there. The company blogged the update today, announcing that transit systems in more 500 cities globally are now included.

And if you happen to use an Android smartphone, you can even get specific about what kind of transit you want to take: bus, train, tram, or subway. Have an iPhone? You get the default suggestions.

The update comes just days after Google Maps rolled out live traffic previews to another 130 cities. Google appears to be doubling down on improving its mapping technologies and offerings on the eve of being booted out of its privileged position as the default mapping app on Apple’s devices — iOS 6 will come with Apple’s own mapping solution standard.

I remember buying the highly rated Tube Map for my first trip to London (it’s now free), which was superhelpful, giving times, transfers, and data on the reliability of various subway lines. However, it only shows the subway options, whereas Google Maps shows all available transit options.

One thing that apps like Tube Map still having going for them? They work without network access, meaning you won’t have to pay international data roaming charges, which can be ridiculously expensive.

photo credit: Anirudh Koul via photo pin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After months of rumors about the Galaxy S III smartphone, Samsung has finally sent out press invites for a London event on May 3, asking attendees to “Come and meet the next Galaxy.”

There’s a hint of Apple coyness to the invite, and some are already speculating if Samsung will go with a different naming scheme for the Galaxy S III. But given the power of its flagship Android brand, I don’t think Samsung will pull anything akin to the “new iPad” reveal.

Samsung has its work cut out for it this time around. The company launched the original Galaxy S on the top four carriers in the U.S., which quickly led to it becoming the top Android handset. But now Apple’s iPhone is on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, as well as more carriers internationally, so Samsung is going to have stiffer competition with the next iPhone.

Most recently, we’ve heard that the Galaxy S III could sport a huge 4.8-inch screen (bigger than Google’s flagship Galaxy Nexus) as well as a ceramic case and quad-core processor. The phone could be as thin a 7 millimeters, and is expected to feature updated cameras as well. By this point, it’s a given that it will sport Android 4.0 and LTE connectivity.

Techcrunch just posted some  new research from the Startup Compass on the world’s top tech hubs and their defining characteristics. A post of this kind always leads to arguments over whose tech hub is best, but let’s start with the data from the 13,000 startups covered.

In terms of the total number of startups, capital raised and startup success rate (defined by Startup Genome as companies at the “scale” stage) Silicon Valley still rules. Silicon Valley has 3 times as many startups as New York, 4.5 times as many as London  and 12.5-times the number in Berlin. The average startup in the Valley also raised 2-3 times as much capital as its global equivalents in the early stages of its development and had the most helpful mentors.

Accoprding to Startup Genome, the typical Silicon Valley entrepreneur is quite a different creature to the London founder. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are more inclined to address new markets, build infrastructure, games and social networks. In contrast, entrepreneurs in London are twice as likely as their Silicon Valley equivalents to build project management software and 50 percent more likely build e-commerce products. Silicon Valley startups are 4.4 times more likely to define lead generation as their primary business model and 3.6 more likely to choose virtual goods.

Silicon Valley startups also create 38 percent more jobs than London startups, while the London has twice as many company founders as the Valley looking to quickly flip their company. The message appears to be that Londoners like to address proven markets with better products, invest less and sell the company quickly while the Americans like to make bigger and more speculative bets in the hyped social and gaming fields.

So far, so cliched. European entrepreneurs are often accused of being more risk-averse and less ambitious than their U.S. equivalents, and in general compared and found wanting according to the Silicon Valley standard. Maybe this misses the point. Startup culture is a subset of the wider culture. It’s hard not to despair when one government after another announces plans to build a new Silicon Valley, overlooking the fact that you could not create Silicon Valley anew in California if you started now. There is no longer any silicon for a start.

Are the metrics for startup success used by Startup Genome even the right ones for the 21st Century? Why do we measure a startup’s funding level or valuation, but not whether it makes the lives of its employees and users better? In an interview with economic thinker Umair Haque in VentureBeat, he argues that Silicon Valley is caught in a competency trap. “The things that made it successful yesterday are exactly the things that prevent it from becoming successful tomorrow”, he said. To succeed in the future, companies need to create “thick value” which he defines as tangibly improving people’s physical, mental or social well-being or improving their lives economically in an enduring way. Instagram, anyone?

Silicon Valley does certain things brilliantly but every city has something unique. Seven of the top 10 tech hubs in the Startup Compass list are outside the U.S: London, Toronto, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Bangalore and Moscow. Why not learn from the Valley, but create hubs which play to the unique cultural strengths and values of your own city and people?

Appsterdam’s indie app movement is one example of an alternative approach to building companies. The Berlin startup ecosystem did not evolve because the residents are particularly entrepreneurial (most startup founders in Berlin, even the German ones, come from outside the city) but because the city was cheap, had a thriving cultural scene and was an exciting place to live.

Some of my own favorite startups come from Scandinavia, which does not even make it into Startup Genome’s list of the world’s top 25 tech hubs. Fast Company published a fascinating article recently on how the Scandinavian tech innovations, which includes things like Linux and Skype, tend to further the greater good. The author contends that this is no coincidence, but is driven by the values. Nordic societies favor “egalitarianism, collectivism, homogeneity and conformity as values to be protected and practiced by citizens,” a very different world view to that of most Americans.

All startups, and startup hubs, should reflect the values of their founders. Trying to replicate Silicon Valley is like dressing up as a drag queen to fit in on a girl’s night out; it takes a lot of effort and you will remain an imitation of the real thing. Instead, as Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.”

The LeWeb conference is just winding down for another year in Paris. From the major brands to the new startups looking for the big break, everyone’s been here.

The conference began amid a lot of speculation about a possible move to London. That commenced a whole debate around innovation in Europe and the regular debate on Europe vs. Silicon Valley. This was heightened by Google executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, saying that Silicon Valley needs to have more competitors on the world stage. Schmidt said he believes a number of European cities had the potential, with Paris being the forerunner. Of course, all of us Europeans loved this and strongly believe that Europe is finally living up to its promise.

I’m still completely buzzing from my first panel at LeWeb. I was joined by Victoria Ransom, CEO of Wildfire, and Matthieu Chéreau, founder and CEO of Tigerlily to debate “Going beyond creating a Facebook page”. The key takeaway from the panel was data, data and more data. It’s all about having the information to understand how to engage audiences and build lasting relationships. The three of us all believe that the right data provides a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t, and without data it’s impossible to strategically build campaigns that will deliver the best return on investment.

This became even more relevant when Sean Parker stepped onstage and talked about the future of the social web. He claimed that the outcome of the next US election will be determined by social media, and that got me thinking about what has changed in social media since the last election.

Every candidate will be using social media this time around. Having a social and digital policy will not be the differentiator but getting it right and building real engagement will be key. This time around, candidates will have to understand their audiences and develop relationships that are real. What worked for the Obama administration last time will not suffice, but picking the right tools and strategies will give significant results to those that get it right. Once again it all comes back to data and using the data to understanding what’s going to work.

LeWeb continues to be one of the best digital conferences in the world, and this year was no different.

Well, we’d love to meet you. London is the next city in my global search for great technology products. I’ll be arriving next week to attend the Tech City UK Entrepreneurs Festival on November 17 – 19.

I’ll be arriving from my visit to Istanbul, the latest stop in VentureBeat’s prowl around the globe. A similar trip to Asia will happen early next year, and South America soon after that.

We’re looking for great companies for two big reasons: First, we want to cover these companies in VentureBeat, where we have an expanding list of syndication partners that pick up our stories, from Reuters to the Washington Post. Second, we’re looking to invite the very best companies to the U.S. in April to launch at the DEMO conference in Silicon Valley, where some of the biggest tech players have launched over the past two decades.

We’ve got some momentum at DEMO. We’ve doubled the audience over the past two years, and we’ve created a scholarship program so that we can afford to bring the very best ideas regardless of their ability to pay. That, combined with the stellar audience — we invite the nation’s tech press, investors, and other tech influencers — makes it the most powerful launch event around, in my view. (BTW, Fusion-io is the latest DEMO alum success story. It launched at DEMO in 2008, went public this summer, and now has a market cap of almost $3 billion!)

While in London next week, I’ll be moderating a panel of a handful of the United States’ leading entrepreneurs during the “Silicon Valley Comes to the UK” portion of the event.

Afterward, VentureBeat will also be meeting privately with up to 10 local companies, offering feedback to them about their technology, business model and plans to expand. We’ll be meeting at the Excel Centre.

If you’re based in London and your company is interested, please fill out this form, and we will be in touch with further details shortly.

I’m looking forward to a great trip and am excited to see what happens in London at the Entrepreneurs Festival next week!

[Image via siliconroundabout.org.uk]

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

London commuters have something new to cheer now that their city is the latest to get a free route-planner iPhone app from Pandav. The app, called Ride London Tube, lets users plan trips on mass transit with a deceptively simple touch interface.

“This is our first international release. And we’re going to take London very seriously,” Pandav co-founder David Hodge told VentureBeat in an interview. The app launched last week.

Pandav apps have offline navigation and arrival times, so users can find the ideal route to their destination in the widest variety of circumstances. Realtime updates are another key feature available on Pandav’s navigation apps, so when users have a data connection, they can be alerted to track construction and other possible delays, and plan accordingly.

The London app offers the same touchscreen navigation as the developer’s other apps, but will soon be able to alert riders to the availability of so-called “Boris Bikes” at their destinations — Boris Bikes are the citywide bike-sharing program spearheaded by London Mayor Boris Johnson. The hope is that the app will be used by locals and tourists alike.

“Definitely the biggest thing we learned was that there are many people who are comfortable enough with transit systems but didn’t even realize how much of their time they wasted without our app,” says Hodge. “With that in mind, we honed trip planning and made sure we could provide people with good delay/reroute information.”

San Francisco-based Pandav thinks it has a winner should it start selling location-based deals, because when people are in transit, they’re neither at home or at work, and are most receptive to location-based offers. As a opposed to a location service like Foursquare that knows where you are when you check in, Pandav knows where you’re going to be, because the app is helping you make better public transportation decisions.

With their first $3,000 the Pandav team was able to roll out iBart, the transit app for Bay Area commuters, and chalk up more than half a million users. Today Pandav apps are available for transit riders in New York City (MTA, Metro-North, Long Island Railroad) Chicago (Metra  and CTA, aka the L), and the Washington D.C. Metro, as well as the newly-launched London Tube map. Hodge says he’s seeing 1.4 million sessions per month, and they’re growing by 25 percent month-to-month.

With the 2012 Summer Olympics just around the corner in London, the Pandav team expects that tens of thousands of people may be using this app during the games to get around the city. “We aim to be able to help tourists get to specific events easily and help locals avoid the madness as much as possible. So that means specific event listings with built-in directions,” said Hodge. “It sounds straightforward on the surface, but it get’s pretty involved.”

Pandav has three full-time employees and part-time designer, and has received unattributed funding.

The system is known as “ICT hardware,” and it comes from a Leeds-based company called Datong. In essence, the device masquerades as a mobile phone network, intercepting communications from individual’s cellular phones gather data and allowing police authorities to remotely shut off phones in a targeted area, the Guardian writes.

The device is a the size of a suitcase, and emits a signal which can blanket an area of roughly 10 square kilometers, causing cellular phones to automatically broadcast the owner’s international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) and international mobile equipment identity (IMEI), as well as the owner’s whereabouts, reports CNET. The device then picks up this data, giving the authorities information on cellphone users’ whereabouts.

“It raises a number of serious civil liberties concerns and clarification is urgently needed on when and where this technology has been deployed, and what data has been gathered,” said Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, in The Guardian.

Others wondered whether such invasive technology made it possible to individually identify suspected criminals based on their mobile phone behavior, when hundreds of transmissions are being intercepted simultaneously.

Datong is selling the snooping device to governments in more than 40 countries in the Middle East, South America, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, and the U.S. Secret Service, according to the Guardian.

Attached image is not the device being used by Scotland Yard.

[Image Credit: x-ray delta one/Flickr]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion said Monday evening that it will cooperate after police said BlackBerry Messenger played an instrumental part in coordinating the violent rioting and looting in London during the past few days.

In a statement to VentureBeat, RIM said:

“As in all markets around the world where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials. Similar to other technology providers in the UK we comply with The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and co-operate fully with the Home Office and UK police forces.”

The company declined to elaborate further, but the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act does allow police to make companies hand over information, so RIM could have to give up information it has on specific users.

BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, is a free, private messaging service that only works on BlackBerry devices. What makes the network special—and easy to abuse—is that BBM messages are encrypted and untraceable to authorities. RIM has said in the past that it can’t unscramble messages sent via BBM, but the scope of the company’s capabilities in this area remain unclear.

Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have also been blamed for amplifying users’ messages. Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said that “inflammatory” and “inaccurate” messages on Twitter were also to blame for the riots, according to the Guardian. “Social media and other methods have been used to organize these levels of greed and criminality,” Kavanagh said, according to the paper.

The riots in London have been raging since Saturday, and it was reported today that a 26-year-old man who was shot during the riots has died, becoming the first death attributed to the mass disorder. Police are expecting more disturbances this evening.

The negative press toward BBM certainly doesn’t help RIM, which has struggled lately to keep consumers interested in its devices. The company just launched five new models of BlackBerry 7 devices, but many smartphone buyers in the U.S. and around the world have shown a preference for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices.

I’d like to point out that although smartphone technology and social networks helped in coordinating the riots in London, these tools shouldn’t be blamed for actually causing the disorder. In the absence of BBM or Twitter, users could have used text messages or phone calls to coordinate.