Planning a funeral but not sure enough people are going to show up? Rent a Mourner, a service that hires people to cry at funerals, might be able to help.

U.K.-based Rent a Mourner charges £45 an hour to get a small crowd to attend a funeral service and have them cry during it. The company has 20 people for hire and claims it has attracted 52 bookings in the U.K. since it began early last year.

“Our staff will meet with the client beforehand and agree on ‘the story’, so our staff will either have known the deceased professionally or socially,” Rent a Mourner founder Ian Robertson told The Telegraph. “They will be informed of the deceased’s background, achievements, failures, etc. so they can converse with other mourners with confidence.”

Apparently, the practice of having fake mourners is popular in parts of Asia, which is where Robertson got the idea.

“We were actually inspired by the market growth in China,” Robertson said. “The Middle Eastern way is to provide wailers — crying women — as opposed to the quiet, dignified methods we use.”

Rent a Mourner plans to expand its service because it has not been able to meet demand. Robertson said he has turned down more than 60 requests to date because the funerals were too far away.

h/t Betabeat

Mourning family via Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Yesterday was an interesting day for me at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As always the sheer size of this event is somewhat overwhelming, however there is no better place to see what the future of the mobile industry holds.

One thing that really stood out on day one is that Samsung, which has one of the largest stands here by far, has chosen not to launch its flagship product for the year, the Galaxy S4. Instead the company opted to use social media to announce that the S4 will be unveiled to the world at a special event in New York on March 14 (which will also be streamed online). This is one of the clearest indications yet that the center of the mobile industry has seen a shift from Europe to North America.

Traditionally MWC, and Europe in general, was the dominant market for mobile innovation. Major companies such as Nokia, Ericsson and Vodafone have long held the power and driven industry innovation.

Now the power has shifted to the U.S.. Apple and Google are the leading players in the mobile market with their superiority rooted in software for smartphones. For competitors to rival these big players, they need to be seen on the other side of the Atlantic in Apple and Google’s domestic market. This is without doubt part of Samsung’s rationale for launching the S4 in New York.

However this transfer in epicenter does not mean that the European mobile market has died. In fact, the shift has given rise to a new, thriving market for app development. In the UK in particular the market for mobile app developers, building new products for smartphones, is producing some genuinely brilliant businesses, which are catching the eyes of investors. A great example of this is SwiftKey, which topped the Google Play paid app charts for more days than any other app in 2012.

An example of how the app market has developed in the UK is the Smart UK Project, a competition run by the UK Trade & Investment, which held the final of its contest today here at MWC.

Beginning with 70 UK based mobile companies, a shortlist of 20 was selected and this was then reduced again to five, who had the privilege of presenting to a panel of six judges at the show, of which I was one.

This year’s winner, OpenSignal, is a brilliantly innovative app that can help users to understand the quality of the network coverage they have in any given region. Despite fierce competition, OpenSignal has really wowed the judges with its innovation and practical application. Knowing which mobile network operator best covers where you live is an attractive proposition for consumers and will certainly increase competition among operators.

There has been a clear shift in where the mobile industry considers its main market to be, representing a change in business strategies for handset manufacturers and telcos. This has given rise to new business and investment opportunities, especially in the burgeoning app market. As always, the UK finds itself a hotbed of innovation and creativity and with competitions such as the Smart UK Project, investors don’t have to look far to find their next opportunity.

Frederic Lardieg is a principal at Octopus Ventures. You can follow him on Twitter at @FredLardieg.

Photo: MozillaEU/Flickr

Julian Assange, the famed creator of Wikileaks, was granted asylum in Ecuador today, after fleeing to the country’s embassy in London in June.

Assange currently faces charges for sexual misconduct in Sweden and was set to be extradited to the country for trial when he sought shelter at the embassy. At the time, he was under house arrest in London, waiting for his extradition. His real fear, however, may not be the trial in Sweden, but rather the potential to be further extradited to the United States. The U.S. has an interest in bringing Assange to American soil because of diplomatic cables that were leaked through his website, Wikileaks, in 2010.

Unhappy with Assange’s refuge, the U.K. has threatened to enter the Ecuadorian embassy and has guards ready to arrest Assange if he leaves the embassy and steps onto U.K. soil. Cnet notes that Ecuadorian representatives may escort Assange in a diplomatic vehicle to the airport to escape to Equador, though law enforcement could entrap the car and force Assange to step on U.K. ground.

Ricardo Patino, Ecuador’s foreign minister, says the country discussed the problems with Assange’s extradition with the U.K., though the two countries were unable to come to an agreement. The main issue of contention is apparently that the U.K. cannot promise Assange will not be taken after his Swedish trial to the U.S., and that Ecuador is concerned for his well being.

Wikileaks is known for publishing sensitive or proprietary information in the name of transparency. The U.S. cables involved in what is now referred to as “Cablegate,” pertained to diplomatic and military communications. They included sensitive and embarrassing information. Since then, the website has released a number of similar documents, including a slew of Syrian government emails, as well as emails from geopolitical analyst firm Stratfor.

“WikiLeaks condemns in the strongest possible terms the UK’s resort to intimidation,” the organization said in a statement posted to its website in July, when Assange first entered the embassy. “A threat of this nature is a hostile and extreme act, which is not proportionate to the circumstances, and an unprecedented assault on the rights of asylum seekers worldwide.”

Editors of the website have thus far not released any statements on today’s events.

hat tip Cnet; Julian Assange photo via adamfeuer/Flickr

Cyberbullying is a very real problem on the web, and Facebook just took part in a landmark case to shed light on the identities of trolls who do real harm.

A 45-year-old woman named Nicola Brookes (pictured above) brought the case against a group of individuals who tormented her for months, creating fake profiles using her picture and even sending death threats.

Now, the social network will reveal the names, emails addresses, and IP addresses of four alleged cyberbullies, the Daily Mail reports.

Ironically, Brookes’ ordeal began when she defended another victim of cyberbullying. She posted a supportive message on her own Facebook wall, encouraging the other person to “keep [his] chin up… They’ll move onto someone else soon.” Apparently, that “someone else” was Brookes, who received more than 100 violent and disturbing messages over the next 24 hours.

Some of the messages accused Brookes of pedophilia. When her image was used to create a fake profile, the person behind the fake profile began using it to send inappropriate messages to girls as young as 9 years old.

In most states in the U.S., online harassment is already a serious offense that can lead to jail time, and social media companies stateside already do a fair amount of compliance with official requests for user information, especially when those requests are routed through the courts or law enforcement.

Facebook in particular has been working very diligently over the past couple years to raise awareness around bullying. A Facebook spokesperson said, “There is no place for harassment on Facebook, but unfortunately a small minority of malicious individuals exist online, just as they do offline. We respect our legal obligations and work with law enforcement to ensure such people are brought to justice.”

But they may encounter a few speedbumps on the way. IP addresses are notoriously held on shaky ground legally. In all, lawyers are going to have to piece together more than a few details before they have a firm case.

Looks like it’s not just the newspapers snooping on UK citizens. The government itself has reported internal breaches, according to information released in a Freedom of Information request.

Over 1,000 breaches of personal information have occurred in the last year due to rogue civil servants accessing the data without permission, says ZDNet. These employees gain access to personal information, despite a lengthy vetting process giving them the permissible access in the first place. These employees came from the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions and The Department for Health. Only the Department for Work says it properly recorded breaches made, and revealed in 2011 there were around 1,000 civil servants punished for wrongful access to personal information. The latter says it did not record all the breaches, though it did record at least 150 of them.

Many of the security concerns we hear about are from external groups, such as Anonymous, other governments, and hackers working independently. They spread malware, take websites down, deface them, steal personally identifiable information and more. What people don’t realize is that these guys are the modern bank robbers. Just about anyone with access to a wealth of personally identifiable information has the opportunity to make a lot of money selling that data on the black markets. Indeed, while “hacktivists” and online protesting breaches have gotten much of the attention, hacking is still a financially lucrative game.

Companies and governments alike still need to realize that many hacks can come from within. ZDNet notes that those who do expose or illegally access personally identifiable information could be subject to a fine as expensive as $7,900. Whether or not those involved in the breaches have been fined is unknown.

via ZDNet, Tower Bridge image via Shutterstock

Twilio offers a pay-as-you-go platform for phone and messaging services, and it provides application programming interfaces (APIs) so that developers can build phone and messaging apps on top of its platform. Airbnb, for example, has built an app atop Twilio to automatically confirm bookings with SMS messages; and Salesforce used the platform to run an app at its Dreamforce conference that let attendees text in their votes for the best app of the show.

In October, the company made its official move to the United Kingdom and has since had its eyes on its next 20 European countries. Jeff Lawson, the company’s chief executive officer says one the biggest queries Twilio receives from its developer community is “when will Twilio be in my country?”

“We launched the company on this notion that we should open up communications,” said Lawson in an interview with VentureBeat. “Our general goal is to make a product that works wherever our customers are.”

One feature of Twilio is that it allows its clients to choose phone numbers from anywhere in the US. So, for example, a merchant could choose local customer service numbers so that customers feel like they’re connecting with the vendor locally. And political campaigns could to the same for their constituents across any region of the country. Expanding into new countries means developers and companies everywhere can choose numbers not just from the United States, but those countries as well. Currently, the company has rolled out its complete offerings in the UK and the US and has public betas in Poland, France, Portugal, Austria and Denmark.

Other than being able to choose and use telephone numbers from different countries, having these places be Twilio ready means providing a cohesive way to communicate across borders. Anyone who has traveled internationally knows that it’s a pain to have to plan for communication, either paying out the nose for international fees, or buying a whole cell phone used just for that period of travel. Texting between countries has also been a pain for many, as different carriers have different text message fee requirements. Twilio currently has an international SMS product in beta, which will make it easy for developers to incorporate text communication between multiple countries. Lawson expects the product will launch in the coming months.

Twilio is also using the funding to hire, as the company is expanding rapidly. Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures both sit on Twilio’s board now. The company’s APIs are used by Salesforce, Airbnb, LinkedIn and Zendesk, whose relationship with Twilio is very close, including shared visions of expanding internationally.