Technology

AppleiPhone 8 is about to get even better

ItJuly. Apple is probably going to launch new iPhones in a few weeks. And this is great news for budget-conscious shoppers in the market for a second-user iPhone 8.

iPhone 8 Plus, appreciate

One of the most popular smartphones money can buy, iPhone 8/Pus is the quintessence of iPhone design.

I described it as being, &Iconic, (it) delivers everything we have grown to expect from the brand a traditional and time-tested counterpoint to the new-fangled iPhone X.&

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (90 Comments)

Yesterday The Europas, the European Tech Startup Awards and Unconference once again held its annual jamboree in London, throwing together an afternoon of deep-dive panel discussions on the hottest topics in tech, a &Pitch Roulette& session of early-stage startup pitches, and a glittering Awards ceremony, honouring the hottest startups, unicorns founders, investors and blockchain projects in the European ecosystem.

The awards are based on thousands of votes gleaned from a round of public voting, combined with industry judges drawn from founders and investors.

The photos from the night will shortly be up online.

To keep the conversations intimate and real, there was no live stream, but you can follow the coverage on Twitter here.

An annual celebration of Europebrightest and best tech companies, The Europas Unconference and Awards for European Tech Startups has been an established fixture on the European scene since 2009, when it was first held in a London bar.

Over 60 speakers were at the casual series if afternoon panel sessions, ahead of the industry Awards finale in the evening. There was also a pitch competition &Pich Roulette& where AiPod, BFF, Coinweb, PsycApps/Equoo, Frogology, Tube Chat, Lookhealth.io, Blockchip and Loveshark pitched. PsycApps/Equoo was selected as the winner.

Over the last few weeks, startups had been able to either apply for an award or be nominated by a third-party. The winners of that round were combined with the top picks by an expert judging panel and the results combined to determine the hottest European startups across all categories. No fees were paid by entrants or winners to enter or accept the awards, marking this the only truly editorially independent tech startups awards in Europe.

The Europas is held in partnership with TechCrunch and all attendees, nominees and winners of the Europas Awards will get discounts to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin later this year.

The sponsors and event partners were: Bizzabo Isotoma Blockchip Malta Blockchain Summit Barclays Bayer BlueArray Coinweb Columbus Capital Ihorizon JAG Shaw Baker Orrick Outlier Ventures Fieldhouse Associates aiPod Burlington CEW Communications London Tech Week

Who were Awards judges They were: Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital Stephanie Hospital, One Ragtime Jason Ball, Qualcomm Ventures Tugce Ergul, Angel Labs Jeremy Yap, Angel Sitar Teli, Connect Ventures George McDonaugh, KR1 Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp Andrei Brasoveanu, Accel Partners Candice Lo, Lending Block Richard Muirhead, Fabric VC Nancy Fechnay, Blockchain Investor Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital Tina Baker, Jag Shaw Baker Scott Sage, Crane Venture Partners Eze Vidra, Remagine Ventures Saul Klein, LocalGlobe

The winners, selected from the finalists, were:

Here are the finalists for The Europas Awards 2018, July 3, London

1. Hottest Media/Entertainment Hatch Entertainment Judges& comments: Potentially &the Netflix of Mobile Games&

2. Hottest eCommerce/Retail Deliveroo Judges& comments: Utterly ubiquitous! You can&t walk down a street without a Deliveroo rider rushing past you, and increasingly international.

3. Hottest Fintech sponsored by Orrick, Herrington - Sutcliffe LLP Starling Bank Judges comments: Huge growth in the last year, putting the heat on other challenger banks

4. Hottest Games Startup Bossa Studios Judges comments: Innovative new games which defy convention

5. Hottest Startup Accelerator sponsored by BlueArray Founders Factory Judges comments: Cleverly matching corporates with startups for wider distribution partnerships and collaborative innovation

6. Hottest Marketing/Adtech Startup AppsFlyer & Now Europeleading platform for mobile attribution - marketing analytics.

7. Hottest Education Startup sponsored by Isotoma Lingumi Judges comments: Language learning platform for pre-school kids encouraging parent participation

8. Hottest Mobile Startup Depop Judges comments: GenZeBay & A hit for ‘merch drops& so teens can later &depop& their hot fashion.

9. Hottest Enterprise, SaaS or B2B sponsored by Barclays Signal Media Judges comments: An amazing AI startup turning data into accessible business knowledge

10. Hottest Hardware Kano Computing Judges comments: With new funding secured, a powerhouse of European hardware

11. Hottest Platform Economy / Marketplace Syft Judges comments: The &Taskrabbit for hospitality industry&

12. Hottest Health sponsored by Bayer Digital Health Ada Health Judges comments: Definitely your future doctor

13. Hottest Cyber Security sponsored by ihorizon Digital Shadows Judges comments: A cyber security powerhouse straight out of Europe

14. Hottest Travel - Mobility Startup Seatfrog Judges comments: Making upgrades effortless for airlines and passengers, iton a roll with investors, press and consumers alike

15. Hottest Internet of Things Smarter Judges comments: Smarter kitchens of the future, but today

16. Hottest Technology Innovation Ultrahaptics Judges comments: Just wave your hand and you too can become a Jedi Knight with this amazing technology, which will probably end up in our homes and cars.

17. Hottest FashionTech Startup 21 Buttons Judges comments: A fashion social and shopping network growing like a weed.

18. Hottest Tech for Good BuffaloGrid Judges comments: Bringing connectivity to the next 3 billion

19. Hottest AI Startup Black Swan Judges comments: The leading European startup in Smart Data and Predictive Analytics, making uncanny predictions on what we&ll buy.

20. Fastest Rising Startup of the Year Revolut Judges comments: A challenger bank thatchallenging the other challengers, and is now even a player in cryptocurrency

21. Hottest GreenTech Startup Asperitas Judges comments: The next wave in Greening datacentres & Crypto miners take note!

22. Hottest Startup Founders Joel Gibbard + Samantha Payne, Open Bionics Judges comments: These founders are changing peoplelives with futuristic prosthetics

23. Hottest CEO of the Year Pieter van der Does, Adyen Judges comments: van der Does has skilfully piloted his company to a smash hit IPO this year

24. Hottest Angel/Seed Investor Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp Judges comments: Still hungry for Seed startups, and has even raised a new EU-backed fund in tough political times.

25. Hottest VC Investor sponsored by JAG Shaw Baker Pär-Jörgen Pärson, Northzone Judges comments: A popular industry player and an early backer of the powerhouse that is Spotify and many other European unicorns

26. Hottest Blockchain/Crypto Startup Founder Mona El Isa, Melonport Judges comments: El Isa is considered a blockchain industry thought leader and Melonport is poised to change the game in crypto asset management and governance

27. Hottest Blockchain Protocol Project, sponsored by Outlier Ventures Polkadot.io Judges comments: Straight outta Berlin & The biggest project out there to link the worldblockchains

28. Hottest Blockchain DApp, sponsored by Blockchip Verisart Judges comments: A real-world blockchain application taking the art world by storm

29. Hottest Corporate Blockchain Project sponsored by Coinweb Billon Judges comments: Billon is using blockchain to reimagine the flow of regulated money and data.

30. Hottest Blockchain Investor Europe sponsored by Malta Blockchain Summit KR1 Judges comments: An pioneering blockchain and token investment player doing big things under the radar

31. Hottest Blockchain ICO Europe sponsored by Columbus Capital Bancor Judges comments: Bancor has created new standard for cryptocurrencies convertible directly through their smart contracts, and managed an amazing public ICO.

32. Hottest Financial Crypto Project BlockEx Judges comments: BlockExdigital asset exchange platform has made positive waves in the crypto assets world

33. Hottest Blockchain for Good Project United Nations Jordan Etherum Project (Parity Technologies)! Judges comments: The combined United Nations, World Food Programme and Parity project on the Ethereum blockchain has changed the game for aid distribution to Syrian refugees in Jordan and is poised to be applied to other humanitarian projects globally.

34. Hottest Blockchain Identity Project Trunomi Judges comments: If data rights are the furture, Trunomi is helping to unlock that future.

35. Hall of Fame sponsored by TechCrunch Saul Klein and Robin Klein, LocalGlobe Judges comments: An incredible long-time double-act of European venture - startups. Every startup needs a Batman and Robin to help them, and Saul and Robin keep delivering!

28. Grand Prix Unicorn Award, sponsored by Bizzabo Adyen Judges comments: AdyenIPO was one of the biggest of the year and shows that Europe can produce the next wave of global Tech Unicorns.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (100 Comments)

Review: The V-Moda Crossfade II Wireless headphones look and sound beautiful

Damn. These are good looking headphones. TheV-Moda Crossfade II Wireless could be the best looking headphones available. Better yet, they sound good, too.

As the name suggests, this is the second generation of this series of headphones from V-Moda. The drivers are different and the company improved on the build quality. The originals were already one of my favorite headphones and the followup is even better.

[gallery ids="1667954,1667951,1667952,1667950,1667953,1667955,1667956"]

Herewhat I like:

The build quality of these headphones is superb. TheV-Moda Crossfade II Wireless headphones feel like they&ll last a lifetime. I have headphones from Bose, Definitive, Denon, Shinola, Audeze and more and none look or feel as good as these. They&re comfortable. Even on my large head, they fit nicely and I&m able to wear them for hours at a time without issue.

The headphones sound great, too. To be clear, they&re not the best sounding headphones available, but the sound is on par for the price. The sound stage is full and wide with great separation between the channels.

TheV-Moda Crossfade II Wireless are most comfortable with the mid tones found in rock, country, jazz and pop. Thatnot to say low and high tones are absent; they&re present but not noteworthy. The headphones are balanced nicely with a preference to sounds in the middle of the range.

I always use a few tracks to test headphones. Save Tonight by Eagle-Eye Cherry is one of them. The track is mixed in a way that produced a narrow soundstage. On headphones the audio can be either muddled or clean. On these headphones, itcloser to clean but not perfect. The lyrics come across clear while the instruments are a bit blended. 4 Non Blondes& WhatUp sounds fantastics. You can hear the strumming of the guitars and feel the emotion of the band. The Cranberries& Linger is more of the same. Itjust lovely on these headphones.

The wide soundstage is put on display for Look At Me Now. Busta sits in the middle and his lyrics flow in the middle while the beat comes in from the sides. Reproduced correctly, itan immersive experience and these headphones do it correctly. Meek MillDreams and Nightmares is another great example. These headphones put Meek in the center of the stage while the piano tracks sits on the side of the stage. The headphonetuning makes the track a stunning example of properly tuned headphones.

These headphones get loud. They&re among the loudest headphones I&ve tested. And since the headphones lack active noise cancelation, thata good thing. I&m pleased to report, there is very little distortion when the headphones are at their max volume.

Wireless battery life is excellent. V-Moda claims 14 hours. I used these headphones for several days and never found the bottom of the battery. Thatgood enough for me.

Herewhat I don&t like:

The headphones lack on key feature: They keep playing when taken off. Thata big no-no and an unfortunate miss from V-moda. Itnot a dealbreaker, though. These are wireless headphones and therefore they have a limited battery life even though they have great battery life. Such headphones need to have the ability to stop playing audio when removed from the head.

Bottom line:

The headphones are available in several colors through retailers or buyers can use V-Modacustomizer to build a custom pair. Want a set of headphones with 14k gold plated side plates Thatan option though it adds hundreds to the cost. Platinum headphones That&ll cost $26,000.

I love the V-Moda Crossfade II Wireless headphones. These are great headphones and I whole heartily recommend them. At $350, they punch above their weight class. These are solid headphones with a build quality that seem like they&ll last longer than other options.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (94 Comments)

Starling CEO Anne Boden is coming to Disrupt Berlin

The European fintech wave can&t stop and won&t stop. Thatwhy I&m excited to announce that the founder and CEO of Starling Bank Anne Boden is joining us at Disrupt Berlin.

While it feels like everybody is talking about challenger banks, Boden started thinking about building a new bank back in 2014. She ditched a carrer in traditional banks to start her own thing.

Starling provides a current account specifically designed for your phone. You can open an account in just a few minutes using the companymobile app.

Whenever you use your card or send money, you can instantly see the transaction in the app — thereno delay. You can also receive push notifications instantly. When it comes to your card, you can lock it when you can&t find it, and thereno exchange fee when you use your card abroad. Starling supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Fitbit Pay and, yes, even Garmin Pay.

Starling is even better with multiple people. For instance, if your roommate or significant other also has a Starling account, you can create a joint account for shared bills. You can also send money instantly to other Starling accounts.

The startup has been building a marketplace to become the only banking app you need. There are already a handful of fintech companies leveraging the Starling API. You&ll find savings, investment and mortgage products. You can centralize your paper receipts and more from the Starling app.

The startup already has its own banking license and has been raising a funding round of more than $100 million.

Starling operates in a very competitive market, with well-funded startups such as Monzo, Revolut and N26 all iterating quite quickly. Thatwhy itgoing to be interesting to hear Bodentake on challenger banks, the fintech industry and her experience with Starling.

TechCrunch is coming back to Berlin to talk with the best and brightest people in tech from Europe and the rest of the world. In addition to fireside chats and panels, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield Europe to win the coveted cup.

Tickets to the show, which runs November 29-30, are available here.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (100 Comments)

Wikipedia goes dark in Spanish, Italian ahead of key EU vote on copyright

WikipediaItalian and Spanish language versions have temporarily shut off access to their respective versions of the free online encyclopedia in Europe to protest against controversial components of a copyright reform package ahead of a key vote in the EU parliament tomorrow.

The protest follows a vote by the EU parliamentlegal affairs committee last month which backed the reforms — including the two most controversial elements: Article 13,which makes platforms directly liable for copyright infringements by their users — pushing them towards pre-filtering all content uploads, with all the associated potential chilling effects for free expression; and Article 11, which targets news aggregator business models by creating a neighboring right for snippets of journalistic content — aka ‘the link tax&, as critics dub it.

Visitors to Wikipedia in many parts of the EU (and further afield) are met with a banner which urges them to defend the open Internet against the controversial proposal by calling their MEP to voice their opposition to a measure critics describe as ‘censorship machines&, warning it will &weaken the values, culture and ecosystem on which Wikipedia is based&.

Clicking on a button to ‘call your MEP& links through to anti-Article 13 campaign website,saveyourinternet.eu, where users can search for the phone number of their MEP and/or send an email to protest against the measure. The initiative is backed by a large coalition of digital and civil rights groups — including the EFF, the Open Rights Group, and the Center for Democracy - Technology.

In a longer letter to visitors explaining its action, the Spanish Wikipedia community writes that: &If the proposal were approved in its current version, actions such as sharing a news item on social networks or accessing it through a search engine would become more complicated on the Internet; Wikipedia itself would be at risk.&

The Spanish language version of Wikipedia will remain dark throughout the EU parliament vote — which is due to take place at 10 o&clock (UTC) on July 5.

&We want to continue offering an open, free, collaborative and free work with verifiable content. We call on all members of the European Parliament to vote against the current text, to open it up for discussion and to consider the numerous proposals of the Wikimedia movement to protect access to knowledge; among them, the elimination of articles 11 and 13, the extension of the freedom of panorama to the whole EU and the preservation of the public domain,& it adds.

The Italian language version of Wikipedia went dark yesterday.

While the protest banners about the reform are appearing widely across Wikipedia, the decisions to block out encyclopedia content are less widespread — and are being taken by each local community of editors.

As you&d expect, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been a very vocal critic of Article 13 — including lashing out at whoever was in control of the European CommissionTwitter feed yesterday when they tried to suggest that online encyclopedias will not be affected by the proposal — by suggesting they would not be &considered& to be giving access to &large amounts of unauthorised protected content& by claiming most of their content would fall outside the scope of the law because itcovered by Creative Commons licenses. (An interpretation of the proposed rules that anti-Article 13 campaigners dispute.)

And the commissioners drafting this portion of the directive do appear to have been mostly intending to regulate YouTube — which has been a target for record industry irein recent years, over the relatively small royalties paid to artists vs streaming music services.

But critics arguethis is a wrongheaded, sledgehammer-to-crack a nut approach to lawmaking — which will have the unintended consequence of damaging free expression and access to information online.

Wales shot back at the ECtweet — saying it&deeply inappropriate for the European Commission to be lobbying publicly and misleading the public in this way&.

A little later in the same Twitter thread, as more users had joined the argument, he added: &The Wikipedia community is not so narrow minded as to let the rest of the Internet suffer just because we are big enough that they try to throw us a bone. Justice matters.&

The EU parliament will vote as a whole tomorrow — when we&ll find out whether or not MEPs have been swayed by this latest #SaveYourInternet campaign.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (96 Comments)

Ride-hailing giant Uber is officially relaunching in Finland today, a year after suspending its primary service in the market — when it said it would wait for taxi laws to be deregulated.

Among the changes it was waiting for are the removal of taxi permit caps and fare restrictions.Most parts of the Actcame into effect on July 1.

The Finnish governmentsaid its intentionis to modernize the rules to &significantly enhance the implementation of new technology, digitalisation and new business concepts&, promoting competition and working towards the creation of what it dubbed &seamless, multimodal travel chains& —thanks also to a push in the act for data and systems interoperability and open interfaces.

&This Act will give us a genuine opportunity to make mobility a comprehensive service for customers,& saidtransport minister Anne Berner last year.

From3pm CET todayUber says two services that use professional drivers — uberX and UberBLACK — will operate in the Helsinki capital region in Finland, which it notes will includes Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen.

Uber is not restarting its unlicensed peer-to-peer service (UberPOP) in the market.

That unlicensed driveroption has essentially been outlawed in Europe after the regiontop court ruled in Decemberthat Uber is a transport service, not a platform, thereby locking its business into being regulated by existing taxi licensing regimes.

And locking Uber into lobbying city authorities to ‘modernize& and deregulate taxi rules in its favor — such as by removing permit caps and making it easier for more people to become taxi drivers.

&In the vast majority of the European countries we have been operating under existing transportation laws for years now and were able to scale our business with licensed drivers,& an Uber spokesman told us.

Blogging about the Finland relaunch, Uber talks up the different course it says itseeking to chart under new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, writing: &We&ve set a course for more responsible growth with a new approach to building long-term partnerships with cities and regulators.&

In truth Uber has had its course reset after a series of scandals rocked the company and, in Europe, after myriad legal challenges led to regulatory blowback and ramped up public and political pressure on the company to change.

Those external forces are continuing to reconfigure Uberbusiness — and in Europe at least to make it better mesh with local civic values.

For example in London, the company has made a series of changesto how it operates — such as introducingsafety caps on the hours drivers can work— changes it made following a shock decision by the transport regulator to withdraw its license to operate in September 2017.

Last monththe company won an appeal against TfLwithdrawal of its license based on changes it had made since September 2017, though the judge only granted it a provisional 15-month license — with UK regulators set to continue to scrutinize its conduct closely.

Another example of Uberregional reconfiguration: An announcement in May that it would expand accident insurance cover for its drivers and delivery workers across Europe.

Last month the company also said it will bring its Jump e-bike service to Europe — with Khosrowshahi claiming the companywants to help cities tackle traffic-related problems such as air pollution and congestion by increasing access to &cleaner transportation solutions&.

In Helsinki, Uber had intended to keep its UberBlack service going for the past year but a spokeswoman told us it did not have enough drivers to provide a reliable service — so UberBlack has not been operational since the suspension. But will restart later today.

Since last August, Uber says more than 250,000 people in the Helsinki area have opened its app despite there being no service in operation — which it touts as showing &clear demand& for its service.

It also notes that Finnish Uber users have takenmore than 200,000 Uber trips abroad during the local market pause.

&We&re excited to use our technology to complement existing public and private transport options and to offer an affordable, safe and reliable alternative to personal car ownership. We hope that other countries, where local people are not currently able to use apps like Uber either to get around or to make money on their terms, will soon follow suit,& Uber adds.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (91 Comments)
  1. Applications are open for Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin ’18
  2. How to hide your Gmails from prying eyes
  3. Seamus Heaney letter reunited with owner
  4. Toyota sends autonomous hydrogen-powered ship on a six-year world tour
  5. What is AI Everything you need to know