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Vice News: forms strategic partnership with Skype

Vice News plans to use Skype's voice and video technology to enable audience participation and to expand news coverage around the world.

The initiative is aimed at allowing Vice's youth audience to engage more closely with the newsroom's content.

Among possible new formats are roundtable debates with Vice News selecting a topical issue and inviting representatives with differing views to participate. Another possibility under consideration is for Vice News reporters to take questions live on air from around the world.

Vice News launched in March and has delivered reports and documentary content from trouble spots including Ukraine and Venezuela.

At the time of the launch, Vice Media reportedly planned to put US $50 million (£31 million) into the news operation over the following three years and has hired at least 60 reporters.

Sterling Proffer, general manager of Vice News, said: "Since the launch of Vice News in March we've been covering the issues and events that matter most to our audience - immigration, the environment and crisis and conflict around the world.

"Now, by teaming up with Skype, we're going to bring people even closer to the story and give our global audience an even louder voice."

Angie Hill, general manager of audience marketing, Microsoft Consumer Apps and Services at Skype, said: "Skype is proud to be partnering with such an innovative and forward-thinking media company.

"Together, Skype and Vice News will be able to transform the way that young people globally consume the news and have their voices heard on topics that matter the most to them, using the range of communication tools that Skype offers."

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Vice News plans to use Skype's voice and video technology to enable audience participation and to expand news coverage around the world. The initiative is aimed at allowing Vice's youth audience to engage more closely with the newsroom's content. Among possible new formats are roundtable debates with Vice News selecting a topical issue and inviting representatives with differing views to participate.

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Done & Dusted: produces Johnnie Walker event

Hamish Hamilton, the director and executive producer at Done & Dusted was speaking in a video of clips featuring the Johnnie Walker "symphony in blue" event, created by the production company.

He said: "I think this represents a brave new world of branded entertainment where you take your message literally to the end of the nose.

"You are [targeting] a certain type of trend-setter that you want to talk about your brand."

The actor Jude Law closed the event at Merchant Taylors' Hall in the City of London.

Hamilton said the event was "theatre and entertainment where you literally enjoy the heritage, craftsmanship and the flavour of Johnnie Walker Blue Label".

James Thompson, Diageo's global managing director of Reserve Brands, also featured in the video. He said: "Creating experiences is how a lot of brands will communicate in the future, particularly luxury brands."

Law also featured in a short film for Johnnie Walker Blue Label, which was created by Anomaly New York and directed by Jake Scott through RSA Films.

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Johnnie Walker event represents a 'brave new world'

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Hamish Hamilton, the director and executive producer at Done & Dusted was speaking in a video of clips featuring the Johnnie Walker "symphony in blue" event, created by the production company. He said: "I think this represents a brave new world of branded entertainment where you take your message literally to the end of the nose.

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Coca-Cola has struck a partnership with Channel 4 which has seen it create personalised digital TV ads as part of an extension of the Share a Coke campaign - the first deal of its kind for the broadcaster.

Viewers watching 4oD content via Channel4.com will see a 10-second bespoke spot featuring the Channel 4 logo transform into a bottle of Coca-Cola which has been personalised with the individual names of viewers and the strapline 'Share a Coke' - followed by a 30-second ad.

"This marks an exciting development for the Share a Coke campaign, as we harness technology to make it more personalised than ever before," explained Bobby Brittain, marketing strategy and activation director, Coca-Cola Great Britain.

"A huge number of consumers are already going out to find Coca-Cola bottles with their name on, but engaging with the campaign online and through social media. These new innovations will help us reach an even wider audience with timely, relevant advertising."

Coca-Cola has targeted Channel 4's 16-34 demographic. Earlier this year the broadcaster stated its database of registered viewers had reached over 10 million registered viewers, which includes one in two of all 16-24 year olds in the UK.

The latest phase of the 'Share a Coke' campaign, which first launched in April last year, has also involved an out-of-home and TV push with a new TVC titled Bobby.

For the out-of-home element there have been 7,000 6 sheets for 'Share a Coke' rolled out across the county and London buses. The ads vary with approximately 200 names, 50 chosen by consumers courtesy of Facebook vote.

In addition, Coca-Cola has launched further, personalised content with a focus on social media whilst working with key YouTube Vloggers for a content push throughout the summer.

For consumers who can't find their name on shelves, a new e-commerce platform has been launched where they will be able to buy a glass bottle.

Across all media, Coca-Cola has projected the campaign will be seen by approximately 94 per cent of population, 20 times, while the out-of-home activity will be seen by approximately 89 per cent of the population.

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Coca-Cola and Channel 4 to create personalised digital ads for latest 'Share a Coke' push

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Coca-Cola has struck a partnership with Channel 4 which has seen it create personalised digital TV ads as part of an extension of the Share a Coke campaign - the first deal of its kind for the broadcaster.

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I had an ad with my name in it!

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Burberry has created a customisable ad campaign to push forward its new perfume launch as models Cara Delevingne and Kate Moss are brought together for the first time.

Via Channel 4's 4oD TV catch-up service viewers can personalise the My Burberry TV campaign, ending the advert with a monogrammed My Burberry bottle with their own initials appearing on screen.

An interactive billboard campaign will also roll out, letting consumers interact with the campaign on digital billboards to personal and project a giant My Burberry bottle with their initials.

Live-mapping directions will then guide them to the nearest Burberry store where they can purchase their monogrammed My Burberry bottle.

Interactive advertising will also run across Google's ad network.

On the Burberry website and in selected stores consumers will be able to physically personalise a bottle of the perfume with up to three initials through a monogramming service.

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Burberry releases customisable ads to promote new perfume

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Burberry has created a customisable ad campaign to push forward its new perfume launch as models Cara Delevingne and Kate Moss are brought together for the first time. Via Channel 4's 4oD TV catch-up service viewers can personalise the My Burberry TV campaign, ending the advert with a monogrammed My Burberry bottle with their own initials appearing on screen.

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I've had the phrase 'clarity as a business model' in my head for a while - probably since I heard a splendid NPR podcast about fine print. Being clear about things that are normally muddy seems like a potential competitive...

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When Brian Swichkow, a digital marketer in Burlington, Vermont, was pranked by his roommate, he came up with a creative idea to get even. Swichkow flipped to his Facebook Ads dashboard, created a custom audience with his roommate's email address, and started serving banner ads that poked fun at his hapless friend's personal life.

For three weeks, Swichkow targeted his one person audience with increasingly comical and invasive ads, reaching the point where his roommate confessed he thought a Facebook advertiser had wire-tapped his phone. With just $1.70, Swichkow executed one of the most uniquely targeted Facebook ad campaigns in recent memory, one that's been re-shared on social over 30,000 times since he revealed the punchline.

Although Swichkow's joke is an extreme and amusing edge case in social advertising, it also highlights a very real truth: we have squarely arrived in the era of person-level marketing. It's not sci-fi, it's a power available in your current marketing technology stack.

And with great power comes great responsibility. Facebook's Atlas and LinkedIn's recent acquisition of Bizo are expanding both the opportunity and the risks of hyper-targeted personalization. Atlas - for anyone interested in a short definition - is a cross-device advertising platform that targets people and their devices based on their Facebook login status, rather than cookies. "Cookies," Facebook's Atlas team says, "don't work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can't easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world. People-based marketing solves these problems. Atlas can now connect online campaigns to actual offline sales, ultimately proving the real impact that digital campaigns have in driving incremental reach and new sales."

Since many of Facebook's 1.3 billion users stay logged into their Facebook account - and the majority also use Facebook's native aps on mobile - Atlas lets advertisers track user behavior across desktop and mobile far more accurately than on Google Display Network (GDN). Unsurprisingly, Twitter and LinkedIn's respective product roadmaps are also moving in this direction.

But before you rush to re-allocate your media budget, remember these three important marketing principles:

1. Personalization must build trust. People trust people they know, not necessarily your brand. Their trust has to be earned. Align your brand voice to how your customers talk, be transparent and invite your reader or viewer to experience something that helps, educates or delights them. Marketing is becoming less and less about broadcasted media buys and more and more about casual, one-on-one conversations. Show up in your customer's lives with a polite knock on the front door, not by barging in unexpectedly.

This philosophy has inspired Dove's recent efforts to support women's self-esteem on social channels like Snapchat. "Our goal was to leverage the ephemeral nature of Snapchat to establish genuine personal connections in a space that feels safe to girls and women," Unilever Marketing Director Jennifer Bremmer told AdAge, "We want to speak to them in ways and places that are organic to them... What made [Snapchat] most appealing was the ability to engage with women and girls in a personal, one-to-one manner."

2. Personalization takes systematic marketing. Five years ago, a digital marketing campaign might have needed six to a dozen image variations and crops, covering email, website, Facebook, Twitter and display. Today, think about the creative, delivery and asset management requirements of personalizing a campaign to a million people. Personalization and audience targeting requires technology-enabled processes and systems that can handle both the art and the science of that replication.

3. Person-level marketing starts from within. In our current phase of social and mobile-centric marketing technology, marketing departments have a direct path to engage their employees on social: their phones, where nearly every modern employee is actively building trust and sharing content for their personal brand. In such a connected era, your brand's voice, empathy, reach and optimism start from within and extend outwards through your clients and partners. Build a culture that celebrates the individual, fights to make its clients happy and successful and consistently delivers on great content and experiences.

As marketers, it's up to us to make person-level marketing an opportunity to build connections, extend handshakes and be relevant. The platforms are already providing us with the pipes and plumbing, we need to supply the good judgement and heart.

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The Rise and Risk of Person-Level Marketing

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When Brian Swichkow, a digital marketer in Burlington, Vermont, was pranked by his roommate, he came up with a creative idea to get even. Swichkow flipped to his Facebook Ads dashboard, created a custom audience with his roommate's email address, and started serving banner ads that poked fun at his hapless friend's personal life.

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Disruptions

When it comes to the future of computing, there is one major known and a principal unknown.

The known, with almost guaranteed certainty, is that the next era of computing will be wearables. The unknown, with commensurate guaranteed uncertainty, is what these wearables will be and where on your body they will live.

Apple and Samsung, for example, are betting on the wrist; Google, the face. A slew of tech companies believe clothing will simply become electronic. Yet there's a whole new segment of start-ups that believe all of the above are destined for failure and that we humans will become the actual computers, or at least the place where the technology will reside.

Their enthusiasm is on an emerging class of wearable computers that adhere to the skin like temporary tattoos, or attach to the body like an old-fashioned Band-Aid.

Many of these technologies don't look anything like today's gadgets. Instead, they are stretchable, bendable and incredibly thin. They can also be given unique designs, to stand out like a bold tattoo, or to blend in to the color of your skin.

While these wearables raise novel privacy concerns, their advocates say there are numerous benefits. Attachable computers will be less expensive to make, provide greater accuracy because sensors will be closer to a person's body (or even inside us) and offer the most utility, as something people won't forget to wear.

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MC10 attachable computers. Credit John A. Rogers/The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

MC10, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., is testing attachable computers that look like small rectangular stickers, about the size of a piece of gum, and can include wireless antennas, temperature and heart-rate sensors and a tiny battery.

"Our devices are not like wearables that are used today, where people wear them for a little bit and then throw them into a drawer," said Scott Pomerantz, the chief executive of MC10. "Ours are always on you. We have the smallest, most flexible, stretchable, wearable computer, and you can collect all sorts of biometric data tied to your motion."

MC10 recently teamed up with John A. Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has been working for nearly a decade to perfect flexible devices that can be worn on the skin or implanted internally.

How would these gadgets work? Imagine being able to slap a few Band-Aid-size sensors to your body when you go for a run, then seeing a micro-level reading of your exercise on your phone.

Maybe you want to figure out which deodorant would be best for you. This would be done with a sticker that tracks your sweat level, then emails you a few brand recommendations. Or if you want to monitor your baby's breathing, you would stick a little sensor on the baby's chest that will alert you to any problems.

"We'll eventually see a more intimate integration of electronics and biological systems," Mr. Rogers said in a phone interview. "Without that kind of intimate physical contact, it's going to be difficult, or maybe even impossible, to extract meaningful data."

MC10 attachable computers.

The health applications are enormous. Over the past year, Mr. Rogers and his team of scientists have been working with patients with Parkinson's disease to monitor their motions, dermatologists to treat skin diseases, and beauty companies like L'Oréal to develop digital stickers that track skin hydration.

Wearable-computer advocates are also giddy about the infinite style possibilities. "It turns out that the mechanics of these devices are 100 percent compatible with kids' standard temporary tattoos," Mr. Rogers said. Meaning, they can be made to look like tattoos, with each segment containing different sensors.

Anke Loh, the chairwoman of the fashion department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has been experimenting with making the attachable computers look like body art. "You see these patches and you really want to put them on your skin, even without knowing what the function is," Ms. Loh said, noting that most wearable computers today are clunky and ugly. "There's a lot of potential to combine fashion and technology."

On a more futuristic front, scientists at the University of Tokyo have been working on an "e-skin," which, as you may have guessed, is an electronic skin that sits on top of real skin. It looks like a flexible and stretchable sheet of plastic wrap, yet contains lots of health-related sensors.

In another iteration of e-skin, scientists are working to add a layer of LEDs, turning it into a functional screen that sits on the body.

Digital skins offer numerous applications, not only in monitoring a user's health, but also as a visual user interface. They can be used on lifelike prosthetics and even replace smartphones one day. (Imagine your forearm as a touch-screen display.)

But don't throw aside your smartwatch or say goodbye to Google Glass just yet. It will be a while before our wearable future becomes known.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page E2 of the New York edition with the headline: Wearable Technology, Warts and All. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Wearable Technology That Feels Like Skin

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Disruptions When it comes to the future of computing, there is one major known and a principal unknown. The known, with almost guaranteed certainty, is that the next era of computing will be wearables. The unknown, with commensurate guaranteed uncertainty, is what these wearables will be and where on your body they will live.

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FB allows you to pay your pals, through not PayPal

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FB allows you to pay your pals, through not PayPal

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Facebook and Google are taking over your online identity

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Facebook and Google are taking over your online identity

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When Facebook executives meet potential advertisers, their biggest selling point is that the company knows whom it's advertising to. In contrast to the wilds of the web, the proposition goes, Facebook users sign in to the service and make themselves known. Match their data with third parties-data brokers who provide loyalty card spending, for instance-and you have a fairly good idea of whether your ad has been effective. If user x saw ad y and made a purchase, there's the return on investment. (Facebook stresses that these data are anonymised and the data are analysed only in aggregate.)

Most Facebook users are aware of this-or at least the bit about the service being tied to advertising. But Facebook's tentacles reach far beyond its homepage. Its "like" button is splashed across the web. Last month, the company suggested that advertisers include a Facebook tracking pixel on their sites to better measure whether the ads are working.

The notion that the world outside its homepage remains anonymous is increasingly untrue. Millions of internet users voluntarily give Facebook, Google, and others access to their movements across the web and on mobile when they use "social log in," or the ability to sign in to a website using credentials from the big identity providers.

The web's rent-a-cops-or emperors

Think about this way: In the early 1990s, people travelled around the web at will, only having to show their ID when accessing something important and personal, such as email accounts or while shopping, much as you would at the post office or in a shop. But soon the fetish for ID grew. By the late 2000s, somebody was asking for your ID every block of the internet you travelled, every street you crossed, every building you entered. Worse, each one of them issued their own credentials.

People eventually got sick of carrying a headful of IDs (usernames and passwords) around every time they want for a little stroll online; so in 2008 (pdf) Facebook and Google said to the others, "Look, let us be your gatekeepers. We can check people's credentials and let them in for you." Your Facebook or Google accounts suddenly became passports, giving access to all territories. In return for their service, these identity providers note the details of your comings and goings. It's like if your government monitored where your passport was and sent you restaurant recommendations. (That day will probably come.) Or, to mix metaphors entirely, Facebook and Google exert suzerainty over the smaller websites that use their service.

The battle for your identity

The data that identity providers gather is a crucial component of their business. It is a useful thing to know what your users are up to when they're on your site. To know what their movements are on the rest of the web is a bigger prize yet. And as mobile phones and tablets render old tracking mechanisms, such as cookies, increasingly ineffectual, identity is becoming the single most important tool to follow web users across multiple devices. The mission of every large web advertising firm is to be able to paint a complete portrait of their users.

Between them, Facebook and Google account for over 80% of social log-ins. As mobile has risen and this realisation has sunk in, the competition around identity has intensified. In 2012, Google started forcing new users to register for a Google+ account (something it finally stopped doing this week) and began integrating Google+ across its services. It ensures that people are always logged into its services. Meanwhile, Facebook has introduced a version of social login in which users can sign into third-party apps "anonymously," which isn't really anonymous at all.

Yahoo is also trying to regain lost share; it decided in May to stop accepting outside credentials for its Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick'Em, a college basketball-themed service. The change will gradually roll out across all of Yahoo's services. Mobile networks are furious at being left behind and want to get back in on the action. Governments are getting into the act too.

Between them, Facebook and Google account for over 80% of social log-ins, according to Janrain, a company that helps manage social login integration. The gap between the two and everybody else is gradually widening.

Give the people what they want

Consumers seem happy about this state of affairs; they have been driven into the arms of big identity providers by the sheer volume of passwords they are expected to remember as they travel the web. Gigya, another social identity company, surveyed 2,000 American men and women and found that some 77% of respondents had logged into a website or mobile app using a social network account at least once. That's a big rise from 53% last year.

Of the people who have used social login, a third said they use it whenever it is available. The top two reasons were the time it takes to register on sites, and the hassle of remembering yet another username and password.

It's clear why websites and apps use social login. Some 60% of respondents said they had abandoned a purchase on a website or mobile app because it required filling out an online registration form. And nearly two-thirds of respondents said they were likely to use social login on their phones instead of creating a new username of password, suggesting convenience is what drives use. Indeed some enterprising programmers are trying to make the process of social login even easier than it already is, integrating social login in the background.

And it's not like people aren't aware of what signing in with their social media accounts actually means.

That suggests internet users have come to accept the trade-offs they must make for convenience. It suits everyone: identity providers, which get their hands on more data; third-party websites that can make life easier for their users; and regular people, who now have to remember fewer passwords. But it also means handing ever more to some of the richest and most powerful companies on the internet.

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How Facebook and Google are taking over your online identity

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When Facebook executives meet potential advertisers, their biggest selling point is that the company knows whom it's advertising to. In contrast to the wilds of the web, the proposition goes, Facebook users sign in to the service and make themselves known.

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Forget flying cars, Elon Musk says we're taking tech underground

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Forget flying cars, Elon Musk says we're taking tech underground

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Elon Musk's ambition has finally found its limits: the billionaire technologist, who wants to banish petrol-driven cars from the earth with Tesla Motors while putting humanity on Mars with SpaceX, can't abide flying cars.

Speaking in at an event in San Francisco, Musk, who is expected to unveil the new Tesla D car later on Thursday, rejected the idea.

"I'm not sure about the flying cars," Musk told the audience at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. "If the sky was full of cars flying all over the place, it would affect how things look. It would affect the skyline. And it would be noisier and there would be a greater probability of something falling on your head. Those are not good things.

"On the other hand, you'd be able to go from one place to another faster," he conceded.

But he maintained that there are easier ways to gain massive improvements in travel speeds, such as moving vehicles underground to "eliminate the choke points in cities" that clog up traffic.

That's not to say that Musk shies away from the difficult solutions to getting people from A to B. In 2013, he presented an "alpha" proposal, which he called "an open source transportation concept", for the "Hyperloop" - an ambitious attempt to link LA and San Francisco on what Musk described as "a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table".

The Hyperloop was ill-received as a concept, knocked for overstating its benefits while simultaneously belittling the more advanced proposals for a California high-speed rail system. But Musk clearly didn't stop thinking about the possibility of changing how travel works beyond simply swapping petrol for electricity.

"This may seem trite," he told the audience, "but I honestly think tunnels should be given a lot more consideration."

Alongside the future of travel, Musk elaborated on his belief that humanity will be the architect of its own demise in the form of super-intelligent artificial intelligence.

What would happen, he asked, if a supersmart machine decides that the best way to achieve its gains is to destroy humanity? Suppose an AI is set to the task of cleaning up our inboxes; what if it comes to the conclusion, Musk asked, that "the best way to get rid of spam is to get rid of humans?"

Citing Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom, Musk has previously warned that "we need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.

"Hope we're not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence," he added back in August, comparing humanity to the simple programs that load up the full operating system on a PC. "Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable."

In the meantime, Musk can look forward to revealing the D in Los Angeles tonight. According to analysts at Barclays Capital, the announcement is likely to entail a four-wheel drive version of the Tesla Model S, and perhaps a semi-autonomous driving system.
* Elon Musk says he invested in DeepMind over 'Terminator' fears Topics

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Elon Musk to unveil the new Tesla D model - but says no to flying cars

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Elon Musk's ambition has finally found its limits: the billionaire technologist, who wants to banish petrol-driven cars from the earth with Tesla Motors while putting humanity on Mars with SpaceX, can't abide flying cars. Speaking in at an event in San Francisco, Musk, who is expected to unveil the new Tesla D car later on Thursday, rejected the idea.

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Blockchain bitcoin bootsraps all the way to $30.5 million

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Blockchain bitcoin bootsraps all the way to $30.5 million

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Music technology company ROLI has raised $3.7m in Series A investment as its flagship product the Seaboard GRAND gains momentum.

The London-based company announced a $12.8m Series A round in May and hopes the new round, which includes Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures, will help get a foothold in the Asian market.

The round also included previous investors Balderton Capital, FirstMark Capital, Index Ventures, and Universal Music Group.

Revolutionary hardware

The Seaboard is the company's first product, focused on ROLI's mantra of increasing "the bandwidth of interaction between people and technology".

It has been dubbed the piano of the future and has been ordered from over 34 different countries.

Founded in 2009 by Roland Lamb, the company has grown from three staff to over 50, based in London, New York and the Far East.

It is a positive sign for the Seaboard that CEO Lamb was honoured for his contribution to the design world with the Emerging Talent Medal at London Design Week.

Famous endorsements

The Seaboard GRAND has been used by a number of high-profile artists. including Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman and Dream Theater's Grammy-nominated keyboard virtuoso Jordan Rudess.

Rudess described playing the keyboard as "the most important musical life-changing event since my first synthesizer".

Alongside an event announcing the May investment, Rudess played a set with other musicians on three Seaboards at the iconic Abbey Road Studios. You can see the video below.

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ROLI raises $3.7m as revolutionary keyboard gains momentum - UKTN (UK Tech News)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Music technology company ROLI has raised $3.7m in Series A investment as its flagship product the Seaboard GRAND gains momentum. The London-based company announced a $12.8m Series A round in May and hopes the new round, which includes Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures, will help get a foothold in the Asian market.

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Music technology company ROLI has raised $3.7m in Series A investment as its flagship product the Seaboard GRAND gains momentum.

The London-based company announced a $12.8m Series A round in May and hopes the new round, which includes Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures, will help get a foothold in the Asian market.

The round also included previous investors Balderton Capital, FirstMark Capital, Index Ventures, and Universal Music Group.

Revolutionary hardware

The Seaboard is the company's first product, focused on ROLI's mantra of increasing "the bandwidth of interaction between people and technology".

It has been dubbed the piano of the future and has been ordered from over 34 different countries.

Founded in 2009 by Roland Lamb, the company has grown from three staff to over 50, based in London, New York and the Far East.

It is a positive sign for the Seaboard that CEO Lamb was honoured for his contribution to the design world with the Emerging Talent Medal at London Design Week.

Famous endorsements

The Seaboard GRAND has been used by a number of high-profile artists. including Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman and Dream Theater's Grammy-nominated keyboard virtuoso Jordan Rudess.

Rudess described playing the keyboard as "the most important musical life-changing event since my first synthesizer".

Alongside an event announcing the May investment, Rudess played a set with other musicians on three Seaboards at the iconic Abbey Road Studios. You can see the video below.

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ROLI raises $3.7m as revolutionary keyboard gains momentum - UKTN (UK Tech News)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Music technology company ROLI has raised $3.7m in Series A investment as its flagship product the Seaboard GRAND gains momentum. The London-based company announced a $12.8m Series A round in May and hopes the new round, which includes Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures, will help get a foothold in the Asian market.

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Tablet computers have replaced the TV in the bedroom as the must-have gadget for children, with over one-third of those aged from five to 15 owning their own tablet, says Ofcom.

Studies from the UK's media and telecoms regulator discovered that the proportion of children having their own tablet, instead of using a parent's device, has increased from 19% in 2013 to 34% in 2014.

Over six in ten children use a tablet at home, up 50% on 2013, while the number of children with TV sets in their bedrooms has decreased by a third in five years.

Affordable alternative

Tablet use has expanded for all age groups over the last couple of years, as they have become an affordable alternative to a PC and can be bought for under £100 from major high street retailers and supermarkets.

Both Tesco, with its Hudl tablet, and Argos spotted the trend last year and released own brand tablets available for under £100. Tesco says it sold 750,000 Hudl tablets in the past year.

Research firm eMarketer expects there to be 24.6 million tablet users in the UK in 2014, where Apple's iPad still dominates, making up 50% of UK tablet users.

The number of 5-15-year-olds using a tablet to go online has doubled to 42% in the past year, while PC use for internet access by children has decreased by 3% to 88%. PC sales have steadily decreased over the last three years, as tablets and other smart devices have grown in popularity.

Beyond internet access, tablets are being used by children for a range of different activities. Games are played on tablets by 30% of children, while 20% watch live TV on their tablets and 33% watch on-demand TV.

Social media, YouTube and filters

Social media also plays a large part in internet use for older children, with 71% of 12-15 years olds having a social media profile on Facebook, Twitter or another service. But in that age range, girls are more likely to have an Instagram, SnapChat or Tumblr account than boys.

YouTube attracts more boys than girls, however, who are more than twice as likely to use the Google video site.

Ofcom also found that 84% of parents directly supervise their children online and 82% have defined rules about the use and access of the internet by their kids. Over half of parents also use tools to manage their child's internet use on tablets and PCs, including internet filters, password protection and anti-virus software.

Over three-quarters of parents currently feel they enough about the internet and how it works to help protect their children, but 43% feel that their kids know more about the internet than they do, rising to 62% for the 12-15 year olds.
* Hudl 2: Tesco releases new larger Android tablet with parental controls Topics

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Ofcom: one in three children under 15 has own tablet computer, supplanting TV

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Tablet computers have replaced the TV in the bedroom as the must-have gadget for children, with over one-third of those aged from five to 15 owning their own tablet, says Ofcom. Studies from the UK's media and telecoms regulator discovered that the proportion of children having their own tablet, instead of using a parent's device, has increased from 19% in 2013 to 34% in 2014.

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1 in 3 smartphone users uninterested in apps

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1 in 3 smartphone users uninterested in apps

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One of the very big and obvious trends in mobile in the last couple of years has been the explosion of new messaging forms, enabled by the permissionless innovation of the internet and by the emergence of the smartphone as a social platform. So far, voice has been relatively unaffected, and the VOIP players from the desktop era, most obviously Skype, have had pretty little impact on how we speak to people. With the shift of networks (slowly) to LTE and the increased sophistication of smartphone platforms this is now starting to change.

There is not really a 'free' story here in the way that there was for SMS: there is not the same vast arbitrage opportunity that there was between SMS pricing and data pricing. Generally price arbitrages like that arise when there is a big gap between the price charged and the underlying cost structure, but this is not the case of voice as it was for SMS. Unlike SMS, voice does actually have significant marginal cost to provide (though provisioning capacity is pretty lumpy), and VOIP does not make that cheaper - in fact on 3G networks VOIP tends to use several times more radio network capacity since it's not optimized for the way the network works. On LTE (eventually, and to generalize hugely) all voice will be VOIP, but that doesn't mean the network will no longer cost money to run. And operators are already (painfully) moving their pricing towards integrated bundles anyway, so the cope for arbitrage from voice to data pricing is pretty limited, I think (I discussed these issues in more detail here).

On the other hand, there is a lot of scope to innovate around the actual voice experience in much the same way that we have seen around messaging apps.

In messaging we have seen two levels of innovation in experience. WhatsApp delivers 'SMS 2.0' - it does the things that telco technologies like IMS were supposed to add close to a decade ago, but not much more, so far. On the other, we have things like Line, Wechat, Kik and Snapchat that actually change what messaging is, even before you look at the platform elements of their offerings. I suspect (but no more) that it is harder fundamentally to change what voice is than to create alternatives to a snippet of text, and so the basic voice experience might change less - the innovation, like WhatsApp, may be more about the handling and routing and setup. That is, it kills the dialer. That's one way to look at Talko - it rethinks what 'dialer' mean when there is no DTMF (or pulse), and builds value around that.

Most of the old generation services in this space have been focused on international calling and perhaps roaming, either using gateways (that is, supplanting calling cards) or complicated SIM/MVNO setups that never went mainstream. I always felt that that approach focused on too small a problem - we tend to over-estimate how many normal people know enough people (or any people) in another country, outside very specific groups such as immigrants and MBAs. And even where people do know someone abroad, that's generally not of enough of their calling to switch all the rest of their calls to a new platform. Hence Skype grew to a very large proportion of international calls and created a whole new market for free international voice, but remains a pretty small proportion of actual, well, calls. This coming new generation might find more universal use cases.

There are a bunch of interesting second order questions from this. Most obviously, how does it interact with the current status of the PSTN numbering system as the lowest common denominator?

One of the interesting changes between old and new generations of social comms app is that the older generation (Skype etc) was all about interconnect with the PSTN (at least, that's where the money came from) but tended to ignore the actual number itself. Conversely WhatsApp et al rely on the PSTN number as an identify platform (a 'social graph') but have no interest in connecting to the actual PSTN itself.

If, now, you move your voice to a social app, what happens to your phone number? Do you still use it in the WhatsApp sense, as an ID number rather like an ICQ ID? Does it still matter if it changes? Or does it linger on as something for old people and as a mailbox for boring official things (like email?).

Next, do we think differently about fragmentation of voice than of messaging? It seems clear that we are not going to have one single point of contact for messaging systems. Everyone will have several of Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Line and so on, with new apps coming and going, some quickly like fireworks, some finding a way to stick. But are we happy having multiple paths for voice in the same way? I can't think of an a priori reason why it would be different, other than perhaps urgency, but who knows?

Finally, if the phone number goes then commoditising the cellular network becomes that much easier, especially in countries where strong competition means that the networks themselves are roughly comparable. We obviously have number portability already, though how fast and frictionless it is varies hugely by country, but if you could take your comms from network to network just as you can take your SIM from phone to phone then the commoditisation of the network layer would be much easier. The sticking point here is the interlocking effect of handset subsidies and contracts, but over half of Europe and a growing part of the USA is on prepay and there's clearly a move to shift contract users from direct subsides to instalment plans as well. Soft SIMs (despite all the very obvious problems) would accelerate this, if operators ever decided to adopt them, for whatever reason.

Hence, one could propose a nightmare scenario for mobile operators in which your voice contact points become as free-form as your messaging contact points have become, with lots of different possible channels, the PSTN number becoming as vestigial as email is (apparently) for today's teenagers, and SIMs (or connection plans on a soft SIM) sold from week to week on a pure price /gig basis. I'm far from sure that that will happen, certainly any time soon, but it is certainly a possibility.

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One of the very big and obvious trends in mobile in the last couple of years has been the explosion of new messaging forms, enabled by the permissionless innovation of the internet and by the emergence of the smartphone as a social platform.

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Netflix, premium VOD, taking on hollywood

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Netflix, premium VOD, taking on hollywood

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In a first deal of its kind, Netflix and the Weinstein Company said Monday that they planned to release next year's sequel to the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" simultaneously across the globe on Netflix and a select number of Imax theaters.

The film, a follow-up to Ang Lee's Academy Award-winning martial arts drama, is the first major motion picture to make its debut on the streaming service and in movie theaters at the same time. It will be available on Aug. 28 at no additional fee to Netflix subscribers and is the first of several films that Netflix is backing that will follow this new model for release. Only Imax is involved; other theater chains will not screen the film.

Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, said he hoped this deal would show Hollywood that the time had come to respond to what movie fans wanted, and to change the traditional method for releasing films - first in theaters then, typically several months later, for streaming.

"What I am hoping is that it will be a proof point that the sky doesn't fall," Mr. Sarandos said. "These are two different experiences, like going to a football game and watching a football game on TV."

The move underscores an eagerness at Netflix to shatter the traditional so-called windowing system for movies in the same way that it has rattled the structure of the television business, with TV shows now made available for streaming soon after they are broadcast on traditional networks. Netflix has also introduced entirely new models, releasing original series like "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black" all at once.

"We fundamentally believe that the only way to attack the windowing system - that is the centerpiece of the business model of the movie industry versus what consumers want - requires an outsider," said Rich Greenfield, a media analyst with BTIG Research. "Netflix already changed the TV business in a very, very significant way. The movie business is teed up next."

Yet the deal also reflects the challenges that persist in breaking the system, particularly in film. The film, called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend," is a production of the independent Weinstein Company, not a major movie studio, and has a relatively modest budget. The partnership with Imax avoids one big problem: that the major theater chains refuse to break the system.

For Imax, the deal to some degree reflects the manner in which it struggles to find marquee programming during lulls in Hollywood's release calendar. Late August is sort of a cinematic black hole, a time when big studios hold back new releases to avoid competing with back-to-school activities and end-of-summer vacations.

Three theater chains - Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment and Cinemark - control the majority of movie screens in the United States, and they have aggressively opposed any encroachment on their release window, maintaining that any shortening would encourage consumers to stay home. Under current contracts, theaters get to play movies for three months without competition.

Even so, major movie studios, eager to tap into the increasing popularity of video-on-demand systems at a time when domestic box office sales are declining, have experimented with making new releases more readily available in the home. In February, for instance, Warner Bros. simultaneously released "Veronica Mars" in only 270 theaters on the same day the film was made available to buy or rent online.

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Donnie Yen in the sequel, which is called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend." Credit Rico Torres for Netflix

Warner had very limited theatrical options because Regal and Cinemark refused to play the film, and AMC forced Warner to buy out entire auditoriums in advance rather than splitting actual ticket sales after the fact, which is the typical practice.

With Imax, Netflix and the Weinstein Company have found a similar workaround. Although a lot of Imax theaters are now housed in multiplexes owned by one of the big three chains, Imax controls what goes on its screens. Netflix has been interested in breaking into the original film business for some time, and has worked with the Weinstein Company on several projects, including the forthcoming "Marco Polo" historical adventure series, which will be shown exclusively on Netflix.

The idea to kick off this new project came out of a conversation between Mr. Sarandos and Mr. Weinstein.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was very much an art house film. Made for about $23.5 million in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, it took audiences - in Mandarin, with English subtitles - on a martial arts romp. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won four, including best foreign film. The film catapulted its Taiwan-born director, Mr. Lee, to the forefront of Hollywood.

Despite its art house imprimatur, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" played more like a blockbuster, which helps explain Imax's interest in the sequel. Mr. Lee's film took in $176.8 million in North America, after adjusting for inflation, for Sony Pictures Classics in 2000. It ranks as the best-selling Chinese language film in domestic box office history.

The budget for the sequel, "The Green Legend," is a multiple of that for the 2000 film, according to one person familiar with the financing.

In the sequel, Michelle Yeoh reprises her role as the warrior Yu Shu Lien but Mr. Lee does not return. The Weinstein Company has instead given the directing reins to Woo-ping Yuen, a well-known director in China. "The Green Legend," set 20 years after the events of the first movie, follows four martial arts heroes trying to protect the Green Destiny sword.

Just because the first "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was a smash does not guarantee similarly huge ticket sales for the sequel. The independent film surge that helped wash it into the mainstream has since receded and sequels made more than a couple years after the original tend to struggle.

But the more the Weinstein Company can make "The Green Legend" feel like a must-see event the more the sequel is likely to overcome that challenge.

In an interview, Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of the Weinstein Company, said that the industry needed to explore new ways to distribute his movies.

"There is a big world out there, and there are many ways to exhibit things," Mr. Weinstein said. "This is the wave of the future."

Correction:

An article on Tuesday about plans by Netflix and the Weinstein Company to release a sequel to the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" used an outdated working title for the new film. It is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend," not "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Destiny." The error was repeated in an accompanying caption with a picture of the actor Donnie Yen.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Netflix Aims at Hollywood's New Releases. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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With 'Crouching Tiger' Sequel, Netflix Takes Aim at Hollywood

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In a first deal of its kind, Netflix and the Weinstein Company said Monday that they planned to release next year's sequel to the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" simultaneously across the globe on Netflix and a select number of Imax theaters.

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Facebook said Sunday it was relaunching its advertising platform Atlas, and extending anonymized data it has on its users to Atlas in order to serve better ads off of Facebook.

Basically, it means Facebook's targeting data will be available to advertisers that aren't advertising just on Facebook, but are also using its advertising platform Atlas that it acquired in 2013 for Microsoft. Historically, advertisers off Facebook have had to rely on "cookies," or digital markers left by websites on a device. Cookies are increasingly unreliable as more users begin to use mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, leading to many major advertising providers - like Facebook and Google - searching for alternatives. Omnicom will be one of the first advertising providers working with the new data on Atlas.

"It solves a huge issue for us, which is mobile, it's not really cookie-based," Omincom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson told BuzzFeed News. "But when you log into Facebook they know who you are, they get at the mobile issue, which is a particular pain point. We've gone more and more blind as to who they are, but the advertising on mobile is generally not as focused as it would be on the desktop. They start to get a long way to solving those problems."

When a user logs into Facebook on a device, the company is able to tie a device identifier to a specific Facebook account, creating a "real identity" for that device. Then, when an advertiser using Atlas sets up a campaign targeting users that meet a specific criteria - such as age or gender - Atlas serves ads targeted to those users in apps and on sites off of Facebook.

In this sense, Atlas serves as a mediation platform. Facebook tells Atlas what data it has on a specific user, and then when an Atlas advertiser asks for a specific demographic that has more advanced targeting built in, Facebook will deliver the advertiser a batch of anonymized users that are targeted to that. Facebook does not, the company said, hand any identifying user data over to Atlas advertisers.

Facebook's strength as a home for advertisements is the data it has on its users. In that sense, Facebook is able to maximize the value for its advertisers by targeting campaigns at a much more specific level - say, users that specifically like tennis shoes and have installed the Nike app - than any previous advertising platform. Facebook's advertising ranking in News Feed is dependent on not only the value for the advertiser, but also the impact on its engagement for users, as BuzzFeed News has previously detailed.

Thus, opening up that data - particularly for an ad serving service owned by Facebook, which would be a natural step - means a wider swath of advertisers can get access to that targeting data across more devices. Better-targeted ads are then worth more because the users that engage with those ads - either by buying something or watching a video, or the like - are higher-quality and tend to drive more value for advertisers. And Atlas users won't confuse different people on different devices, which might lead to poorly targeted ads.

"It makes a lot of sense, they're getting us a lot closer to individuals, and at Omnicom we've talked about putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time on the right platform is what matters," Nelson said. "Facebook is going to allow us to do exactly that, right person, right time, right message on right platform with known consumers."

Matthew Lynley is a business reporter for BuzzFeed News in San Francisco. Lynley reports on Silicon Valley and the tech industry.

Contact Matthew Lynley at matthew.lynley@buzzfeed.com.

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Facebook Opens Up Some Targeting Data To Its Other Ad Platform, Atlas

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Facebook said Sunday it was relaunching its advertising platform Atlas, and extending anonymized data it has on its users to Atlas in order to serve better ads off of Facebook. Basically, it means Facebook's targeting data will be available to advertisers that aren't advertising just on Facebook, but are also using its advertising platform Atlas that it acquired in 2013 for Microsoft.

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bPay by Barclaycard | Wearable Contactless Payments

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Experience the future of contactless payments with bPay by Barclaycard. With your contactless loop, wristband, fob and sticker, pay easier than ever before.

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and PayPal are going their separate ways. Today eBay announced that its fast-growing PayPal division would be spun off as a new company in 2015. In 2013, PayPal moved $180 billion in 26 currencies across 193 nations. Its revenue jumped 20% to $6.6 billion--41% of eBay's total and 36% of its profits.

The move----prompted in no small part by jump into the mobile payment game and Alibaba's massive IPO--is meant to free up PayPal to focus solely on payments. It will also help attract top talent--few CEO types want to run a subsidiary of a larger company. "A thorough strategic review with our board shows that keeping eBay and PayPal together beyond 2015 clearly becomes less advantageous to each business strategically and competitively," Donahoe said in a statement today. "The industry landscape is changing, and each business faces different competitive opportunities and challenges." Former American Express president, Dan Schulman, will lead the new PayPal and Devin Wenig, the current head of eBay marketplaces, will be eBay's CEO. Donahoe will step down after the spin-off but hold a seat on both boards.

While Donahoe has long said that eBay would spin-off PayPal once the time was right, the new move is a drastic reversal for eBay, which this February fended off an aggressive attack from activist investor Carl Icahn who called the two companies to split.

"PayPal's a jewel and eBay is covering up its value," Icahn told me this winter when I was writing a FORBES cover story on PayPal and the coming wallet wars. "If you just went out and took it public you'd get a huge premium because of growth."

Donahoe disagreed: "Ebay has accelerated and enhanced PayPal's success, allowing it to be more aggressive, bolder and to take more risk than if it was separate."

The fight turned nasty. Ebay created a new website (which I can't seem to find now...) touting the advantages of keeping the two companies together. Meanwhile, Icahn launched a verbal assault on eBay management calling it a poorly run company and accusing eBay board members Marc Andreessen and Scott Cook of placing their interests ahead of shareholders and self-dealing.

Icahn wasn't alone on his calls for eBay to spin-off PayPal.

"It doesn't make sense that a global payment system is a subsidiary of an auction website... It's as if Target owned Visa or something," said Elon Musk, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal who is now running SpaceX and Tesla Motors. PayPal "will get cut to pieces by Amazon payments or by other systems like Apple and by start-ups if it continues to be part of eBay... It will either wither or be spun out."

Former PayPal COO David Sacks shared the same sentiment. He told me that an independent PayPal could hit a market cap of $100 billion. "If you allowed PayPal to pursue its destiny there are moves it could make to become the largest financial company in the world."

Donahoe eventually won the fight. In February Icahn backed off his attack, settling for an independent member to be added to eBay's board. But a series of big events seemed to give eBay a change of heart. First, in June, PayPal's new president David Marcus left to join Facebook. This month Alibaba, which runs a massive mobile payment arm Alipay, went public at a giant $230 billion valuation. And then there is was Apple's iPhone 6 launch that introduced Apple Pay--a mobile wallet feature that could change the entire payment game.

As I've written (many times) before--money is going mobile. Research firm Gartner estimates that mobile payments will top $720 billion a year by 2017, up from $235 billion last year. The upside remains enormous: Humans made $15 trillion worth of retail transactions in 2013. Everyone wants a piece of that market. In addition to apple and PayPal there's Alipay, Amazon, Google and Square. Let's not forget the traditional titans: Visa, American Express and MasterCard. As Apple showed demonstrated this month, the payment arms race is on--PayPal is getting battle ready.

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Ebay And PayPal To Split: Carl Icahn And Elon Musk Wish Comes True

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and PayPal are going their separate ways. Today eBay announced that its fast-growing PayPal division would be spun off as a new company in 2015. In 2013, PayPal moved $180 billion in 26 currencies across 193 nations. Its revenue jumped 20% to $6.6 billion--41% of eBay's total and 36% of its profits.

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FB preparing payments via Messenger / Whats App

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FB preparing payments via Messenger / Whats App

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Just Dance Now with Coca-Cola and Les Twins!

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To mark the release of Just Dance Now mobile game, an amazing and immersive event took place in the heart of a big city, on September 15th, giving people the opportunity to experience for the first time the new mobile version of Just Dance and to dance to the new Coca-Cola song "Find Your Move" with the famous dancers, Les Twins.

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BuzzFeed adds a "Buy It!" button to L'Oreal post

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BuzzFeed adds a "Buy It!" button to L'Oreal post

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BuzzFeed has long pitched to advertisers the power of its technology to make branded content go "viral" among the millions of users who share the site's quizzes and listicles with their friends. Now, it's hoping to help advertisers sell products too.

BuzzFeed this week debuted its first foray into e-commerce-enabled branded content with a L'Oreal USA sponsored post that features a click to buy button for readers to purchase the cosmetics and beauty company's products referenced in the post.

The post " 11 Vintage Hairstyles Anyone Can Pull Off," sponsored by L'Oreal 's Makeup.com, features animated GIFs, tutorial links and Makeup.com illustrations of different types of buns, braids and blowouts for women to try. Below each GIF or illustration is a blue button that says "Love it? Buy It!" that directs readers to a L'Oreal retail page where they can buy the product used to construct that particular hairstyle.

As marketers question if sponsored content is really working, an e-commerce capability can help BuzzFeed better quantify the business impact of sponsored content. BuzzFeed is providing the technology integration but all revenue through the e-commerce test goes to L'Oreal. BuzzFeed said it is too early to share statistics for the L'Oreal partnership yet.

BuzzFeed has been successful in producing and distributing highly viral content: the site attracted about 69 million unique visitors in the U.S. in August, according to comScore, and BuzzFeed says it gets about 75% of its traffic from social media sources. BuzzFeed said it wanted to experiment with whether consumers would use its site to not only read entertaining content but to also buy products for brands they like.

"From an engagement and sharing perspective, beauty tends to do very well," said BuzzFeed Chief Revenue Officer Andy Wiedlin, adding that the site has found that "how to" and "do it yourself" posts tend to get shared at a higher rate than other pieces of branded content. "If you look at e-commerce consumption, health and beauty are a popular category."

L'Oreal USA's Vice President, Digital Innovation, Content and New Ventures Rachel Weiss said the e-commerce integrated posts helps create a more seamless experience for a customer that wants to know how to get a particular look.

"We want to make beauty fun and accessible for everyone and create content that they care about for beauty," Ms. Weiss said. "BuzzFeed can help us do it at scale like we've never done before."

L'Oreal is BuzzFeed's first beauty advertiser for the site's beauty channel in a partnership that runs through February 2015. Other L'Oreal sponsored posts on BuzzFeed include articles such as " Definitive Proof Hairspray Gives You Superpowers" and " 15 Signs You Should Be A Makeup Artist" and " 10 Items From Our Childhood Closet That Never Went Out Of Style."

Not all of L'Oreal's sponsored posts with BuzzFeed will be e-commerce enabled, but BuzzFeed said it will experiment with different types of posts to carry the "Love It? Buy It!" button. There are currently no plans to test the e-commerce capability with other partners, but if it proves to be successful the click to buy button could be extended to other brands, Mr. Wiedlin said.

"We have high confidence that this e-commerce test will work," Mr. Wiedlin said.

CORRECTION: L'Oreal USA's Vice President, Digital Innovation, Content and New Ventures Rachel Weiss said of the company's partnership "We want to make beauty fun and accessible for everyone and create content that they care about for beauty." An earlier version of the post misquoted Ms. Weiss.

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Love it? BuzzFeed Wants to Help You Buy It Too

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BuzzFeed has long pitched to advertisers the power of its technology to make branded content go "viral" among the millions of users who share the site's quizzes and listicles with their friends. Now, it's hoping to help advertisers sell products too.

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As British property tech continues its rapid rise to prominence, Europe's first property-focused tech accelerator Pi Labs has been announced in London.

Pi Labs will offer startups mentorship, investment and office space in Second Home, a new 20,000 sq. ft. coworking space in Shoreditch.

The new accelerator has been announced in partnership with estate agents Cushman & Wakefield and Spire Ventures and has been founded by Faisal Butt and Umesh Kumar.

'Next wave of tech company success stories'

Pi Labs cofounder Butt is founder and CEO of Spire Ventures, who last week invested $810k in property startup Spacious.

Both Spacious and Pi Labs' base Second Home were founded by former special advisor to David Cameron Rohan Silva.

Butt explained he hopes the new can "empower prop-tech start-ups requiring space, access to capital and support, and ultimately help spawn the next wave of tech company success stories".

We see Pi Labs as the platform that will create the next Zoopla, the next Airbnb and the next Nest.

Spire will hope Pi Labs will help it establish itself as the leading investor in the growing property sector.

Fellow cofounder Kumar also brings experience to the accelerator having previously been an associate at Techstars and Oxygen. He will manage day-to-day operations as programme director.

Pi Labs' Second Home

The tech team of corporate real estate agent Cushman & Wakefield will also set up base in the Second Home space.

Second Home founder Rohan Silva celebrated the Pi Labs annoucement as "a brilliant example of this type of inter-disciplinary thinking".

Startups will soon be able to apply for the first intake of Pi Labs.

Prop tech is heating up

It has been a particularly interesting 2014 for property tech, an industry growing so rapidly that many are already dropping the 'erty' from the name.

The year started with property tech giant Zoopla floating and was followed by the announcement Agents' Mutual were to fight back against Zoopla and Rightmove on behalf of estate agents.

Not long after, Purple Bricks raised £8m to undercut the market and were followed by new venture easyProperty (of easyJet heritage) who raised an initial investment round that valued it at over $66m.

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Europe's first property tech accelerator Pi Labs announced in London - UKTN (UK Tech News)

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As British property tech continues its rapid rise to prominence, Europe's first property-focused tech accelerator Pi Labs has been announced in London. Pi Labs will offer startups mentorship, investment and office space in Second Home, a new 20,000 sq. ft. coworking space in Shoreditch.

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London is best city to live in, especially if you're in tech

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London is best city to live in, especially if you're in tech

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London has beaten New York, Paris and Silicon Valley as the most desirable place to work, particularly for those working for tech.

More people want to work in London than any other city in the world, according to research by Boston Consulting Group and totaljobs.com.

The British capital has also come out on top for tech workers. A survey by recruitment firm Hydrogen Group finding that within the tech sector 41 per cent of respondents who had relocated for employment had chosen London, again more than any other city.

London: a hub for culture

Both surveys highlighted the cultural attraction to London.

Mike Booker, international director at totaljobs.com, believes the report "cements London's reputation as a truly global city".

Not only does it offer a wealth of job opportunities in a range of industries, but it boasts some of the world's top cultural attractions, so it's no surprise that people across the globe want to come and work here.

The english language is the greatest asset for UK EdTech

Many respondents to the Hydrogen Group survey felt London had the perfect mix of improving their overall career prospects, maximising their earning potential and gaining new experiences.

80% anticipated staying in London longer than originally intended.

Not just startups

The same Hydrogen Group survey found that it wasn't just the thriving startup scene that was bringing tech talent to London.

The decisions of leading technology brands such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Bloomberg to establish bases in the city have given London the edge over its European rivals.

However, other European cities such as Berlin, Dublin and Amsterdam are all hot on London's heels and Tim Smeaton, CEO of Hydrogen Group, believes that London needs to keep up its supply of tech talent to continue to compete.

The government needs to make sure that there is the opportunity for the right calibre tech professionals to work here to maintain our status as a leading global hub; companies need to recognise that talent is available globally and is keen to work here.

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London named most desirable city to work in - especially for tech - UKTN (UK Tech News)

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London has beaten New York, Paris and Silicon Valley as the most desirable place to work, particularly for those working for tech. More people want to work in London than any other city in the world, according to research by Boston Consulting Group and totaljobs.com.