Liam Boogar
Sénat votes in favor of Pigeons – Capital Gains Tax removed
As we reported last month, this past week the Sénat voted on the PLF2013, Francois Hollande’s tax budget proposal for 2013. One article in particular, Article 6, has made global news in the past two months, after it sparked the viral Pigeon Movement, calling for the removal of Article 6. The senate, in particular the nationalist (UMP), […]
Google Ventures – Why U No Invest In Europe?
Earlier this month, Google Ventures announced that they would now be investing $300 million a year (up from $200 million). According to Reuters, this puts them in the same ranks as more establish corporate venture funds, like Intel Capital, who invests $300-$500 million a year. To put it in context, travel-tech giant Concur (TripIt) recently […]
YouTube ad in Paris Metro seduces PSG soccer fans
It seems that YouTube is looking to grow their popularity in Paris – the Google-owned video service has recently begun advertising in several Paris metro stations, inviting soccer fans to visit the offical PSG (Paris Saint-Germain, Paris’ soccer team) YouTube channel. Europeans will kill me for calling it Soccer, so here’s a header just for […]
SongPop for photos, Hangpic released on iPhone
Today the app store welcomed France’s latest asyncronous social game, HangPic, which feels quite like a cross between SongPop & Numbers with Friends. I spent the last few weeks beta testing the game, and I must say it’s got all the necessary elements of the games in my “Toilet Games” folder on my iPhone (games […]
Sparrow is the Tupac of iPhone apps, putting out updates from beyond the grave
Over dinner last night with Trista, I somehow found myself saying that Morgan Freeman should pre-record narrations to various classic tales, so that after he’s dead he can put out new eBooks each year for like 20 years. It seems that Sparrow has already claimed this role on iPhone, as the French-founded, Google-owned startup just […]
Here are 5 French VCs you must follow on Twitter
Twitter for me has always been a great way to keep tabs on what’s going on in the startup community. Some of the accounts I follow are blogs, like This French Life or WhiteboardMag, some are companies & startups, and some are people – each is chosen not based on my support or friendship for […]
4 new announcements out of the Apple-esque Orange event
This morning, twitter is buzzing with the set of announcements coming out from telecom giant Orange‘s event Orange Hello. Creating a lot of buzz internationally and covered by TC & TNW, the event included the launch of new iPhone app Libon in 95 countries (available on Android soon), the launch of a new multimedia mobile sharing service […]
US accused of hacking Elysee computers days before last election
French officials announced that they have concluded an investigation into a cyber-security breach into the Elysee that occurred just days before the last election, in which Sarkozy lost to Francois Hollande. Currently trending on TechMeme after being picked up by The Hill, L’express originally reported the story that French officials had identified the virus as having […]
Strasbourg startup Pulpfingers acquired by 500px
500px, the photo-sharing site taking on the likes of Flickr and Google’s Picasa, announced this week that it has acquired the two-man French startup Pulpfingers in an all-stock acquisition. Reported by Techcrunch, the Pulpfingers team have been developing slick iOS apps in the photography space for sometime, including an app for viewing 500px photos on […]
Concur's $150M TravelTech global fund takes off!
Concur Technologies, a traveltech giant who acquired TripIt last year (and owns a few other notable properties), has launched a $150M fund, called The Perfect Trip, dedicated to funding innovation in the traveltech sector. According to Pierre-Emmanuel Tetaz, head of Concur France and former founder of ETAP ON LINE before it was acquired by Concur, the […]