Liam Boogar
“Siri for Enterprise” VirtuOz acquired by Nuance, the company behind Siri
Yesterday rumor began to slip out that French startup VirtuOz had been purchased by Nuance Communications, the makers of Apple virtual assistant Siri. First discovered by TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden, the article suggests that the deal closed earlier this week, and that the news will be made public in the coming weeks, though an amount has not yet […]
Pixmania exclusive eRetailer in France for 249€ Acer Chromebook C7
Google announced this week at CES the release of the latest generation of Chromebooks. Available for $199 or 249€ (do the math on that one), the Acer Chromebook C7 brands itself as the chromebook ‘for everyone.’ Built entirely within Google’s Chrome OS, the hardware is a simple stripped down version of a computer, running entirely […]
Orange to earn €1 Billion in 2 years from Free Mobile contract
When Free Mobile launched just one year ago, it didn’t quite have its mobile network up & running, and so it signed a deal with Orange whereby it would use some of Orange’s network. In an interview with Les Echos this week, Pierre Louette, #2 at Orange’s parent company France Telecom shared a bit of info on […]
And the Nominees for Best French Startup Are…
European startup award ceremony The Europas has announced the shortlists for every award category of their ceremony going on in just 10 days in Berlin. We shared earlier the French nominees for the people’s choice award – today we thought we’d share the nominees for Best French Startup, as well as a bit about them: […]
Parrot’s new Flight Recorder adds a blackbox to your AR Drone
Out at CES this week, plenty of French startups are showing off their latest and greatest hardware, and few are more well known than Parrot AR Drone. The Paris-based company’s hovering drone has spawned meetup groups dedicated to hacking the device, resulting in such hacks as adding a video to the device to follow one’s […]
Fast food employee in France fired after 240 Tweets about his job
French fast food chain Quick announced at the end of last week that it would be pursuing action against the Twitter account @EquipierQuick, which, during the month of November, tweeted 240 times about the daily life working at the French fast food chain. In their press release, Quick says simultaneously that “they welcome all criticism that encourages improvement” […]
hy! Berlin offers 15K€ & an SV tour for startups! Apply today!
Next week I’ll be heading out to Berlin for my first visit there in a few years, and one of the exciting events that caught my attention is hy! Berlin. Bootstrapped by entrepreneurs, the event brings 150 movers and shakers in the startup ecosystem to see the best of what Berlin has to offer Europe […]
Slow Control shows off the connected fork at CES – track your eating habits
This week at CES, plenty of startups are showing off all kinds of consumer hardware; none as interesting so far as Jacques Lepine‘s Slow Control, which developed the HapiFork. The fork monitors records and transmits data about your eating, tracking caloric intake and alerting the ‘user’ (i.e: eater) if they surpass their pre-set reigment by vibrating. […]
Deezer closes in on Spotify attracting more paid subscribers in 2012
A recent report by DigitalMusicNews has shown that Deezer‘s paid subscriber rate is growing faster than that of Spotify‘s. Deezer has seen a grwoth of 114% from December 2011 to December 2012, versus Spotify’s 86% growth. This is surprising, given Spotify’s positioning as the #1 paid subscription music service; however, it’s important to remember what has […]
Here’s a list of French startups exhibiting at CES this week
With CES coming up this week, it seems that the once infamous event, which had taking a reputation beat-down last year, with Microsoft announcing they wouldn’t be returning this year, has actually come full circle, and is now a highly anticipated hardware startup event. Tech blogs are gathering up their entire team, and it seems the event […]