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 […]
Twitter silent in the face of French Government’s demand for censorship. Good or Bad?
Politicians and civil society have much less of a free speech culture in France than what exists in the US. Recently, there has been a bunch of offensive trending hashtags in France that have been quite widely publicized. France has reacted officially by whining, through the voices of its press secretary first, and now through […]
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” […]
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 […]
Is Virgin Megastore going bust?
As confirmed Friday on France Inter, Virgin Stores will submit a request today to declare themselves insolvent. As in the US with Chapter 11 status, there tends to be two possible outcomes of this: 1) restructuring or 2) full-out liquidation/bankruptcy. Given how things have been going for Butler Capital owned Virgin Megastores in recent years, […]
Voiturelib becomes Drivy: International Plans for 2013?
Today Voiturelib announced they have changed their name to Drivy, and can now be found at Drivy.com. This doesn’t surprise me, given that the startup raised €2 Million from Index Ventures last summer, and there was no way Index would invest in a company that wasn’t going to go international. Drivy resonates more internationally than Voiturelib, […]
As SMS begins to die, InZAir is adding new dimensions to text messaging
We announced earlier this week that SMS has perhaps hit its peak, as other smartphone apps begin to rise; there’s no better app to talk about than InZAir, which launched last December its messaging application in order to add two new dimensions to text messaging: location & time. While group messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, […]
SNCF starts beta testing door-to-door service in Aix En Provence
Over the holidays, France’s largest train service SNCF quietly announced a new service, named porte à porte, which allows travelers to book not only their train ticket, but a taxi to and from the departure and arrival train station. The service takes into account expected delays, and assures passengers that taxi’s will wait in the case of […]
B2B marketing specialist Touchvibes acquired by CCMBenchmark
CCMBenchmark group, one of France’s the top 10 online media conglomerates who also own such properties as Linternaute, Journal du Net, and Comment ça Marche, have decided to broaden their portfolio with this week’s announced purchase of Touchvibes. Although the purchase price hasn’t been announced, Les Echos speculate that it likely didn’t exceed €10 million. […]