Return of the French Google Tax: New Government, Same Nonsense
France is now saying it will enforce what’s been dubbed the “Google Tax” [FR], a sort of customs tariff on web products and services sold from anywhere outside of France. Previous governments have tried coming up with a way to apply VAT on digital purchases from foreign companies, from a song on iTunes or an […]
LeCamping launches a sister site in Toulouse along with TIC Valley
LeCamping, the startup accelerator funded in part by public money and in part by private sponsors, announced[FR] last week that they will be hosting a new accelerator program in Toulouse, with space provided by TIC Valley. The program will mirror that of LeCamping’s current program in Paris – six months incubation on-site, mentor sessions, introduction […]
Dandybox, the Joliebox for men!
Pierre Entremont, an HEC graduate, was kind enough to spend some time with me to discuss his venture, Dandybox. Pierre started his career in a cushy finance job, at a Private Equity firm. He described that life as a “Golden Cage”, and said he dreamed of more adventure, freedom, risk and potential reward. In other […]
Geeklist opens up its developer social network to the public
Geeklist announced earlier this week that their social network for developers is finally open to the public (go ahead, sign up now!). The social network’s private beta was launched in September 2011, hoping to encourage developers to post their project accomplishments as well as others’. Now with over 40,000 developers and over 200+ companies working with […]
Owning the dot-com: even my grandma understood
I remember back in 1996 when my grandmother (since passed, bless her soul) caught me off guard, as she had a knack for doing, with a highly-esoteric tech question. She had invited me for lunch at the Hobees in Cupertino, an annual ritual in which we caught up on each others’ lives. Toward the end […]
Why is the #1 headhunter app Pealk shutting down today? (Answer: Linkedin)
If you didn’t catch the story over the weekend, TheNextWeb ran a story last Friday announcing that French startup Pealk, who offers a free headhunting app, is being shutdown. Today. The startup’s application used LinkedIn’s API to help exactly 2739 (as of this morning) recruiters to search for potential hires with a user-friendly interface. What’s […]
Wrap-up of the Webgame Conference
As mentioned a couple weeks back, the Rude Baguette had the distinct pleasure of being selected as a media partner for the third instalment of the annual Webgame Conference. Olivier Issaly, co-founder of the online games group Owlient (now a part of Ubisoft), had the wisdom to start the conference a few years back and […]
Vesalis, Raising the Bar in Facial Recognition
Most of you have probably heard of Face.com, a leading facial recognition company acquired early this week by Facebook. One of Face’s competitors that’s starting to get an increasing amount of recognition is a French, Clerrmont-Ferrand based start-up called Vesalis. Vesalis is expanding internationally and gaining visibility, having been selected to participate in the annual […]
Futur En Seine – Un Festival International ou Pas?
Going on between June 14th and 24th, Futur en Seine is a digital festival in Paris and its surrounding technical parks – but you already knew that. The event series was designed by Cap Digital, a digital services agency which has its hands in several events/associations. As with most Cap Digital events, the conference came […]
EU releases annual Digital Agenda Scoreboard
The EU released it’s annual digital agenda scoreboard this week. The report highlighted several positive trends, such as that consumers and business are quickly moving to mobile (62% growth in mobile internet use and 217 million mobile broadband subscriptions), internet usage is widespread as 68% of Europeans are online regularly and 170 million use social […]