Jeremy Hunt pledges fastest broadband network in Europe by 2015

Jeremy Hunt has pledged to give creative industries a shot in the arm by ensuring Britain has the fastest broadband network of any major European country by 2015.

The culture secretary’s commitment marks a firming up of the government’s original target to create the best superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this parliament, and follows a House of Lords report into the national broadband strategy published last month.

“To really be the best you need to be the fastest,” Hunt told broadband experts at Silicon Roundabout, the area around Old Street on the fringes of the City of London where many technology firms and startups are based.

“I am today announcing an ambition to be not just the best overall, but specifically the fastest broadband of any major European country.”

>Like our broadband speeds, the British government has been slow to react on this issue, unbelievable it took a critical report by the House of Lords to finally get something done.<

TCIO gathers broadband feedback in Silicon Roundabout

The Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO) is asking companies around Silicon Roundabout to share their experiences of broadband in the area.

The group was boosted recently when Vodafone and Amazon announced plans to invest in the East London location and build new bases, but it wants to check out the validity of the facilities on offer as it moves forward.

Once it has received feedback, it will collate the information and give it to the internet service providers (ISPs) supplying the area in the hope they may boost connectivity.

>Organisations that wish to take part can submit their thoughts by the end of August by emailing pressoffice@techcityuk.com with the subject title “Broadband”, or by using the form on its website.<

London 2012: is this the first open data Olympics?

Is this the first open data Olympics?

It should be – we have access to better data analysis and visualisation tools than ever before, many of them free. There is also a culture of open data around the world that just wasn’t there in 2008. Governments have thrown open the doors to their data vaults and numbers are everywhere.

And what is open data? It is data published as a spreadsheet or a csv or some other machine-readable format which allows analysts to do something with it. It’s what our Free our Data campaign called for.

Open data has won the big argument, arguably ever since the McKinsey report in May last year which pointed out that open data means money for those who can build apps and services off the back of it. And with it has come the rise in data journalism – the art/craft/slog of getting stories out of numbers.

>We are loving all the Team GB Golds – and these Olympics are a gift for Data journalism with daily updates that make stories that cry out for analysis. The Guardian, as you would expect, are on the case so check out the stuff they are doing.<

London launch for iPhone Popup Film Festival announced

The iPhone Popup Film festival’s official launch will take place at the Nordic Bar in London’s Fitzrovia in the heart of the capital’s media-land on 11 September.

We are going all Scandi-cool and have secured a great space in what we hope will become our London home for regular film nights dedicated to all smart movie makers, not only in the British capital but all over the world.

The night will be an opportunity for anyone who has made a film on their iOS device to come along and show their work on a ‘big screen’. This is the iPhone ‘festival in your pocket’. We are strictly lo-fi, although our awesome little Pop Video projector will screen your films in qHD (960 x 540 pixel resolution) quality on a ‘big screen’ 50 inches wide. For audio we will plug into the Nordic Bar’s house PA system.

Here’s how the iPhone Popup Film Festival works. Bring your film on your iPhone or iPod Touch, plug it into our Pop Video pico projector and it’s showtime. It’s as simple as that. We can only show films shorter than five minutes, and at present only from iOS devices, but we are working on opening up the festival to other smartphone devices.

>Are you an iPhone filmmaker? Or do you simply fool around and experiment with its camera? Here’s a chance to show off your work, yes.<

Amazon to open major London hub

Internet retail giant Amazon is to open a new creative centre in London which will house hundreds of software developers and engineers.

The centre, based near London’s “Silicon Roundabout” area, will focus on producing the “next generation of TV and film services”, the company said.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson said Amazon’s decision was a “splendid feather in our cap”.

>We don’t normally agree with Boris Johnson, but on this occasion we make an exception.<

Network infrastructure is key to realising Tech City’s ambitions

Just over 200 years ago East London became the backbone of the British economy, opening its streets to a wave of new industries that laid the foundations for the UK to become the global economic player it is today. Fast forward to 2012 and it is now the tech industry using the area as a platform for innovation and development at a time when other sectors are suffering. With 3,200 new IT startups in just four years, London’s Tech City has grown exponentially and now employs approximately 48,000 people (Centre for London, July 2012).

A cluster of tech, digital and creative companies have set up in the area, cementing Tech City as ‘the must be place’ for innovative tech businesses in the UK. The area has been a hotbed of innovation for some time now, but its public profile has become stronger recently, with the government keen to position Tech City as London’s answer to Silicon Valley and Europe’s technology capital. But while the wave of new arrivals and prosperity is undoubtedly riding high, a robust infrastructure is needed to guarantee the success of the area.

>John-Paul Hemingway is chief technologist for EMEA at Ciena, and has written with some authority on the challenges ahead for Silicon Roundabout, which we back.<

Million Pound Startup prize aims to be X Factor for new businesses

A competition launched in London aims to create a cross between X Factor and Dragon’s Den by offering £1m to a startup business.

The Million Pound Startup competition went live on Wednesday night in what Kam Star, one of its architects and prime movers, says is intended to spark competition and ideas from would-be and existing entrepreneurs.

Entry is open to any business around the world as long as they have not yet had an annual turnover of more than £1m – and if they promise to relocate to London if they win.

The competition is open to entries until 1 May 2013, and will be judged at the Digital Shoreditch event later that month.

>Another big chance to get funding for a startup idea, but it sounds a bit trivial, but then again nothing trivial about £1m.<

Crowd-sourced funding site Kickstarter to launch in UK

The crowd-sourced funding website Kickstarter is to launch in the UK this autumn, according to its Twitter feed.

The funding platform for new businesses has so far been limited to US-registered projects.

The tweet reads: “People in the UK will be able to launch projects on Kickstarter starting this autumn. More info soon!”

Since Kickstarter’s 2009 launch it has funded more than 20,000 projects, with several eclipsing the $1m pledge mark.

Kickstarter uses Amazon Payments, which requires users to have a US bank account.

But a growing number of UK-based companies are already using the site, either by setting up a US company or partnering with an existing one.

>This is great news, we may even use the service ourselves. Crowdsourcing is definitely the way forward and will hopefully give London startups easier access to investment.<

Never mind the hype, there’s real signs of growth in Silicon Roundabout

Naysayers of ‘Silicon Roundabout’ (or Tech City, to use its UK government-sanctioned name) can certainly point to some of the giddy PR surrounding the area as evidence of hype. But when you join up the dots, there’s a definite sense that we’re beginning to see signs of real growth for this tech cluster in the east end of London.

And so it is that news comes today of what looks like another impressive hire for a Silicon Roundabout-based startup: Matthew Brazil, who was previously VP of Business Development for Radian6 (which exited to Salesforce for $326m) has joined social customer service outfit Conversocial as VP of Sales. This follows the recent hiring by neighbouring Songkick of former Googler Dan Crow as its CTO.

Newly hired Brazil will lead Conversocial’s sales and marketing efforts as it gears up for a more aggressive push into the US — which is particularly noteworthy given his links to Radian6, whose offering has plenty of overlap with Conversocial’s own Twitter and Facebook-based customer service tool. In fact, Brazil can be considered responsible for growing Radian6′s UK operation via 6consulting, which he co-founded and that was acquired by the company in 2011 (not long before itself being gobbled up by Salesforce).

>Conversocial co-founder and CEO Joshua March tells Techcrunch that “we’re starting to see Silicon Roundabout growing up”. What was is Steve Jobs said – ‘stay young, stay foolish’?<

East London’s 20 hottest tech startups

There are more than 3,000 tech firms in east London, employing up to 50,000 people in the digital economy. Here are 20 companies to watch out for …

>A great list compiled by the Guardian’s James Silver, with help from industry insiders. Wonder where these companies will be this time next year?<