John Lewell

[London, ENGLAND] Launched Friday is a new Internet site that allows companies to present information about their businesses directly to European financial professionals. Named Equitystory.com, the site originates in Germany, the brainchild of Achim Weick who conceived the idea on a flight to London to make presentations to investors. Unable to land due to heavy […]

[London, ENGLAND] In a report published Thursday, usability expert Jakob Nielsen has confirmed what WAP users have long suspected — WAP doesn’t work. Wireless Application Protocol is supposed to be the first step towards a mobile Internet, but is failing miserably, according to the in-depth field study conducted in London, England, by the California-based Nielsen […]

[London, ENGLAND] European auctioneer QXL ricardo plc saw its shares dive Thursday after it announced deepening losses and the need to raise 30 million pounds (US $43 million) to avoid a cash drought in 2001. QXL’s quarterly figures to the end of September 2000 showed a loss of US $96.8 million, a six-fold increase over […]

[London, ENGLAND] Bandwidth trading exchange Arbinet-thexchange announced Wednesday the opening of a direct connection center in London that will enable European telecoms carriers to trade bandwidth online. There will be plenty of choice, as members of thexchange include over 100 of the world’s top telecoms companies. Now, European operators will get all the facilities enjoyed […]

[London, ENGLAND] Bertelsmann Financial Services and i-Escrow, Inc. announced Wednesday a joint European venture together with a deal that provides secure transaction settlement services to users of eBay UK. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, i-EscrowEurope will eventually expand to all the major European countries. Initially, it launches in the U.K. and Germany with person-to-person trading community […]

[London, ENGLAND] Horizon Technology Group announced Tuesday that it has acquired Commerce NTI, one of the U.K.’s top e-commerce solutions companies. Commerce NTI is said to have a strong skills base across a whole range of e-commerce technologies, including security, banking, scalable transaction architectures, and software development. It employs 55 people and has traded profitably […]

[London, ENGLAND] U.K. wireless Internet specialist Waperture has announced what is claims is the world’s first “Web-to-WAP-to-Voice” service, enabling both telephone and WAP users to access Internet content. The telephone service, named BrowseByPhone, lets users of ordinary telephones access content by voice and a telephone keypad. The service is not meant to resemble the rich […]

[London, ENGLAND] Global currency exchange Currenex announced Monday it has secured US $27.6 million in funding from the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies. Shell, which transacts over US $200 billion a year in the global foreign exchange markets, has been using Currenex’s FXtrades service and clearly likes what it sees. With its investment it also […]

[London, ENGLAND] Last minute solutions retailer lastminute.com announced Monday a new technology platform for its Web sites — and immediately saw its share price jump over 10 percent. Part of the reason for the market’s enthusiasm is that one of lastminute.com’s aims in moving to a new platform is to increase the conversion rate of […]

[London, ENGLAND] CompleTel Europe N.V. has effectively doubled the size of its European Tier One IP Network by deploying an additional 4,068 kilometers of leased fiber optic network capacity. The additional capacity completes the international connections of CompleTel’s networks in France, Germany and the U.K., while linking its existing metropolitan area networks in France and […]

[London, ENGLAND] A new report to be published in December by Phillips Global Media says that over the next five years there will be a huge increase in the number of Europeans who use all three main digital platforms, namely digital TV, mobile devices, and the Internet. Calling them “convergent consumers,” the report says they […]

[London, ENGLAND] It is only 6 weeks old and it has already had investment of nearly US $6 million, but search and procurement portal engine SearchandMatch has just received another million pounds (US $1.42 million) from British entrepreneur Bob Morton. Morton, who is chairman of Harrier Group plc (and, for that matter, also of Baron […]