John Lewell

[London, ENGLAND] BT Broadcast Services and the pay-per-view operator “digital broadcasting company” (dbc) announced a joint venture Monday to form udirect.tv, a TV service to be webcast over multiple Internet platforms later this year. udirect.tv will carry short films and international sports together with facilities for purchasing videos and DVDs. It will be broadcast over […]

[London, ENGLAND] Undaunted by the recent collapse of online fashion house Boo.com, several Danish firms have pumped an additional $12 million into designer label factory outlet Haburi.com. Among the backers are technology company Maersk Data A/S, department store operator Magasin and insurance company Tryg-Baltica, three prominent Danish businesses. Funding is also coming from Venture Partners, […]

[London, ENGLAND] The Internet is now used at least once a month or more by a quarter of the U.K. population, according to figures published Friday by Forrester Research. The survey put questions to 65,000 Internet users in an online poll, combining the results with those from an offline poll of 2,000 people. The comparison […]

[London, ENGLAND] Venture capital firm Vertex Management has put $4 million into U.K-based art site eyestorm which sells limited-edition photographs of modern art. The latest round of funding brings the total raised by eyestorm to $11 million. A substantial amount has already been spent on designing one of the Internet’s more intriguing Web sites, featuring […]

[London, ENGLAND] Bank of Scotland and IBM announced Thursday an IT alliance worth over a billion dollars to the computer giant. In what is thought to be one of the largest outsourcing deals ever made in Europe, IBM will take over the management of IT operational services for the Bank of Scotland Group from September […]

[London, ENGLAND] The European Commission (EC) formally blocked on Wednesday the $146 billion merger between MCI WorldCom and Sprint, saying the companies’ plan to divest Sprint’s Internet business was insufficient to resolve its concerns about competition. European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said it was vital for the Commission that the divested business become a strong, […]

[London, ENGLAND] Priceline.com, the e-commerce site that lets users set the prices they are willing to pay, announced Wednesday it is joining with investment company General Atlantic Partners to form priceline.com Europe. The new company will launch in the fourth quarter 2000, headed by Dennis Malamatinas who is currently chief executive of Burger King Corporation […]

[London, ENGLAND] Sweden’s largest holding company Investor AB announced Tuesday a joint investment of $56.4 million in venture capital company Startupfactory with partners Softbank Corporation and Carnegie Holding AB. Startupfactory has focused on wireless communication, an area that particularly excites the investors, according to Borje Ekholm, managing director and head of new investments at Investor […]

[London, ENGLAND] BT and Canadian mobile developer Research In Motion Limited (RIM) announced Tuesday that they are working together to bring the BlackBerry wireless e-mail solution to the U.K. Designed for corporate users, BlackBerry is a complete, secure, wireless e-mail solution that operates over General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Its key features are a large […]

[London, ENGLAND] Top U.K. package holiday company Thomson Holidays has turned itself into an e-business within 90 days, according to Monday’s announcement by its technology providers. The project was jointly undertaken by Texan e-business software supplier NEON Systems, integrator Inform Information Systems (IIS), and a team of Thomson’s in-house systems developers. The result is a […]

[London, ENGLAND] UnitedGlobalCom has signed a major broadband deal with Liberty Media Corporation that brings Liberty’s European and Latin American broadband assets to United for a combination of cash and shares. United is paying $200 million cash and 75.3 million Class B shares for the broadband interests, among which is a 25 percent stake in […]

[June 23] Computer consultancy Logica plc announced Friday the first commercially available cHTML gateway, a product that could help bring Japan’s WAP alternative to the rest of the world. cHTML is the acronym for Compact HTML, a defined sub-set of Hypertext MarkUp Language which is the basis of a typical Web page. In Japan, cHTML […]