John Lewell

Europe’s top football club Manchester United launched its own Internet service on Thursday in conjunction with the international network services provider UUNET. ManUFree.Net is being offered initially to fans in the UK, with an international roll-out expected during the next six months. Its aim, says finance director David Gill, is to link fans around the […]

In a blaze of publicity costing £2 million ($3.2 million) UK computer manufacturer Tiny has launched a PC giveaway to people willing to use its new telecoms service. To qualify for a free PC, users will have to sign up for 12 months to TinyTelecom and spend at least £25 ($40) a month on their […]

UK venture capital company Arts Alliance is making a substantial investment in Mascot Network, the leading creator of college portals in the U.S. Mascot Network will receive £750K ($1.2 million) in seed-round venture financing from a group of investors led by Arts Alliance. Founded in 1998, Mascot Network provides universities with personalized Internet communications and […]

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), an information provider to the world’s research community, will enable UK higher education institutions to gain access to its Citation Databases via the Web of Science interface. This week’s announcement, made jointly with the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Combined Higher Education Software Team (CHEST), means that […]

UK music label EMI/Chrysalis has greatly expanded its web services with the Wednesday launch of its new site. Designed by web consultancy Lateral, together with Other Media, the Web site will eventually link to micro sites for each artist or band. The site is “a music industry first — a genuine cross band/label web site […]

London-based Orbis has launched a complete end-to-end solution for running gambling sites on the World Wide Web. Called OpenBet, the new system can handle hundreds of thousands of account holders and millions of plays per day. “Datamonitor predicts that $3 billion a year will be wagered on Web sites in Europe alone over the next […]

Dixons’ Freeserve has been valued at between £1.31 billion and £1.51 billion (US$2.05 billion and US$2.36 billion), well below previous estimates of £2 billion to £4 billion (US$3.13 billion to US$6.25 billion) that were mentioned in the press. Shares in the company will begin trading on the London and Nasdaq stock markets beginning 26 July. […]

SportsLine Europe will not renew its affiliation with the Daily Mail, having supplied most of the content for the Mail’s SoccerNet over the past two years. The majority-owned subsidiary of SportsLine USA, announced Thursday that it plans to create the “world’s most comprehensive soccer site” and run it independently as part of its network of […]

According to a survey published by MORI this week, Denmark is still leading Britain in both PC usage and the popularity of e-commerce. Although PC penetration increased from 32 percent to 39 percent in the UK during the past year, in Denmark seven out of ten households can boast a PC. What is more: in […]

In a report published this week, Oftel, the UK’s telecoms watchdog, has demanded the unbundling of BT’s local loop, together with open access to BT’s forthcoming high speed data network. The proposals are made in Oftel’s report, “Access to Bandwidth: Proposals for Action,” in which Oftel suggests a twin-track approach is needed in order to […]

By the end of this year there will be 130.6 million people online worldwide, according to the new eGlobal Report from eMarketer. The reports says that 35.2 million users are joining the Internet for the first time. Already, in the first quarter of this year, the Internet population is larger in the rest of the […]

Top Web directory Yahoo! UK & Ireland has entered a UK marketing agreement with satellite broadcaster BSkyB, extending a relationship between Yahoo! and News Corp. established in the U.S. earlier this year. “By utilising the powerful online properties of Yahoo! Sky’s online presence can reach a new level of awareness,” claimed Ian West, Sky Entertainment’s […]