VC investment in UK and Irish high-tech companies this year is rapidly outstripping last year’s investment volume, according to the technology-focussed investment group, Ascendant.

In the first half of 2011, £455m has been invested compared to £620m in the first half of 2010.

“In Q2 2011, £234m (up from £190m in Q2 2010) was invested in 48 UK/Irish companies (47) by 70 investors (84),” says Stuart McKnight, managing director of Ascendant, “when added to our figures for Q1 that makes £455m invested in 91 companies in the first half of 2011. It is worth noting that in the whole of 2010, just £620m was invested in 213 companies so while we are seeing good progress in terms of funds committed, the market is a bit behind in the volume of companies receiving money.”

There were three notable trends in Q2. Perhaps the biggest was the bounce back of Cleantech deals. In Q1, two Cleantech companies raised a total of £3m. In Q2, 10 Cleantech companies raised £70m.

“We believe that there was no single factor driving this,” says McKnight, “the reasons we see are a small number of new investors, greater participation by corporate/strategic investors, and a greater number of late stage deals – more than 50% were Series C or later. Whilst we are encouraged, we would still be very cautious about concluding that all is well in the green tech sector as we are aware of a number of investors who will no longer look at new Cleantech deals, and the extended timetables that Cleantech companies are enduring to close their rounds – much longer than other tech companies.”

A second trend was the continuing high level of funds being committed to small numbers of companies. A good measure of this concentration is the percentage of funds invested in each quarter that are secured by the top 10 deals. In Q1 this peaked at 82%. Whilst it dropped in Q2 to 65%, this is still relatively high compared to norms of around 50%.

So it looks as though many investors have decided to get behind (or place big bets on) what they perceive to be an elite group of companies. This has happened before – about 11 years ago. The main difference now is that the big money is going to established businesses in late stage deals. So lessons have been learned.

The third trend was a gradual withdrawal of investors from the market. In Q1 2008, over 100 investors participated in UK/Irish VC deals. In Q2, 2011 that number was just 70. Apart from a significant drop in early 2009 due the recession, there has been a clear and consistent decrease during this period.

“Given that we know that there have been a number of new entrants – particularly in the corporate sector – this implies that there has been shrinkage in the main body of technology investors,” adds McKnight, “we are doing some deeper research on this and will publish this later this year.”

Even security alarm systems, new cell phones, business answering services, and other essential home and business based services are available for promotion through american communications networks services. It’s not every single day that you can find somewhere to own a business for under $500.00 that lets you be on the edge of technological innovations and that is one of the huge benefits and great things about a company like this. Imagine being able to promote the first iPad and tablet and make money off of it truly is an amazing idea.

“When we commented on the prospects for the year at the end of Q1, we suggested that: ‘If the normal pattern of investment holds then we should expect a modest uplift from the 2010 probably getting close to £750m for the whole of 2011’,” continues McKnight, “clearly Q2 has been much better than many of us expected – particularly in Cleantech – and we are minded to push up our “guestimate” for the year to between £800m-£850m. As always, there are a number of significant dynamics that could push this number in either direction.”

Trends highlighted by Ascendant are:

In Q2 2011, £234m was invested in 48 deals by 70 investors.

In the first half of 2011, £455m was invested in 91 companies

In Q2, the busiest investors were Index, DFJ Esprit, Eden and Finance Wales

57% of deals were syndicated – i.e. involved more than one investor

Private investors participated in 22% of VC deals, US investors in 2%, Euro investors in 10% and Corporate Investors in 22%

The biggest deals were: Enecsys (£25m), Oxford Nanopore (£25m), Shazam (£20m), Media Ingenuity (£18m), Wind Energy Direct (£18m), EVO Electric, Nujira (£10m), Worldstores (£10m), eWise (£9m) and Neul (£8m)

There were three primary areas of investment focus – Cleantech (£70m), Internet/Wireless Services (£60m), and Software (£45m).

There were 10 Cleantech deals in Q2 with the largest being: Enecsys (£25m), Wind Energy Direct (£18m), Evo-Electric (ND), Intelligent Energy (£7m) and Acal Energy (£5.1m).

14 Internet/Wireless Services companies received investment in Q2. The big deals were: Media Ingenuity (£18m), Worldstores (£10m), eWise (£9m), Borro (£8m) and StylistPick (£5m).

14 Software companies received VC backing. Shazam (£20m), Metaforic (£5m), Site Intelligence (£4m), Cognitive Match (£3.5m) and Brightpearl (£3m) were the largest.

The only semi/opto company to receive venture capital in this quarter was SmartKem.

18 London based companies raised £94m representing 37% of volume and 40% of the value of all UK/Irish Deals

All other regions managed to finance between 3 and 5 companies each.

Investment in companies from Scotland and the SW was particularly low with these regions only managing to raise £7m and £4m respectively.

Source: electronicsweekly.com

There are many different sites that give reviews on electronic cigarettes.  Three brands of the top brands are Green Smoke, V2 and Premium.   While there are other good brands, these three are in the top ten of most Electronic Cigarette Reviews.  Electronic cigarettes are growing in popularity and knowing which of the brands are recommended will help the smoker to make a more informed decision.  Being a rather new industry there are continuously new innovations and improvements.  Each company features it own unique e-cigarettes.

Green smoke was the first company to patent the two component electronic cigarette.  What this means is that it only takes one step to replace the cartridge.  The part that goes to your lips gets replaced with every new cartridge so it remains quite hygienic.  You can also choose your nicotine level which ranges from 0mg to 16mg.  Another bonus is free shipping.  Green smoke offers various kits such as the Green Smoke Basic Starter Kit which consists of 1 manual, 2 lithium rechargeable cigarette batteries,1 USB home charger, 5 Nicotine Cartridges, The Social Smoker kit and there is even a Love Birds Kit for smoking couples.  Green smoke offers six different flavors including tobacco, red label tobacco, vanilla, chocolate, menthol and coffee.

V2 Cigs was started by 3 ex smokers who themselves have been committed to helping smokers quit the habit. V2 have come out with a unique button so that you can have your vapors cook at the right moment. V2 also have various kits such as the V2 Starter Kit which comes with 2 V2 batteries, 10 V2 Cartridges which offer 8 flavors and four nicotine strengths, USB charger, A/C wall Adapter and a user manual, Economy kit, Traveler Kit, Couples kit, Notebooking- USB Kit.  They offer flavors such as Tobacco (Cowboy and Congress), Menthol, Coffee, Cherry, Vanilla, Chocolate, Peppermint, they will soon be adding four new flavours Sahara, Island Coconut, Banana Blast and Classic Cola.  V2 offer a year warranty on their Electronic Cigarette parts.

Premium Electronic Cigarettes have come out with a new look and they have also revamped their website.  They have grown rapidly and have an excellent reputation with the media.  Their battery designs give you the option of creating a custom electronic cigarette kit.  The two piece electronic cigarettes are not only made to a high standard but they are inexpensive.  Premiums come with different starter kits including the Electronic Cigarette Starter Kit.  This kit contains 2  batteries, 6 atomizers (with built-in cartridges), a USB charger with AC adapter and a user manual.

  Premium has 19 different flavors, Tobacco, Vanilla, Menthol,  Coffee, Chocolate, Red Energy, Apple, Strawberry, Caramel, Camel, Irish Cream, Blueberry, Pineapple, Watermelon,  Pear, Cola, Clove, Peach and Cherry.  They also have 5 Nicotine Levels.  These level include, None (no nicotine), Low, Medium, High and Ultra high.

Or Will New Technology Make Life a Little More Difficult?

iPhone apps like Red Laser have made scanning barcodes with your iPhone infinitely easier. As a result, it is now simpler than ever to order stuff like DVDs and CDs online. Having barcodes stored in your iPhone now makes it possible to make shopping lists, look up nutritional information about the food, and doing a little comparison shopping.

With the anticipated advent of the next generation of iPhone, consumers are desperately wondering how their apps will be affected. Which apps will be available for the new iPhone? What improvements will be made with those applications? And – most importantly – how much are these bad boys going to cost?

Red laser 2.2 currently tops out at under two quid to download, making it extremely affordable. All the same, with sites like ShopSavvy and Android offering free applications, consumers are beginning to wonder when and how Apple will respond to all the freebies floating around. When we upgrade to the new generation of iPhones, it would be nice to know that previously purchased applications will be compatible with the new phone. Or alternatively, to be assured that a free option will be available to either replace or convert our old apps.

It may seem like arguing over small change, but consumers have come to expect the most from companies, waiting for the most trendy, cost-effective, and green products to come out. Currency speaks, and applications that do things like scan barcodes are valuable investments that shouldn?t have to be repurchases with each technological advancement.

Enjoy !

Personal printers are a fantastic commodity. Personal printers have allowed for the practical liberation of information and, together with the many functionalities of internet have turned bits of electricity into knowledge, art and entertainment at our fingertips. Inexpensive printing for business have made much easier to dispense graphic marketing, forward company-wide memos and even send complimentary football tickets to someone that lives on the other side of the world. While personal printers do seem to come from the magical world of fairy tales the truth cuts as a double edged sword: we are using a mighty huge amount of paper and ink with our newly found power to put everything down on an A4 sheet.

 State of the art gadgets are all the rage, especially in the mobile phone arena. Today you can do so much with your small mobile device, send emails, measure your jogging statistics and even gamble at a mobile casino!

Enjoy!

It’s been a few months since Micron became the second to introduce the world’s first SATA 6Gbps hard drive (Seagate was the other), and regardless about who was earliest we now know which is currently the fastest. TweakTown put a Crucial-branded C300 through its paces and came to a rather simple conclusion: “At this point in time there is no other drive, platter or solid state that is in the same league as the Crucial RealSSD C300.” It blitzed through all their tests and at the end, when others would be a smoking ruin of high access times, it still performed as good as new. There was one catch, though: Windows Media Player performance was abnormally low, something that testers believe is a glitch to be addressed in firmware. Other than that, if you want the best this is it. But can you afford it? A 128GB model will set you back $499, and the 256GB one is $799. Yeah, ouch.

Source: TweakTown

Let’s face it — there’s at least an 89.4 percent chance that you’d be utterly embarrassed to let your mother, SO or inner neat-freak inspect your keyboard. Years of wear and tear have cleared the way for minuscule portions of delicacies, follicles and all manners of foreign objects to make their home just beneath the vowels you smash on a daily basis, and considering that cleaning said keyboard or buying a new one is far too difficult, the Quirky community has a better solution. The Space Bar ($42 in a 3-pack) is an aluminum keyboard cover that can slip right over ‘boards that measure 18-inches wide and 1.5-inches deep; aside from covering things up, it also provides six easily accessible USB 2.0 ports.

Too bad there’s no germ-nixing UV light on the underside, but there’s always hope for v2.0.

Multitrack digital recorders might not be front and center of the gadget lover’s mind right now, but slap that “unlimited” modifier in front and all of a sudden interests are piqued and ears prick up. Korg has made official its new Sound On Sound Unlimited Track Recorder, which will do exactly what its name suggests while keeping each overdub separate for future modification or retuning. You’ll be able to fit up to 26 track hours on a 16GB MicroSDHC card and a dedicated guitar input is available alongside mic and line-in ports. Another useful-sounding feature is Sound Stretch, which should allow you to alter speed to between 25 and 150 percent of the original recording without altering pitch. Price is tentatively set at £230 ($375) for a March 2010 release.

Via: music radar

When it comes to storage-based media players that you connect to your TV, it all boils down to performance, compatibility, and capacity. LG’s XF2 player ships in April and, with its 1080p video and 5.1 audio output over HDMI, has the performance side covered. In terms of compatibility it hits all its marks (MPEG 1/2/4, h.264, Xvid, DivX, FLAC, WMA, AC3, etc. etc.), also supporting subtitles and captions in a number of formats. Capacity, well, 500GB is good, but more would have been better, especially given the lack of a network interface — and the price. This one will retail for 270,000 won, or about $240. Yeah, ouch.

 Via LGE

Up until the moment I decided to try an SSD for myself, on a regular basis (namely on my home desktop computer), I didn’t realize just what a boost of performance such a storage solution brings to a normal system, especially as far as boot times and application loading are concerned. However, SSDs tend to be quite expensive, and, for this reason, their adoption rate is still a lot lower than manufacturers might be willing to accept.

And in order to come up with a solution for boosting sales (not to mention performance), Kingston, one of the world’s top SSD manufacturers, has just released the Kingston SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive at this year’s CES, with the clear purpose of making these things more accessible to a wider audience.

As expected, given the low amount of storage space it provides, the solution is designed to be used in conjunction with an existing hard-disk drive (HDD). The drive is also available with a bundle that includes cloning software, 2.5″ to 3.5″ mounting brackets and SATA data and power cable extenders. Moreover, the SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive also offers Windows 7 TRIM support, which helps the SSD maintain high performance through the life of the drive.

And since we’ve mentioned the issue of performance, we’ll also have to add that Kingston’s SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive can attain sustained read speeds of up to 180MB/sec. and sustained write speeds of up to 50MB/sec.

“In our quest to bring SSDs into mainstream use, we’re aiming to deliver a lower price point while boosting performance. The new SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive accomplishes those goals,” said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. “Desktop users can extend the life cycle of their systems with this drive and IT managers in the enterprise space like it as there is less data for them to backup to the network. In addition, we will also release a 30GB SSD twin-pack for prosumers and enthusiasts who want to take performance to the next level.”

And now for the moment most of you have probably been waiting for: pricing. So, according to Kingston, its new SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive solution will be available for under 100 Euro, which might make it popular with those people who haven’t yet opted for an SSD solution on account of the price alone.

Boy, if it’s not car dashboards, it’s thermostats — you just can’t get away from touchscreens these days. The latest 7-inch temperature regulator from Silverpac comes with a bunch of extra goodies to entice the touch control-loving generation into the energy conservation game. With WiFi built in, the Silverstat 7 can pump data out to the internet or your home network, and is equally adept at streaming photos, music and other content back from those connections. A full week’s worth of water temperature instructions can be programmed into the device, which can also inform you of weather conditions and your home’s energy consumption. The latter part is most intriguing, as you’ll be informed of power usage on a per-appliance basis, which can be mighty beneficial when a certain bit of home hardware gorges on electricity without you knowing. June 2010 is set as the release date, but the wallet damage remains unrevealed.

Live the Smart lifestyle with the SilverSTAT 7, a true advanced Smart Energy Thermostat that seeks to replace the standard household thermostat with an advanced home climate control system. SilverSTAT 7 not only provides all the features of an intelligent 7 day programmable thermostat, but also features Smart Energy In-Home Display (IHD) to help monitor utility usage and expenses for green energy management.

The device is elegantly designed with its 7’’ touch screen display that illustrates the distribution of household energy down to individual appliances. With its IEEE 802.15.4 wireless interface, the SilverSTAT 7 will speak to the new smart meters that will have the ability to send information on real-time electricity and gas use in households directly to the utility companies. This process eliminates the inconvenience of meter readings and the inefficiencies of their controversial estimates. Reductions in peak energy demand are encouraged by providing customers with an instantaneous view of their ongoing energy usage and utility pricing on their networked in-home display. Potential savings can be achieved by turning off or rescheduling the use of appliances for a more cost efficient time.

With the built-in 802.11 Wi-Fi interface, the SilverSTAT 7 can successfully communicate with a home network and internet services. It hosts useful smart gadgets to enhance the convenience of daily tasks with attractive features including streaming photos, music and content direct from Live.com and from the PC. Through Windows technology, users can control their digital universe with access to email, stock prices, real-time weather forecasting, billing and price schedules for energy providers and more! SilverSTAT 7 is packed with features to consolidate the tasks of managing energy usage in a home.