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

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 !

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Source: vespacious.com

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!

What is the meaning of life? According to a recent article in The Guardian, mobile phones are well on their way to answer life’s big questions. Maybe they’re not quite up to the philosophical stuff just yet, but they’ve certainly come a long way to making life all the easier for the multitude of mobile users around the globe.

The introduction of improved tracking facilities on mobile phones is set to provide an answer to the question: who am I? With the ability to remember the places we frequent, and record this data, a profile of the “type” of person we are is able to be built.

2010 is the year for such a breakthrough thanks to the increased accuracy of in-built tracking devices and their ability to glean location signals from satellites, Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile transmitters. The information generated about the places we visit – cafés, restaurants, theatres or cinemas – goes a long way to create a fairly accurate personal profile. An advertiser’s dream or a privacy nightmare? Only time will tell, but in the meantime it certainly means fantastic opportunities for discovering appealing restaurants in your immediate vicinity. Localised weather services are also a boon for commuters or the curious. Need to chart the latest weather? The most up-to-date data can give you precise details on any rainy spells, heat transfers or cold snaps to help pick out the best route to work or an outfit for the day. The answers are all available via your mobile. The acquisition of satnav technologies in mobile phones is additionally a big plus.

Location-based services are plentiful, and there are new ones appearing all the time, including Google’s Near Me Now, Foursquare.com and blockchalk.com, although the latter is predominantly catered for the US market at the moment. A nifty gimmick is the chance to leave location-based messages in a café or at the end of your street, which gives users the opportunity to leave behind their cyber tag or virtual graffiti without actually despoiling the streets. Stay tuned as Twitter intends to pursue these technologies in the near future.

There’s even talk that mobile phones will be able to assist us with choices in our clothing labels with regards to shopping location data. From café locations to fashion fabric labels, the sky is the limit!

Enjoy !

Fully dedicated to amateur sports car, a small spotlight on the last application proposed by M Power BMW for iPhone. Totally free, fairly well thought and easy to use, you will measure the performance of your car with the accelerometer built into your phone. All the details and the download link directly on iTunes.

Enjoy!

Today we knows that thousands of software are the make our work easier and there are thousands of websites which sharing these software. It’s very easy to find quality website where you can find software downloads option without paying any money and if you are looking for some quality website for this then I would advice you to visit SoftwareLode.com which is best place for you. SoftwareLode lists thousands of software packages. Each software title is shown with a description provided by the software vendor and a link to download an installer. Almost all the software listings include a screenshot of the software program and, if available, a link to the vendor’s own website where you can find out more information either about the software and its features or about the company writing the software. So it make your work easy to find free downloads from SoftwareLode.com.

The biggest advantage in a free software download is literally being able to freely download software so that you get to try out the software for no cost before you buy it. Usually, though not always, you get a free trial period of about 30 days. This allows you to try out all the features of the software and make sure it does what you want and is actually worth purchasing. SoftwareLode also lists many so-called freeware programs.

A freeware title is a totally free software download – you can download it and use it for as long as you like without making a purchasing.

As the Linux Foundation tells it, the Linux-related job market is today 80 percent larger than it was five years ago. Whereas other industries have had to shed workers in the current recession, the Foundation is hopeful penny-pinching measures might actually encourage businesses to transition to Linux-based software and thereby further stimulate employment opportunities within the sector. We’re not told exactly what “Linux-related” means in this context, but the newly set up Linux.com Job Board indicates that the vast majority of new openings are for system admins. That’s right, the corporate world is crying out for more geeks — won’t you answer the call?

[Thanks to Overlord59 for the Tux images]

Birth of an AVATAR from Peter Ammentorp Lund on Vimeo.

There are few more lazily fulfilling practices in this world than to watch someone else Photoshop in time lapse. In this clip, a guy turns himself into a Na’vi (Avatar smurf).

Papyrus credits included. [fubiz via DVICE]

We’re not quite sure what to make of this, but it appears that the AccuWeather app for S60 5th Edition devices has gone ahead and leaked an unknown Nokia device — the “Saga” — which appears to be a sort of N97 Mini Mini (two “Minis” on purpose there) that trades the tilting screen for a more traditional flat sliding one. As Symbian-Guru points out, Nokia itself doesn’t typically assign names to its handsets — it leaves that job to its carrier partners — so this might simply be a branded version of one of the existing N97 variants, but naturally, the leaked device theory is juicier. At any rate, if this were to come Stateside, they might have a bit of trouble slipping it by Samsung since they’ve already got a Saga in the mix here, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for some blander N, E, or X series label if this gets real.

Source:  Symbian-Guru