Spool – Get Your Daily Entertainment Fix

Introducing the launch of Spool, the premium space online for professional short-form entertainment content. Each day we scour the web to find the best premium animated shorts, exclusive music vidoes, creative adverts, and classic short films and broadcast the best of the best on the website for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to discuss and share your daily spool, and be sure to tune in every day for a new and exclusive video.

http://spool.tv

Angel Investor Networks in the UK

There are a number of services that help connect seed stage entrepreneurs with angel investors in the UK.

– Envestors
– Angels Den
– Venture Giant
– London Business Angels
– Northwest Business Angels

If anyone has any first-hand experience with any of these services or any others that I’ve missed, then please do comment.

UK Startup Guide – Resources, Funding and Support for Tech Startups and Entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom

The UK is a notoriously difficult place to be a tech entrepreneur. However, there are always opportunities if you look for them. Below I have detailed just a few main sources of support, incubators, accelerators, VCs, angel networks, and competitions that I came across during my research into setting up my startup. Please feel free to add other sources that you may know of, and help make this an extremely useful, current and robust guide for tech startups in the UK.

STARTUP FUNDING AND SUPPORT

Starting Points (Research and Gateways)
Business Link
Enterprise UK
British Library Business & IP Centre
Shell Live-Wire
Startup Donut
NWDA

Startup Communities/Social Networks
Virgin Media Pioneers
FlyingStart
cmypitch.com
OpenCoffee Club
Techcelerate

Support Incubators and Technopoles/Science Parks (offer workspace and networking in exchange for capital)
Daresbury Science and Innovation Park
Fab Lab Manchester
e4f (Birmingham Science Park Aston)
Accelerator London (Metropolitan University)
InfoLab21 Lancaster

Incubator Accelerators (offer seed capital, workspace, and networking in exchange for equity)
The Difference Engine – Northeast England
Seedcamp – London
Springboard – Cambridge
InQUBAtor – Sheffield
H-Farm – London
Start VI – Belfast, Northern Ireland
Tycoon Bootcamp – London

Workspace and/or Incubators (offer workspace in exchange for capital):
London Knowledge Innovation Centre
Imperial Innovators
TechHub
Trampery
The Cube
The Hub
eOffice

Venture Capital Incubators (offer capital, incubation space, concept testing in exchange for equity):
Straub Ventures
Atomico Ventures
H-FarmVentures
Hothouse Ventures

Seed Stage VCs/Funds
Index Seed
Profounders Capital
Moai Capital
Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs (ACE) Fund
Beringea Digital Ventures

Angel Networks
British Business Angels Association
London Business Angels
Venture Giant
Angel Investment Network

Venture Capital Firms & Angels (offer capital for equity):
Nesta
Atlas Ventures
Eden Ventures
Balderton Capital
Index Ventures
Amadeus Ventures
MMC Ventures
Pi Capital
Advent Ventures
The Accelerator Group
Nitrokickstart

Mobile & Telecom Sector VCs (offer capital and expertise for equity):
Innovacom (France Telecom Fund)
Pond Ventures
Spark Ventures

Media VCs (offer services and expertise for equity):
4iP
Bonnier R&D Fund

Advice & Support
NWDA’s High Growth Programme
Lancaster University’s Knowledge Exchange Programme (InfoLab21)
Innospace (MMU)
Microsoft BizSpark

Startup Weekends & Startup Events (offer platform to launch new business startup)
Launch48
Startup Weekend
GeekNRolla

Competitions
http://www.dedipowerdigitalawards.com/
http://www.shell-livewire.org/
http://www.fgba.co.uk/
http://www.stridingout.co.uk/latest-news/future-100.html
http://www.stridingout.co.uk/competition.html
http://www.findinvestgrow.com/about/competition/
http://www.essenceoftheentrepreneur.com/2009/home/
http://www.connectmidlands.co.uk/web/cm/index.cfm
http://www.enterpriseuk.org/markets
http://www.wix.com/vlennox/nvpc
http://www.innovate-events.com/about/

Microsoft’s Vision of the Future

I came across a very interesting video made last year by Microsoft on how technology was progressing and what the future would look like in 2019.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9JBSEBu2q8&playnext_from=TL&videos=sjozrqWssdc

Unfortunately, I think Microsoft overshot their prediction by about 7 or 8 years. The technology they “predict” already exists. Bonnier’s Mag+ had a very similar looking UI designed by Berg, the digital agency in London that’s become quite popular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAZCr6canvw

Also, TED revealed last year the concept of sixth sense, developed by Pranav Mistry, that used extremely simple existing technologies and created an immensely innovative application that allowed users to digitally access, share and preview information immediately, without the need for a screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzKmGTVmqJs

I guess Microsoft is just a little behind the times. But it was a very enjoyable video nonetheless.

Web 3.0 Explained: The Future of the Internet

In a word, web 3.0 will be: intuitive. Looking past the jargon, web 3.0 is simply the next phase in the future of the internet, where web or mobile apps will be able to interpret, understand, and analyze users’ needs and wants, so as to provide instant, real-time solutions, that are targeted, useful and highly relevant. In other words; it will be quite smart. The word semantic has been used to describe this phenomenon, but I feel that the way the internet has evolved, one concept cannot define the internet at any stage of its life-cycle. As a result, I think it would be better to broadly classify the conceptual categories that exist under each phase of the internet’s evolution as detailed below.

Web 1.0: Search, Information, Research, Shopping, Games

Web 2.0: Social Media, Social Networking, Video Sharing, Blogs & Microblogs, Wikis (Mass Collaboration), Multiplayer Games

Web 3.0: Location Based Services, Intuitive Search, Collaborative Cloud Based Services, Mobile Applications, Niche Social Networks or Social Portals

The most exciting web 3.0 apps that are currently being developed are centered around location based services, with Foursquare, the mobile app that gives users recommendations based on their location, being among the most popular. Other exciting 3.0 apps will be collaborative cloud based entertainment creation services. Essentially, creators and producers of entertainment media content will be able to collaborate to mass produce and distribute content entirely through the internet. Finally, niche social networks will crop up, which will offer users a chance to network within particular domains, to access the most relevant contacts which will increase the speed of communication and search.

A designer in Japan has developed his vision of the future of web and mobile applications in which location aware applications, where devices, when pointed around your environment, can provide you with both historical as well as real-time data and information on the subject of interest.