Microsoft extends carrier billing deal with MACH as Canada’s TELUS comes on board

Maintaining its carrier billing service on Windows Phone smartphones, Microsoft has today signed an extended agreement with direct operator billing service MACH, ensuring consumers are able to purchase apps and content on Windows Phone devices, billing them directly to their monthly tariff.
Under the extended deal, MACH will integrate its payment services into Windows Phone smartphones sold by Canadian operator TELUS, following Australian carrier Telstra, which the initial agreement was signed on January 18 2012.
MACH’s Direct Billing Gateway allows operators to directly connect to Microsoft’s Commerce Platform, providing them with a quick and easy way of integrating their payment process into Windows Phone Marketplace downloads.
Microsoft’s partnership with MACH removes the need for cumbersome premium messaging services or re-direction to WAP payment pages, maintaining a consistent experience for all Windows Phone owners.

Sky Go arrives on a limited range of Android devices, and with no ICS support

BSkyB’s online TV service, Sky Go, has finally arrived on Android, three weeks after we first reported that it would be made available some time this month.
The UK satellite TV broadcaster launched Sky Go back in July 2011, after merging its existing Sky Player and Sky Mobile TV services, and initially it was only available on iOS mobile devices. Sky Go allows subscribers to watch both live and ‘on-demand’ video content on computers, mobile device and games consoles, and it’s available for free to Sky TV subscribers. Sky also revealed last month that Apple-branded devices alone had reeled in 1.5 million unique users in December alone.
As we previously noted, the Sky Go Android app is only available in the UK and Ireland on a limited range of Android devices to begin with: HTC Desire, HTC Desire S, HTC Desire HD, HTC Incredible, HTC Sensation, Samsung Galaxy S, and Samsung Galaxy S II. Furthermore, Sky’s content will also be accessible through a 3G connection, though of course this will consume a lot of data.
Last November, we reported that Sky was including movies-on-demand with Sky Go, meaning you can tap in to all eleven Sky Movies’ channels wherever you roam. The service brings access to 22 live channels in total, depending on what you subscribe to, and includes all four Sky Sports channels, plus Sky Sports News, ESPN, Sky News and Sky 1.
The lack of support for Android tablets and limited availability on smartphones may be to some customers’ chagrin, but it seems Sky is looking to restrict the service to only the most suitable of handsets for the timebeing. “We fully appreciate how much Android users have been looking forward to the launch of Sky Go, and we’ve done everything we can to make sure that our bespoke design for Android handsets is worth waiting for,” said Holly Knill, Head of Sky Go, when it first announced an Android app was coming.
Knill added that the Sky Go app was arriving for a “selection of the popular handsets including HTC Desire S and Samsung Galaxy S2, covering the majority of Android users”.
However, if you’re thinking of upgrading to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), you won’t yet be able to access Sky Go, as previously indicated here:

“As some of you have suggested in the past there are over 300 Android smartphones in the market – all with varying versions of the operating system, different components, screen sizes and resolutions. This variation in device specification and the complexity of the Sky Go app means that it is not currently possible to build something generic that will work across all Android devices.
With this in mind and to deliver the app to as many Sky customers as possible, we have taken the decision to build for the most current versions of Android handsets – v2.2 and v2.3.  These are the operating systems that our seven listed handsets use and our research has shown that these handsets cover at least 60% of the Android handsets out there enabling us to deliver Sky Go to a good proportion of our customer base.”

It goes on to say:

“Sky Go Android will not support ice cream sandwich when it is launched, however there are plans to develop the App to support it.”

So the first incarnation of Sky Go for Android will be accessible by a large chunk of users, but it seems we may see a number of updates in the coming months before it’s opened up to the Android masses.
? Sky Go [Android]

Japanese firm DeNA brings its mobile gaming platform to Android in South Korea

Japan’s DeNA has teamed up with Korean Internet giant Daum to officially launch a localized version of its Mobage mobile social gaming platform for Android mobile devices in South Korea.
According to an announcement from DeNA, the ‘Daum Mobage’ platform and apps are now available for devices running the Google-owned operating system, with iOS apps currently in development. To access the platform and games, users must register at Daum’s Web portal, which already boasts 38 million members in Korea.

How Evrythng could give any physical object a life online

The Internet of Things has received plenty of hype over the past few years but we’re yet to see any solid evidence of it making its way into real life. That could be set to change from later this year if a UK and Switzerland-based startup called Evrythng has its way,
The Internet of Things refers to the idea that any physical object could have a connection to the Internet. Imagine streetlights that are able to tell you the current temperature of the part of the city you want to visit, park benches that tell you from afar if there’s a spot free to eat your lunch, or secondhand bikes with their complete ownership and service histories stored in the cloud and updated in real-time.

Flush with fresh funding, ICT services provider Six Degrees Group acquires Ultraspeed

After raising £60 million in funding last year and securing a further £25 million through a credit facility earlier this month, data services provider Six Degrees Group this morning announced its sixth acquisition.
The company has purchased Ultraspeed, a London-based managed hosting and cloud services provider.
With the acquisition of Ultraspeed, which has been around since 1998, Six Degrees gains a number of high-profile enterprise customers, including Nando’s, British Heart Foundation, John Brown Media Group and Bon Voyage Travel & Tours.
Six Degrees was founded by British entrepreneur Alastair Mills, who sold his latest venture SpiriTel to communications giant Daisy for £37 million.
Serving UK businesses, Six Degrees offers a wide range of services, including datacenter, connectivity, voice and cloud solutions.
Ultraspeed will be integrated into Six Degrees Group’s managed data division. All seven staff from the company have joined Six Degrees Group, which now employs roughly 100 people.

For Seedhack FinTech event, Seedcamp moves to Google’s new ‘Campus’ (30 March – 1 April)

If you’re interested in watching – or participating in – the disruption of the financial sector through technology right before your very eyes, register for startup accelerator Seedcamp’s next Seedhack event, which focuses on ‘fintech’ or financial technology. You can also go just to have some fun, of course.
The hackathon-themed event is happening on the weekend of 30 March at Google Campus, the search and advertising giant new hang-out in Tech City, East London’s fast-growing technology hub. In fact, it’ll be the first event held at Google Campus.
For this Seedhack event, Seedcamp’s second of the sort, the European business accelerator is partnering with Anthemis and PayPal.
Says the organization, hoping to entice you to sign up:

We’ll help you on the way to becoming the next big thing by providing a load of APIs to hack on, a great set of mentors and engineers from the Financial industry, and some inspirational thinking courtesy of Sean Park, founder of Anthemis. We’ve planned every aspect of the event to create the perfect environment to innovate.

Participating speakers, APIs and startups include Anthemis, The Currency Cloud, Archivme, Bilbus, Holvi, Transferwise.
? Seedhack FinTech

Augmented reality bridges sight and sound in the Project Paperclip photography exhibit

We’ve seen augmented reality make its way into the worlds of games, media and marketing, and beyond, and we’re bound to see yet more innovation in this field in the future.
Project Paperclip, an exhibition currently taking place in Portugal, and partially online, brings the world of augmented reality to photography. With the use of an iPhone app, photographer Nuno Serrão has created an all encompassing experience for anyone who wants to view his photography the way it was intended, calling it the “first photographic exhibition to use augmented reality.”

More than half of the UK population now owns a smartphone, says report

It has been a long time coming, but it seems the UK’s mobile phone industry has finally reached tipping point, with more than half the population now owning a smartphone, compared to feature phones.
Back in November, reports abounded that half of the UK was now using smartphones as opposed to feature phones, but in fact the figure was closer to around 44%. However, perhaps fueled by the mass of smartphone sales over the Christmas period, with both iOS and Android platforms seeing a significant hike in activations 50.3% now owns a smartphone, reports Cellular News.
The latest data is derived from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, and shows that smartphones constituted 71.4% of all mobile phone sales in the three months leading to 22 January 2012. “For the first time ever, you are now in the minority if you don’t own a smartphone,” says Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at Kantar Worldpanel. “With more people jumping on the bandwagon, there is huge opportunity for both retailers and manufacturers. However, the competition is intense.”
Whilst Android still rules the roost in the UK, with around half of all smartphones shipping with Android, Apple has increased its market share over the past year, from 21.7% to 29.1%. “Windows Phone 7 is also creeping up,” says Sunnebo, “taking over 2% of the market for the first time with the Nokia Lumia 800 taking the lion’s share. This looks set to continue with the expected launch of at least two new models at the Mobile World Congress conference. We forecast this will help it to grow its share to around 8% in the latter half of 2012.”
Predictably, Symbian’s share has fallen to less than 3%, as Nokia gradually kills the mobile OS off in favor of Windows Phone 7. We’ve previously written that Nokia’s Lumia 800 was seeing strong pre-order sales in the UK, though official figures have yet to be released. It has received a pretty good reception all round though, and Windows Phone 7 could be set to gain significant ground as it launches across more handsets in the coming year.
“One of the real positives for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is how engaged its users appear to be with its devices,” says Sunnebo. “Eighty one per cent of handset owners have used social networking on their device in the past month, higher than both iOS & Android. Meanwhile, three quarters have used GPS, indicating that its decision to include Nokia maps for free was a price worth paying to drive user engagement.”
Of course, smartphone sales doesn’t necessarily equate to high user-engagement – it’s likely that a significant chunk of smartphone-owners still primarily use it for calling and texting. But whatever your mobile phone of choice, just remember you are now in the minority of the population if you don’t own a smartphone.

Yandex processes 2 million+ people searches daily, debuts ‘social search program’

Yandex, Russia’s biggest Internet search and related services company, this morning announced the launch of a ‘social search program’ (note: links to page in Russian), aiming to inject content and account information from a wide variety of local and international social networks into its search results over time.
Of course, Yandex says the program will “enhance its search engine’s quality”, but there’s always a fine privacy line to walk with these types of features, and the possibility of users getting spooked by the new functionality is high indeed.
Yandex says it currently processes over two million people searches on a daily basis, although roughly half of those are apparently reserved for celebrities.
Anyway, the huge amount of searches for people has prompted Yandex to roll out its ‘people finder’ service in beta. Basically, it enables Yandex users in Russia to access and filter all public profiles of a person with accounts on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, VKontakte, LiveJournal, Odnoklassniki and the like.
And what if there are – gasp – multiple people with the same name?
Alexander Chubinskiy, Project Manager at Yandex, explains:

“It is so much more convenient to see multiple profiles of the same person grouped together. Yandex does this grouping with care – only those profiles that refer to one another get grouped. Web users can choose if they want their profiles on different websites to appear in search results separately, or as grouped together.”

Yandex is quick to point out that it will only show profiles from social networking sites that are already public and thus available for indexation by search engines, but let’s face it, how many people are readily aware of what parts of their digital life are showing and which ones are shielded from public gawking?
Yandex says it has indexed about 250 million personal profile pages to date.

Apple suffers China blow as local court enforces iPad sales ban, others may follow

Apple has been dealt a blow in its ongoing battle over the iPad trademark in China, after a court in the southern part of the country ruled that local distributors must stop selling the iPad due to the company’s ongoing legal case.
According to a report from the Associated Press, a court in Huizhou found that sales of the device from local retailers and distributors violated the trademark rights of Proview, the company which first took Apple to court over the issue in 2010.
Proview has claimed it will push for a trade ban, however, its chairman Yang Rongshan appears to be seeking a payout, after demanding that Apple must “properly” compensate the Taiwanese firm if it wants to use the term ‘iPad’ in China.
Yang’s comments came the day after strong evidence suggesting that Apple does owns the patents came to light. A report from AllThingsD revealed the compelling evidence that Apple has in support of its argument that it has already purchased the trademark in China.
Apple is appealing the court’s decision, which awarded the rights for term to Proview, insisting that it had purchased the trademark from the company for $35,000 in 2010. However, Proview claims that a deal was made with affiliates despite the fact that Apple has records of emails from Proview’s legal staff in China confirming the sale of the trademark in the country.
The case developed significantly last week as a number of stores and online retailers stopped selling the device in the country, although Apple is reported to have requested that the iPad was removed from online stores which were not registered to sell it.
Chinese authorities have ruled that a ban on importing the iPad may be “difficult” to introduce, however, more city courts likely to rule on the possibility of local retail bans. A Shanghai court will hear a similar case on Wednesday and it remains a possibility that sales of the iPad may be halted in parts of the country while the court case is in progress.

Kuwaiti detained for 21 days for his tweets, amid calls to have his citizenship revoked

Facing a prison sentence as a result of statements made on Twitter seems to have become the norm in Kuwait.
Kuwaiti Twitter user Mohammad al-Mulaifi could be joining the ranks of Nasser Abul and Mubarak al-Bathali who both served prison sentences because of their tweets.
Today, reports have emerged that Mohammad al-Mulaifi was detained by the Kuwaiti secret police over a week ago, with the public prosecutor detaining him for 21 days pending investigation. Al-Mulaifi has been accused of insulting the Muslim Shi’ite minority, which in al-Bathali’s case led to a three year prison sentence.
While al-Bathali was ordered to serve 3 years in prison, for insulting the Shi’ite sect and threatening national unity, his sentence was later commuted to six months. He has since been released and is once again active on Twitter. In the case of Nasser Abul, he spent 3 months in prison for criticizing the Bahraini and Saudi royal families on Twitter.
According to al-Mulaifi’s lawyer, the charges are similar to those that al-Bathali faced – insulting the Shi’ite faith, as well as spreading false news and undermining Kuwait’s image. His lawyer added that al-Mulaifi denied the charges.
Twitter has become something of a minefield in the Middle East. While tweeters have served prison sentences, Saudi Journalist Hamza Kashgari could be facing a far more serious sentence due to statements he made on Twitter. The Saudi journalist fled the country, fearing for his life, after a series of poetic tweets he posted were deemed blasphemous. Amidst public outcry, Kashgari was deported from Malaysia, and sent home, where he could face the death sentence.
Kashgari’s fate remains unknown, with the writer still detained. He has reportedly ‘repented’ for his tweets, while human rights lawyer Abdulrahman Allahem has taken on his case.
Like Kashgari, al-Mulaifi has apologized for his statements, while some of his critics are calling for the revocation of his Kuwaiti citizenship.