New Fund to boost productivity of small tech businesses.
Small Business Minister, Kelly Tolhurst confirmed the new fund this week. Technology projects and pilots across the country – including digital dairy farming, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and cloud computing technology – are among those to benefit from the new fund A total of 15 projects from all parts of the UK have won a…
Concerns over lack of skilled workers in tech sector.
The UK tech sector is leading the way in Europe, but concerns over Brexit and a lack of skilled workers is worrying say leaders in the industry. Last year the government announced that healthcare professionals will no longer be counted against the capped number of tier 2 visas which are issued to skilled workers. This…
Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook messenger merger plans.
Facebook has plans to merge its messaging services. At the moment, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook messenger are all used as stand-alone apps. While there are no plans to change this Facebook plan to link them at a deeper level. This would mean messages could travel across all three services. However, Facebook has said that it…
Tech Nation is working to address skills shortages.
Tech Nation began in 2011 in Shoreditch in London. It was launched by the then Prime Minister David Cameron, to support the East London tech cluster known as London Tech City — or Silicon Roundabout. Tech Nation has since spread its activities to cover other parts of the UK, and have set up Tech North…
Google fined 50 million euros under GDPR.
The French data regulator CNIL has fined Google 50 million euros, about £44m, for a breach of the EU’s data protection rules. The regulator said it had imposed the fine for “lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent regarding ads personalisation”. CNIL said it judged that people were “not sufficiently informed” about…
Facebook removes hundreds of ‘Sputnik’ pages.
Hundreds of pages which are believed to be linked to a Russian news website, Sputnik, have been removed from Facebook. It is alleged the pages breach Facebook rules. The Sputnik news website is backed by the Kremlin and the pages were targeting individuals in former Soviet satellite states. They either pretended to be independent news…
Facebook employs UK charity Full Fact to help stem the tide of fake news.
Full Fact, a UK charity, founded in 2010 has been employed by Facebook to help deal with the spread of fake news. Fake news is something that has become a part of our lives and it is harder and harder for many people to weed out. Such is the sophistication of the ‘fake news’ makers….
UK tech sector leading Europe for 5th year in a row.
UK tech sector leads Europe with record levels of exits and surging investment. Tech Nation and Dealroom, a data analytics company, published figures at the end of 2018 that point to the UK tech sector leading Europe with record levels of exits and surging investment. What are Exit strategies? Venture capital (VC) investors may decide…
ICO publishes guidance for businesses to cope with blocked data transfers from EU post Brexit.
The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has issued a guidance for businesses and organisations in Britain about how to cope with data transfers being blocked, should the UK leave the EU without a deal. The ICO fear there is no time to reach a data adequacy agreement should the UK crash out of Europe. “The guidance we…
2019 will see Artificial Intelligence and machine learning as the tech that will keep on giving.
2018 was the year that AI became almost mainstream. From 2019 AI is going to be absolutely everywhere. According to one contributor to Forbes, Bernard Marr, who is amongst other things, a strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. “This is because hardware and software developers have passed the trial period – experimenting…