Picture this: A Latvian startup visualizes the future

Skolkovo police raid fuels Putin-Medvedev split speculation

On 18 April, Russian authorities searched the Moscow offices of the Skolkovo Foundation, a high-tech incubator, in a move certain to fuel speculation of a widening rift between Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Reuters reports. Read More »

That startup fever

Vladimir Funtikov, a 26-year-old Estonian businessman, already has behind him successful studies at university and the launch of several small technology companies, including Creative Mobile, which produces games for smart phones. Now he’s come up with a crazy idea: playing on cell phones should be taught as a subject at university because, among other reasons, his company – with offices in Tallinn, St. Petersburg, New York, and London employing 60 people – can’t find enough skilled developers and programmers.  Read More »

Russia: Crowdmapping Corruption with Bribr Mobile App

Bribr [ru; App Store, Facebook] is a newly-launched iPhone/iPad app that allows anonymous users in Russia to submit the locations and the amounts of the bribes they pay. Later, it will be possible to report on the bribes taken as well. Read More »

Piano Player

Over at TOL, we’ve been following developments rather closely of the Slovakia-born online paywall system known as Piano. This is a highly unusual story of a media-related innovation originating in our coverage region, but generating a lot of press in Western Europe and the United States (almost always, it’s the other way around). Read More »

Startup ‘incubation’ center opens in Kosovo

A technology-focused incubator opened its doors 27 June to entrepreneurs and innovators in Kosovo. Funded by Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Innovation Center Kosovo will provide business incubation services – training, mentoring, consulting, and an innovative office environment, reports the tech and innovation blogg Goal Europe. Read More »

The best 5 ideas will fight at SI Camp Moldova 2012!

SICamp Moldova 2012 will take place this weekend. Out of 134 applicants, only 25 were selected to work in teams on five ideas of projects with social impact. Read More »

Russia investing millions in high-tech campus near Moscow

Russia intends to diversify its economy away from dependence on the export of raw materials by funding its own version of Silicon Valley an hour outside of Moscow. While this project isn’t exactly new, Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov announced earlier this week that state-owned companies will start transferring billions of rubles into an endowment fund for a flagship research institute at Skolkovo.

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Do androids dream of Russian investors?

The word “robot” was first created and popularized in the 1920s by the Czech brothers Karel and Josef Capek. The term is derived the Czech robotnik, “slave”, but the root “robot” is used in many Slavic languages to mean “work” or “labour”. Now, it seems, it’s a Russian who wants to make the word an everyday term by fuelling a robot revolution and developing robotics into a mass consumer product. Read More »

Estonia, the startup capital of Europe

In additon to being the only country in the euro zone with a budget surplus, Estonia enjoys an abundance of technological and business know-how. Ars Technica, an online magazine, reports that the country of 1.3 million has the second-highest number of startups per capita, after the United States. Read More »

Moldova Startup Weekend features promising ideas

Last weekend in Moldova, the second edition of Moldova Startup Weekend focusing on Mobile and Social Media apps was held. The winner of the first edition – Artur Gurău – will soon launch his social network for footballers. Read More »

Central Asian SICamp Redux: smaller, more wired, and with beer smuggling

The second Social innovation camp was held 31 May – 3 June in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Although smaller than its predecessor in 2011 on the Kyrgyz Issyk Kul, it has had some changes that made it a great event. Read More »

Moldovan online site broadcasts 10,000th event

Privesc.eu, the first online TV channel in Moldova, has been transmitting live for almost three years and has now broadcast more than 10,000 events.

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Update: Piano Media gets $2.6M in new funding

Last week, we ran a post on Piano Media’s recent success in Slovenia and future plans to expand to new markets. Now it seems the company, which specializes in providing media companies with nation-wide paywalls for content, has found the resources to speed up that expansion.  Piano announced 17 April that it has secured $2.6 million in new funding from the 3TS Cisco Growth Fund. Read More »