Ubuntu Edge Smartphone Breaks Record, But Likely to Miss Target

Proof you can be a winner and a loser at the same time. U.K.-based Canonical Ltd.’s campaign to raise money to fund its smartphone has become the largest amount pledged by a crowd-sourcing campaign.

So far, users have pledged $10.3 million on the Indiegogo platform, passing the $10,266,844 previously held by the Pebble Watch.

Unfortunately for Canonical, the company is seeking $32 million; a target that looks completely out of reach with just a week left to go.

Francis Maude Interview

Francis Maude is the U.K. government minister responsible for the government’s digitization strategy. He is behind the award-winning Government Digital Service.

Mr. Maude spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the political aims of the government’s strategy and how it will impact the relationship between citizen and state. This is an edited transcript of the interview.

Open Government and Open Data Are Not The Same Thing

• Commentary
• By Ben Rooney

Outside of Pyongyang (and maybe even there), what government wouldn’t want to be thought of as open? The U.K. has certainly made much political capital in portraying itself that way.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude is responsible for the U.K.’s Government Digital Service and is a co-chairman of the Open Government Partnership, an international body that aims “to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.”

But somewhere along the line the terms “open government” and “open data” have been conflated. While governments have thrown out gigabytes of data “to promote transparency,” few—Finland being among them— have done much trulyto “empower citizens,” and certainly not the U.K.

Smartphones Outsell Feature Phones for the First Time

More smartphones were sold in the second quarter of 2013 than feature phones, the first time that has happened, according to a report published Wednesday.

Gartner said smartphones accounted for 51.8% of mobile phone sales globally. The huge growth in smartphones, up 46.5% compared to the same quarter last year, is driven by the growth in the sub-$100 Android market, said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Basic phones which don’t carry the same level as technology as a smartphone are characterized as feature phones.

“We have seen that smartphones are starting from around $60 in 2013,” he said. “That was not the case in the same quarter in 2012. Then it was $120 or maybe even higher. The gap between average feature phone price and low cost smartphone price has really closed in the last couple of quarters.”

Berlin Needs Exits to Bolster Tech-Hub Case

Germany  attracted more venture capital than the U.K. in the second quarter of this year, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource — driven mainly by Berlin, which is trying hard to be one of Europe’s leading tech hubs.

Germany was the favored destination for equity financing in Europe in the three months to June, taking a 20% share of all investment into European venture capital-backed companies. The country received €273 million ($362 million) for 67 deals, beating the U.K. with €211 million ($279 million) for 77 deals. Dow Jones & Co. is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Still, until a first round of exits takes place, it remains to be seen whether all those investments are worth it. Exits –- part of a changeover phase when initial investors who take high risks and finance a startup cash in and leave -– are still some way down the road.

ASOS Investor Buys Into Zalando

One of Europe’s fashion entrepreneurs, and a backer in the U.K.’s ASOS plc, has taken a stake in Germany’s leading online fashion retailer Zalando GmbH.

Anders Holch Povlsen owner of the Danish company Bestseller A/S has joined the Zalando shareholder group, acquiring a 10 percent stake. Bestseller is a leading European fashion company, behind brands such as Jack & Jones, Vero Moda, Junarose and Selected. Mr. Povlsen will be the third-biggest shareholder in Zalando.

Rubin Ritter, Managing Director of Zalando would not comment on how much Mr. Povlsen paid.

Estonian Nine-Year-Olds to Learn Java

As thousands of unhappy children and thousands of happy parents know, schools will shortly be reopening for the new academic year. In Estonia, some children returning to school this year will be the first to embark on another display of the country’s embracing of the power of technology.

Jaak Aaviksoo, the Baltic state’s education minister, a physicist and former rector of Tartu University, said the computer-based math program, designed to challenge traditional math teaching and focus on problem solving rather than concentrating on doing arithmetic, will start its first trial this academic year.

Only some 30 to 40 schools will be involved in the pilot, he said. The program, backed by the Conrad Wolfram, one of the brothers behind the computational engine Wolfram Alpha, aims to move math away from just computation and arithmetic and focus on solving real problems using computers to do the calculating. The schools will use it to teach statistics.

Index Funds Ambitious Paris Accelerator

An ambitious Paris accelerator program that wants to help 100 startups a year has received a boost with the announcement of an undisclosed funding deal from London fund Index Ventures.

Alice Zagury, CEO of TheFamily, said the deal was “less than €1 million” but would not be drawn on the exact amount.

“We were not looking for funds,” she said. “The deal is more of a strategic investment than a funding round.”

Sonar Tech May Drive Fracking Benefits

Fracking, the controversial process for extracting hydrocarbons from shale rocks, has hit the headlines again. Firstly, environmentalists are noisily protesting against drilling operations in the U.K.; Secondly, Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced earlier this month a $2.1 billion impairment, mostly on its North American shale operations.

However, one potential piece of potentially positive news for the sector has emerged. A U.K. company has developed monitoring technology that could dramatically increase the productivity of each well, so reducing the number of wells that need to be bored, which may ultimately help mitigate the threat of environmental harm.

The technology, called Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), is a spinoff from submarine sonars; it turns any stretch of fiber-optic cable into a remote sensor. We covered it last year.

According to Magnus McEwen-King, managing director of OptaSense — a subsidiary of Qinetiq Group PLC — which pioneered the technology, it comes into its own in the realtime management of fracking wells.

Tictail App Store to Launch in September

Tictail, the Swedish e-commerce site that allows anyone to set up their own online store in seconds, it to open the service up as a platform allowing anyone to develop Tictail apps.

Co-founder Carl Waldekranz said the new service will go live in September.

“I think this release is as big as when we launched Tictail,” he said.