The Million Pound Startup competition aims to attract high-growth technology companies to the capital. The winner will receive £1m equity investment to build its company in London.

In addition to the investment, the winning company will also receive support and assistance from a series of partners including KPMG, the Mayor of London, the Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO), Taylor Wessing, Seedrs, City University London, London & Partners, London First, Schools for Start-ups and Ketchum.

The competition is facilitated by Digital Shoreditch and while it is open to any company around the world, the winning company must relocate to London in order to receive the £1m.

The £1m prize is sourced from angel funding, venture capitalists and equity crowd-funding. Applicants will have to show that they will use the £1m equity investment to build a £100m company based in London.

The investment process will conclude towards the end of the year and as it proceeds, candidates will be gradually reduced and there will be a pitching process, which at the end one organisation will receive £1m.

“We believe that by 2020, the technology sector will look substantially different to today. There will be a new group of world-beating companies, many more of which will have started and grown in the UK. The UK will have cemented its place as one of the key centres of technology, innovation, attracting funding talent and interest from around the world,” said Tim Kay, head of KPMG’s High Growth Technology Group based in Tech City.

While KPMG is not providing any of the monetary prize, the organisation is partnering with the competition to provide mentoring and support throughout the process.

“What we’ve effectively said is that we might do a dry run before pitch days with the final 50. We will give feedback, run sessions and seminars as part of this process, not just for the winner,” said Kay.

To qualify for the competition startups much have been trading for fewer than 10 years and be turning over less than £1m per year.

One of the increasingly evident issues within the startup sector is that there are plenty of opportunities for early stage companies to acquire funding, but minimal opportunities for companies to grow and expand due to the limited second stage growth funding.

A report written by senior executives at Tech City states that there is a lack of funding causing companies to miss out on business opportunities and preventing growth. Additionally, one-fifth of Tech City businesses said that they had to make people redundant because they were unable to secure funding.

Alastair Paterson, chief executive of tech startup Digital Shadows, said: “I think where we’ve got to work and develop is the next stage, so once you’ve had your seed investment, there isn’t a huge amount of funding still in the UK compared with the US. That’s why you see companies heading over to the US to get their funding. We’re coming to that crossroads right now and we’re just assessing where the best place to take the money from is.”

However, the Million Pound Startup competition has broad application requirements in order to include later stage companies to compete for the equity.

“One of the things we’re keen to promote are investment opportunities for second stage companies,” said Kay. “This is why the boundaries are wide.

“If you’re a very early stage startup, this capital will be useful for letting you bring on experienced developers to build a robust product. But also for companies slightly down the development path who need capital for overseas expansion and hiring robust sales staff. That level of investment can help a lot of companies in different ways.

“A lot of schemes and investments are aimed purely at the early stage investment, but this is trying to cast the net slightly wider,” Kay said.

The hacker group managed to publish 12 blog posts on the FT’s Tech Blog in four minutes on Friday 17 May, and also sent tweets through the FT’s Twitter feeds – saying “The Syrian Electronic Army was here” – to thousands of followers.

The FT said the accounts were hijacked following a phishing attack targeting company email accounts.

The SEA’s continuing success suggests media outlets still have a way to go in protecting themselves from phishing, one of the older methods of attack, the report said.

The FT is the latest in a series of attacks attributed to the group on Western media organisations, which have included the Guardian and the BBC.

The SEA, believed to be a front for the al-Assad government, previously targeted al Jazeera, France 24 TV, US National Public Radio and the Associated Press news agency.

Shortly after the Associated Press attack, it emerged that Twitter was testing a two-factor authentication system internally that is aimed at making it more difficult for hackers to take over users’ accounts.

The planned security system requires users to enter a one-time password (OTP) sent to their mobile phones whenever they log in from a computer or device they do not normally use.

In addition, the Prime Minister has made a call to businesses to support the drive. Still under development the BIG programme will open for businesses to apply for the funding this autumn. BIG has pledged to fund a small number of UK-wide projects.

According to the ONS Internet Access 2012 – Households and Individuals report published in February of this year 7.4 million UK adults (15%) have never used a computer or the internet. Furthermore, 16 million people in the UK currently lack basic online skills to confidently and safely make use of digital tools available to them.

The cross sector charity, Go ON UK has eight chief executives on its board – Age UK, BBC, Big Lottery Fund, E.ON, EE, Lloyds Banking Group, Post Office and TalkTalk.

Speaking to Computer Weekly, Graham Walker, chief executive of Go ON UK, said: “The idea is to overcome the perception of the internet and to equip people with the necessary digital skills and tools so they can safely be online.”

Walker added: “We will be looking for national organisations, with good community reach, that can come forward and offer face-to-face support. The fund is not for kit, platforms or apps for example but to offer support with a focus on face-to-face training and strategies.

“Getting our message out there is a peer-to-peer thing. The internet is for the whole population, not just for geeks – it empowers you to be better informed.”

Walker said businesses are being alerted now to give them time to develop applications demonstrating strong cases on how they would use the fund to turn the disconnected into confident online users.

Big Lottery Fund chief executive Peter Wanless said: “We expect to fund only a handful of significant projects, so competition will be intense.”

Baroness Lane-Fox, chair Go ON UK, said: “The Big Lottery Fund’s digital skills investment helps us deliver on Go ON UK’s objective to secure vital investment to build the digital skills of people and organisations across the UK. But we need other organisations to play their part and follow suit.”

Prime Minister David Cameron said: “If we are to succeed in the global race, it is vital that we ensure our people and businesses recognise the opportunities that the web offers and have world-class digital skills. That is why this government is supporting Go ON’s ambition to make the UK the world’s most digitally skilled nation.

“We are investing around £1bn in our digital infrastructure to ensure that everyone in the UK has access to fast, reliable broadband. These changes will reinforce the UK’s position as a leading digital economy and will help to create local jobs and national growth.”

North east pathway

Go ON UK has also unveiled plans to kick start a skills delivery programme in the north-east of England, from October.

After successful cross sector partnerships in Liverpool, the organisation plans to take the Go ON Liverpool model and make digital skills a regional priority for the north east.

Go On Liverpool included £100,000 of funding from BIG and reduced the number of people offline in Liverpool by 55% in 18 months.

On plans for the north east, Lane Fox explained: “We are confident we will be able to provide further evidence of the impact of partnership working to drive up digital skills and build a replicable partnership model that we can the roll out across the nation over the next 18 months.”

Walker said: “We have proved that the Liverpool model works, so we are now looking to do the same thing but on a larger scale. The flavour of Go ON UK is ‘lets supercharge what communities are already doing by helping them’.”

In June 2011, some 104,000 adults (29%) in Liverpool had never been online compared with 17% nationally. Over 18 months 1,500 digital champions were recruited to deliver training and in turn 43,000 new internet users were born.

The campaign was backed by all 90 local councillors and 80 local partners showed their support by promoting the Go ON UK message to their local community and outreach.

Labour promises £75m for digital skills

This week shadow media minister Helen Goodman announced Labour would invest £75m in a new digital skills programme if re-elected. The programme would focus on getting more people online and improving digital skills, funded by halving the size of the government’s current super-connected cities programme.

Last year, the government earmarked £114m from its £830m broadband investment pool with the aim of transforming ten UK cities into “super-connected cities” by 2015.

Previously the government has pledged to invest £830m in delivering the best broadband in Europe, including the extension of mobile coverage.

Yesterday morning’s announcement from Manchester United’s press office Twitter account (at 9.17am) prompted 1.4 million mentions  within the first hour – compared to the million tweets that followed in four hours after Thatcher’s death.

As well as the 1.4 million mentions, the much-expected news of his retirement  was retweeted and “favourited” more than 18,000 times, according to data collected by Twitter.

However, to put that popularity into some perspective, the announcement of the choice of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be the new pope on 13 March garnered substantially more mentions, 7m, demonstrating that while football may be a religion for many, it still has a little way to catch up with the officially recognised ones, at least on social media.

The Ferguson story took eight of Twitter’s top 10 trending topic spots, and four of the top 10 worldwide – all based around the #ThankYouSirAlex hashtag introduced by the club.

The conversation around Ferguson’s retirement peaked at 9.34am, with 13,000 tweets per minute on the topic, Twitter said. While impressive, it’s some way short of the intensity of the tweets around the US Superbowl, which hit 231,500 tweets per minute when a power cut delayed the game.

The choice of Twitter to make the announcement fits with a tendency of a growing number of football clubs and footballers to communicate via the social medium – without offering “exclusives” to news organisations with whom Ferguson, in particular, has had a prickly relationship.

Microsoft has announced that mail service Outlook.com will now support Skype voice and video calling, and instant messaging.

Microsoft is introducing the service in the UK, with the US and Germany following “in the coming weeks” and worldwide “in the coming months”.

When a user links their Outlook.com account with Skype, they will be prompted to install a browser plug-in which enables the integration, said US reports.

The plug-in supports the most recent versions of Chrome and Firefox as well as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in a sign that Microsoft is learning from past mistakes by giving users a choice.

“Sometimes that quick call can accomplish more than a long email reply. That’s why we are bringing Skype audio and video calling to your Outlook.com inbox,” said Microsoft.

The introduction of Skype is the latest in a series of updates to Microsoft’s Outlook.com service and the first real integration project with Skype since Microsoft acquired the company in a $8.5bn deal.

The UK launch is a preview version that will be updated based on initial feedback.

The browser plug-in is not needed for instant messaging using Skype on Outlook.com, but audio and video calls will require it.

The integration also works for Microsoft’s Messenger service, allowing users to video call Messenger users from Outlook.com.

The firm said that it will more clearly label results from YouTube, Google Maps and its other sites. It also agreed to display links to rivals close to where it displayed its own services on its results page.

EU regulators are asking for feedback and have proposed that the concessions be tested for a month. If the European Commission accepts them, they will become legally binding for the next five years.

As part of the agreement, Google will clearly separate promoted links from other web search results as well as displaying links to three specialised search rivals “close to its own services in a place that is clearly visible to users”.

“The objective of this process is to try to see if we can achieve a settled outcome in this antitrust investigation,” said Commission spokesman Antoine Colombani.

But the Microsoft-backed lobby group Initiative for a Competitive Marketplace (Icomp) was not convinced the changes went far enough.

“It is clear that mere labelling is not any kind of solution to the competition concerns that have been identified. Google should implement the same ranking policy to all websites,” it said.

It added it would comment further once it had fully evaluated the proposals.

Other concessions being offered by Google include:

• To offer all websites the option to opt out from the use of all their content in Google’s search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not “unduly” affect the sites’ ranking in its general results
• To offer specialised search sites which focus on product search or local search the option to mark certain categories of information so that they are not indexed or used by Google
• To no longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google
• To no longer restrict advertisers from running search advertising campaigns across rival ad platforms

Samsung’s new Mega Galaxy handset look more like a tablet than a phone – and has already been slammed as ‘just too big’.

Samsung hopes the big design will appeal to commuters and others who regularly watch films on their gadgets.

‘The newest addition to the Galaxy family balances an optimal viewing experience on a 6.3-inch HD screen, yet is ultra-thin and portable enough to put into a pocket or hold in one hand,’ the firm said.

‘The GALAXY Mega offers a mix of popular smartphone and tablet features such as an effortless user experience, a split screen, multitasking between video and other apps and more.’

It claims video and web browsing will be the main uses for the Mega.

‘We are aware of a great potential in the bigger screen for extensive viewing multimedia, web browsing, and more,’ said JK Shin of Samsung.

‘We are excited to provide another choice to meet our consumers’ varying lifestyles, all while maintaining the high-quality features of the award-winning GALAXY series.’

However, experts are less impressed.

Rik Henderson of Pocket Lint said ‘The screen size of the Galaxy Note works as you take notes – but the Mega is just a massive phone, it’s just too big.

‘However, I think we’ll see an arms race to get to that size, there’s a real blurring of the lines between phones and tablets now.

‘But for consumers, I think its a fad – it’s just too big.’ Indeed, it is slightly reminiscent of Dom Joly’s “I’m on the phone” sketch – users may feel slightly ridiculous talking into such a huge screen.

Samsung helped popularise the so-called ‘phablet’ category – in which phones approach tablet dimensions – with its original 5.3in Galaxy Note, which was released in 2011.

Analysts have deemed a ‘phablet’ is a mobile gadget with a screen more than 5inches diagonally. The word comes from blending phone and tablet. Samsung’s Galaxy Note was the first popular ‘phablet’, but others are expected to follow this year.

Experts have predicted that 2013 could be the year of the ‘phablet’.

Analysts claim the emergence of so-called ‘giant mobile’ which blend tablets and mobile phones, will lead to a whole new category of gadgets.

The upshot is a market for phablets that will quadruple in value to $135 billion in three years, according to analysts at Barclays.

Shipments of gadgets that are 5 inches or bigger in screen size will surge by nearly nine-fold to 228 million during the same period, though estimates vary because no one can agree on where smartphones stop and phablets start.

But that’s the point, some say.

‘I think phone size was a preconceived notion based on voice usage,’ said John Berns, a Singapore-based executive who works in the information technology industry.