Europe has no real equivalent to the big hothouse that is Silicon Valley, but it does have lots of tech clusters and networks. As recent research from the startup Seedcamp startup programme has shown, clusters of innovation are spread far and wide across Europe. One place everyone agrees is a key cluster is London. It now hosts offices belonging to all the top-tier pan-European VCs, several new Seed funds, has an active Angel investor market and hosts many major tech events. However, largely because of its cost – everything is still expensive here – London remains hard for European startups to access and get into, even in a recession. And although European and US entrepreneurs often need to take meetings and work in London, who wants to sign a huge office lease?

TechHub (@TechHub on Twitter) is new project put together by long-time London tech scene person Elizabeth Varley which will address just this issue. It will be a new, physical space for tech people, providing the things they really like: Super-fast Wifi, power for laptops, coffee and flexible, plentiful desk space. What’s really game-changing though is that – as I understand it – it will very, very affordable, which is exactly the problem that needs to be solved in London if the rest of Europe is to benefit.

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Last week I saw some coverage of this new HP device called the DreamScreen. And more than a couple of blogs were comparing it to the elusive Apple Tablet. Given my extreme interest in this space, I thought I should get this new DreamScreen in my hands as soon as possible and see if HP had indeed beaten Apple (and us) to the punch in delivering the first high quality tablet computing experience to consumers.

The press: “Want a hint at how the much-anticipated Apple Tablet might be shaping up? Take a look at the HP DreamScreen,” said one of those blogs, adding “this certainly looks like what we’re expecting from the Apple Tablet.” Another site: “Hewlett Packard has beaten Apple to the punch in coming up with a beautiful tablet-like computer.” Engadget called it “something special.”

The reality: I can’t repeat here what I wrote on Twitter because of the sensitive nature of the TechCrunch audience, but I will say this. The HP DreamScreen is possibly the biggest piece of crap to ever grace my desk. Which is saying something.

To be fair to HP, they didn’t really market it as much more than a glorified digital picture frame, the press just got out of hand. But even that’s too much. The device costs $250. It lacks a touchscreen. It lacks a browser. It lacks a battery. And it has the annoying habit of running a very loud demo video every few minutes – the only way to make it stop is to unplug it. Which is very effective, since it lacks a battery (not a good idea when you market yourself as a digital clock). And HP did nothing to stop rabid bloggers and journalists from heralding the device as some sort of Apple killer. I can’t help but wonder if any of these guys actually tried the device.

Wifi setup took ten minutes. I never got Pandora to work. I refused to even try with Facebook, because my password is long and, as you’ll see if you watch to the very end of the video below, I just don’t have an entire afternoon free to type it in. It’s also much thicker than those sexy photos on the HP site make it look.

Text input makes me think that HP was actually aiming for the Macbook Wheel as a comparison point.

I want my money back.

p.s. – I obviously have a huge conflict of interest here. So try it out yourself. But try it in a store where you don’t have to buy it, because you are going to be seriously unhappy with this device.

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We've just heard from AT&T that new carrier settings for the iPhone 3G and 3GS will be available "late morning" Pacific Time (which would be early afternoon Eastern) this Friday, September 25, which will finally enable MMS support. Owners will have to tether up to iTunes to grab those settings, so fish out your cable (as if you don't have it permanently attached to your machine already) and make sure you've got some solid time in front of the computer to check for the update over and over (and over) again, alright?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

AT&T slips some iPhone MMS rollout details for Friday originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our phones are smarter than ever, but figuring out a business’s or personal contact’s phone number can still be a trying task — especially when this data can be scattered across multiple address books, Facebook profiles, and professional contact management tools. CallSpark is a new startup that’s making its debut at DEMO Fall that’s looking to help solve this problem. The company has an iPhone application that will be out soon, with plans to support more platforms in the near future.

First, the company looks to help find a phone number quickly, using data from Yelp, the white pages, yellow pages, and other sources. You can run a keyword search to find matches in your vicinity — for example, a search for ‘Hyatt’ would find the phone number for the most relevant Hyatt hotel in the area. It isn’t clear how this is better than what you get using the iPhone’s integrated Google Maps functionality, which also makes it easy to look up a phone number, but the app does have a number of other interesting features.

The second thing that CallSpark offers is the abillity to import information from sources like your company’s Salesforce account. You can use this information as an address book, as well as to look up details about a contact during a call (beyond contact information, CallSpark can include content from sites like Twitter and Facebook).

Another use case for CallSpark is to locate contact information that would typically be buried in your Email. Say, for example, your friend had sent his new phone number to your Email account but you had yet to enter it into your address book. CallSpark will automatically identify the number in the mail message, and include it as a match next time you run a search on your contact’s name.

Finally, CallSpark offers something called ‘Ring Pages’, which lets companies and individuals create a default website that users should see when they call their number using CallSpark. For example, a FedEx RingPage might include links to track your packages, or find the nearest FedEx locations.

CallSpark says it will soon be announcing a ‘large carrier deal’. Carrier deals may well be key to CallSpark’s success, as it’s unlikely the company will have much luck getting businesses to build Ring Pages if the app doesn’t have a considerable user base.

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