What does Bitcoin have in common with 3D printing, besides both being technologies loved by geeks? On the face of it, not much: one is a digital currency and the other allows you to reproduce almost any small, solid object in the world.
But as lawmakers are starting to realise, there is a key similarity: both Bitcoin and 3D printing have the potential to reduce the power of the state and put it into the hands of individuals. Read more
Duedil, a start-up that provides information on every private company in the UK, has raised $5m in funding ahead of an expansion into more than a dozen countries across Europe.
The London-based company takes data from public and private databases and links it together to provide users with insights that would otherwise have been impossible to obtain. Read more
Ford and WPP have apologised for tasteless ads showing scantily-clad women bound and gagged in the back of a car.
While the images were never published as part of an official campaign, someone at JWT India, Ford’s agency in the country, uploaded them to the sharing site Ads of the World. Read more
Getty Images, the world’s largest supplier of stock photos, has formed partnerships with two start-ups that help publishers transform online images into interactive adverts and virtual shopfronts.
The deals mark a big step forward for a new, highly-targeted form of advertising that Getty expects will become a significant source of revenues for news and magazine publishers. Read more
Two of the three founders of Last.fm, the original Silicon Roundabout success story, have arrived back on the London tech scene to launch a new service that helps people discover popular web pages.
Felix Miller and Martin Stiksel, who sold their music “scrobbling” service Last.fm to CBS in $280m in 2007, announced their new venture Lumi in a blog post on Tuesday. Read more
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Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
