Cameron hails ‘radical’ programme

Peers await the Queen's Speech in 2008

David Cameron’s coalition government is due to outline what laws it wants to pass in the next year when the Queen’s Speech is delivered to Parliament.

Measures are set to include the repeal of ID cards, powers for parents to set up schools, reforms to policing and a referendum on the voting system.

The programme will reflect compromises reached by the Conservatives and Lib Dems when they agreed to share power.

The state opening of Parliament will feature its traditional pageantry.

It will be the 56th time that the Queen has opened a new session of Parliament during her reign.

However, it will be first time in 14 years that she has outlined a Conservative-led programme for government – albeit one that has been drawn up in partnership with the Liberal Democrats following their coalition agreement.

The Queen’s Speech, outlining the government’s legislative priorities for the year ahead, is expected to contain up to 21 bills and comes a day after the government revealed the details of plans to cut £6.2bn in spending this year.

Ministers have stressed that reducing the government’s huge deficit, while ensuring continued economic recovery, will be their priority over the lifetime of the Parliament.

Education focus

Details of likely bills appeared in a number of Sunday newspapers. Downing Street said it was "disappointed" by the apparent leak but will not hold an inquiry. It is likely that MPs will press for an explanation.

Flagship measures are likely to include plans to scrap ID cards and the next generation of biometric passports and a Great Repeal Bill – regulating the retention of DNA and the use of CCTV cameras among other measures. Ministers say this is needed to curb the excessive state intrusion of recent years and protect civil liberties.

Two education bills are expected to form the centrepiece of the programme, extending the academy school programme pioneered by Labour and giving parents and other groups the right to set up so-called "free schools" in the state sector.

Liberal Democrat proposals for a "pupil premium" to improve schooling for children from the most deprived backgrounds, which could see up to £2.5bn channelled into cutting class sizes, will be included in this.

One of the most complex and controversial bills is expected to cover parliamentary reform, a subject on which all parties agree action is needed after last year’s expenses scandal.

As well as giving the public the right to throw out corrupt MPs between elections, it will legislate for a referendum on changing how MPs are elected from the current first-past-the-post system to the Alternative Vote format.

Voting referendum

This was a central Liberal Democrat demand in their negotiations on forming a government.

Plans for fixed-term five-year Parliaments – including a controversial clause requiring 55% of MPs to vote to back the dissolution of Parliament – will also be announced and a review of options for reform of the House of Lords is expected.

Other expected proposals include elected officials to oversee local police forces, the restoration of the link between the state pension and earnings, a tax on bank profits, welfare reforms and a guarantee of a referendum on any treaty proposing more powers for the EU.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said there was likely to be unease in both Conservative and Lib Dem ranks about aspects of the policy programme but Mr Cameron and his Lib Dem deputy Nick Clegg hoped the inclusion of flagship policies designed to appeal to their own side would quell any dissent.

After the Queen has officially opened Parliament, Mr Cameron will begin several days of debate in the Commons over the plans, which he has said will be underpinned by the goals of encouraging freedom, fairness and responsibility.

Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman will respond for the opposition in what will be their first clash across the despatch box.

The Queen’s Speech will be followed on Wednesday by the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the new parliamentary session and by the government’s emergency budget on 22 June.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Steve Case Recalls When AOL Almost Bought Yahoo For $2 Million

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, AOL co-founder (and former CEO) Steve Case took the stage to talk with Michael Arrington. He was full of interesting things to say — especially since current AOL CEO Tim Armstrong was on the stage earlier and the two just celebrated AOL’s 25th anniversary. But the funniest little anecdote from Case involved Yahoo.

People may recall that there was talk that Yahoo would buy and/or merge with AOL two years ago as Yahoo was being pursued by Microsoft. But what you may not recall is that back in the 1990s, when AOL was at the height of its power, Case actually offered to buy Yahoo. Yahoo obviously didn’t accept the offer. But they may have if the offer were just a little higher, Case says.

So how much was the offer? $2 million. Why? Because Yahoo had just two employees at that point: Jerry Yang and David Filo. This price made sense to AOL since they had just bought the early search engine, WebCrawler, in 1995 for $1 million (because it had one employee — Brian Pinkerton).

Case said that he thinks if AOL had gone to $3 million, Yang and Filo would have sold. Instead, later that year, they raised their first major rounds of funding – totaling about $3 million from Sequoia. And the rest is history (both good and bad).


Help GE “Avoid The Lame” For Their Next Digital Advertising Campaign

General Electric is crowdsourcing their next digital / social media ad blitz, Global executive Director, Advertising and Branding Judy Hu just announced on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.

In the spirit of disruption, GE is bypassing the traditional agency model for marketing campaigns. The company has set up both a basic Google Moderator tool and a dedicated email inbox ([email protected]) in order to solicit ideas from anyone (including industry pros).

Got a great idea for an ad campaign? A creative concept for a killer contest? A truly innovative social media program? With your help, we can avoid the lame and embrace the awesome.

The idea is for people like you, our readers, to submit what you think are the best ideas on how to engage online audiences, being the monster company GE is. One thing to remember: this is also open to advertising industry professionals or startups, as a way to win GE’s business.

In other words, don’t forget to share your contact info.

Of course, there are some ground rules to take into account.

So there you have it: do you also think large companies tend to come up with lame online advertising and social media campaigns?

GE thinks if you’re such an expert, you should put your next clicks where your mouth is.


Chrome For Mac And Linux Graduate From Beta

It was almost exactly one year ago that Google released the first dev build of Chrome for Mac and Linux. At the time, even though they released it, they didn’t really want you to use it. It simply wasn’t stable. Now it is. And as such, it’s finally being formally released.

Google announced today that Chrome for Mac and Linux has caught up with the stable (and older) Windows build of the browser. As such, they’re ready to take both builds out of beta for the first time. And these new stable releases come with new features such as more advanced syncing (bookmarks, preferences, settings, etc). And it’s full of HTML5 tools like Geolocation APIs, App Cache, and web sockets. And access to the over 4,500 Chrome extensions.

One thing not included in these new stable release is the new built-in Flash Player. Google actually had to remove that from the dev channel recently because it was causing issues. Google promises that the integration will be ready by the time the final version of Flash 10.1 is released.

You can find the stable builds of Chrome for Mac and Linux here.

Also, in case you missed it, here’s the kick-ass Chrome speed-test video below.


Microsoft’s J. Allard and Robbie Bach Are Leaving The Company

Microsoft is losing two high-profile executives. Both J. Allard, “Chief Experience Offer” and Entertainment and Device Division’s CTO, and Robbie Bach, President of Entertainment and Devices Division, are leaving the company per a Steve Ballmer email from this morning. These are the guys behind the Xbox, Zune, Project Natal, and the dead Courier project — so basically all of Microsoft’s hit entertainment projects from the last decade.

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:01 AM
To: Microsoft – All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Executive Leadership Transitions

After almost 22 years with the company, Robbie Bach has decided to retire from Microsoft. I have worked with Robbie during his entire tenure at Microsoft, and count him as both a friend and a great business partner and leader. Robbie has always had great timing, and is going out on a high note – this has been a phenomenal year for E&D overall, and with the coming launches of both Windows Phone 7 and “Project Natal,” the rest of the year looks stupendous as well. While we are announcing Robbie’s retirement today, he will remain here through the fall, ensuring we have a smooth transition.


How Can Brands Best Get In Front Of Digital Audiences?

We’re still here at the first TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York. Up on stage right now is an interesting group of people discussing how brands can best engage with digital audiences in this day and age.

This is an overview of what Judy Hu, Global Executive Director of Advertising & Branding at GE, Brian Pokorny (CEO of dailybooth), Christopher ‘moot’ Poole of 4chan fame and Andrey Ternovskiy, who started Chatroulette, had to say about that.

Erick Schonfeld: Dailybooth and Chatroulette are somewhat similar. What is it about taking pictures or videos of themselves that is so compelling?

Andrey Ternovskiy: I like the fact that people can interact with one another, but I’m also interested to see what other people would broadcast, what they look like etc. I think this combination of seeing each other is attractive.

Erick Schonfeld: There’s an element of unpredictability there. But why are there so many shirtless guys on Chatroulette?

Andrey Ternovskiy: It grew into something uncontrollable alright. I just gave birth to Chatroulette and let it evolve the way it did. It was just an experiment.

Erick: what do you see as a natural evolution of communication?

Brian Pokorny: You saw the phenomenon originate on YouTube, and it evolved into a new type of communication channel – through photos. Dailybooth is really the first platform that captures this notion of pointing cameras at themselves and sharing them. Is it new media or new communication? I think it’s probably both.

Erick: A big part of 4chan is the diversity of content. What people are familiar with are the LOLcat pictures, the rick-rolling, etc. Why is that type of thing so popular on 4chan?

Christopher: the content turns over constantly. We get 800,000 uploads on 4chan a day, everything is anonymous. we let people jump on and start sharing and spreading ideas. it’s how memes are born, I guess. It’s very basic, I mean 4chan is not Web 2.0 at all. But it’s all about the simplicity of letting people share whatever they want.

Erick: Judy, what do you think about all this as a brand manager?

Judy Hu: well, we live by numbers, as a company. We’re not so much about putting ads next to men without shirts and pants on. But we do look at communities, and we realize that maybe we can find them in new places. But we’re largely a B2B company. Only 3% of our revenues comes from the consumer side. But we love to think about what we can do as an advertiser, e.g. on Dailybooth.

Erick: There is no advertising on Chatroulette, right?

Andrey: yes, a little, just to cover the costs.

Erick: should GE ever advertise on your site?

Andrey: if done properly, why not? But I want users to focus on the content. If we could put advertising in a way that doesn’t distract people from using the service, it would be doable.

Erick: Judy, so you’re clearly a B2B company. Why even bother doing a brand campaign on social media to reach people.

Judy: Brand building. We’re constantly reaching out to audiences, and in particular now to the younger demographic. Also, we’re all about innovation. We want to explore. Third, we also need to extend the brand, we want to make it iconic. We want to get our key messages across to everyone.

That’s why we’re today launching a crowd-sourcing effort to get ideas from the general community on how to do our next digital advertising campaign.

Erick: What would you do in Judy’s shoes, Christopher?

Christopher: I’ve been surprised by how many advertisers come up with half-assed campaigns. Many want to explore, but at the same time they’re terrified. Brands need to loosen up, and they need to realize that ads can simply pop up somewhere it may not seem appropriate to the brand marketer.

Erick: what’s the situation gonna be like in, say, 5 years? how’s the media experience going to change?

Brian: More distributed. Traditional media and advertising has always been very structured. On Dailybooth, we incite people to create their own communities. I think the users are going to define content creation and distribution in the future.

Erick: if you’d redesign 4chan right now, what would you do with it?

Christopher: the trend is real time, I guess. We can do more to make users ‘feel’ the experience of 4chan. There’s a trend of convergence.

Erick: what about video chat?

Andrey: I have some ideas that in the future people will be focused on communication over video, much more than before. I’m not a specialist on communities and social media, but I think things like webcams and microphones and the platforms like Skype we have now, will be used more. People will leave their houses much less than they do now.

Erick: is that a good or a bad thing?

Brian: I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive. You can connect to people on the other side of the world, using different media. It connects the world more than it disconnects.

Judy: I have to say I agree with Chris. The successful companies will be the ones that open their boundaries a bit, and get less restrictive.

Andrey: Video communication was undervalued in the past, in my opinion.


Forbes Acquires Freelance News Startup True/Slant

Just a couple of days after PaidContent ran a story about freelance news site True/Slant reportedly being in M&A talks, Forbes Media announced today that it has agreed “in principle” to buy the company.

True/Slant founder and CEO Lewis Dvorkin will be joining Forbes to lead all editorial areas at Forbes as Chief Product Officer effective June 1.

It isn’t much of a surprise for Forbes specifically to make that move. Dvorkin has after all been consulting with Forbes in April. Also, he was Executive Editor of the Forbes magazine from December 1996 to April 2000.

He was previously Page One Editor of The Wall Street Journal, a Senior Editor at Newsweek, and an editor at The New York Times. He’s also former Senior Vice President, Programming at AOL.

Furthermore, Forbes invested in True/Slant back in August 2008 together with Fuse Capital (the company raised a total of $3 million).

The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.


Mayor Bloomberg Calls For More NYC Startups At TechCrunch Disrupt

Today, TechCrunch Disrupt attendees were treated to a very special guest: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg addressed the audience of entrepreneurs, urging them to make their way to New York City to start their next venture. As he put it, “When you want to start a business, you don’t have any choice. This is where the best and the brightest are.”

Here’s a full video of Mayor Bloomberg’s talk (which was followed by a brief Q&A). My notes on the talk are below that.

Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com

I am the proud owner of a new iPad. It’s amazing. I told Steve Jobs the other day that if he can improve on this it will really be amazing. Before this morning’s conference I updated my Facebook page, sent a tweet, checked in on Foursquare, posted a personal on Craigstlist. (laughs)

Venture funding has increased by 19% in the city even as it went down in the rest of the country.

My company never could have been anywhere as successful if I started it anywhere else. If you want to compete in the big game and hae breadth of cultural possibilities this is the place to come.

20 years ago when Wall Street went into a tailspin, City Hall went into overdrive. When I started the business PCs did not exist, nor did the Internet when I started Bloomberg. We built our own hardware. I used to go up to Connecticut to be with our engineers I worked with and I would solder chips onto circuit boards. As PCs were developed we switched to PCs.

Our idea worked out pretty well, I don’t know who will create the thing big thing will be we do know it needs to be headquartered here.

We’re going to launch a media lab at a major university in our city later this year. We’re continuing to help IT firms find out about opportunities to do business with our city agencies.

Two announcements: first thanks to partnership with Firstmark Capital which is co-investing with our NYC entrepreneur fund will now be able to invest up to $22 million.

Also announcing first investment of $300k going to a mobile app provider MyCityWay.

MyCityWay – a year ago we launched a competition called NYC Big Apps. More than 100 submissions. My City Way put in NYC Way – puts everything New York right at your fingertips.

We liked what they did so much we not only listed them as a Big Apps winner, we also chose to invest in them. They have moved from NJ to NYC.

In NYC we understand innovation drives economic growth. We’re nuturing information technology. If you have an idea, or a product, or an app, NYC is the city for you. Business is better here. NYC has just become #1 tourist destination. It’s happening here. I can’t guarantee you will be succesful, but it’s an awful lot easier to attract the best and brightest, and to interface with other people. If you’re a smart people this is the happening city.

———————Q&A——————-

If you’re a world-class startup, why pick NYC?
Most immigrant friendly place in America. Gateway to the US. What is unique about NYC is that we live as a mixture, not a mosaic. Live together in a way that promotes understanding. People don’t have to forget where they came from.

Microsoft, Google, Reuters have few thousand people each in this city.

If you were starting today as an entrepreneur what would you do?
Something that wasn’t be done, or something that was only being done by big companies. Competing with big companies is much easier than small companies. Live expectancy of a company is relatively short. They become big, they develop infrastructure, and everything looks small in the bottom line so they don’t do it. And that’s when the next big thing comes along.

Your company was about disruption. Today’s media companies are being disrupted by the Internet. What’s your advice to the media?
I’m a big fan of quality media. I think that the problem is not, is it distributed via truck or fiber. The question is it something that you need> I would argue an awful lot of the media has gone away what the public wants to receive. Examples: The Economist keeps growing, it’s probably the most expensive general interest magazine that I know of. There are companies that sell what people want. An awful lot of companies got away from that. It’s not the technology. The magazines that are in trouble are in trouble because they are writing the same thing as everyone else does. They aren’t germane to people’s lives anymore.

Tax incentive programs for tech companies?

Basically, no. We have the fund, we have incubators. But NYC we tax people. We make this the safest big city in the country. Our streets are cleaner, safer. We support our cultural institutions. Rather than tax breaks we’re investing our money in making this city a better place for people to live so that when you want to start a business, you don’t have any choice. This is where the best and the brightest are.

More discussion:


iGlue Raises New Funding To Wikify The Web

iGlue, which wants to “wikify the web“, has raised a further $550,000 funding from private investors alongside Hungary-based Power of the Dream Ventures.

The application unveiled at the recent GeeknRolla event in London, is pretty interesting in that it creates an additional information layer over web pages by using natural language technology to understand its content. The browser widget recognizes names of relevant entities, such as people, geographical locations, institutions etc. and on the spot displays related data, images, videos, events in a timeline.