There’s sure to be a slew of cool new tech products launching at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in two weeks, but who would’ve thought that the mobile-focused conference could also act as the launchpad for a new car?

Ford’s Executive Chairman Bill Ford will unveil the B-MAX on Feb 27th at the event in Barcelona, and this is the first manufacturer ever to unveil a car at the leading mobile industry event.

As such, Bill Ford also will become the first leader of an automotive company to deliver a keynote speech at MWC, when he discusses the company’s vision for mobility in the future and explores the potential for mobile technology and vehicles to play more integrated roles.

Ford will announce significant new technologies for Europe to be debuted on the B-MAX, and it’s thought that this could position the vehicle as one of the continent’s “most technologically-advanced small cars”.

“Revealing the B-MAX at Mobile World Congress underlines how important technology is to customers and to Ford,” said Stephen Odell, chairman and CEO, Ford of Europe. “B-MAX will raise the bar for small vehicles in Europe, combining technology and premium engineering into a compact frame.”

Ford Motor Company is based in Dearborn, Michigan, and it manufactures or distributes cars across six continents. The first Ford cars were shipped to Europe in 1903 – the same year Ford Motor Company was founded – with European production beginning in 1911. Today, Ford has around 164,000 employees and about 70 plants worldwide.

Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally will also introduce the B-MAX to the automotive world at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show on March 6.

Scientists in Europe are working on a project that could allow children and robots to become ‘friends’.

Robots can help children in all sorts of ways, by assisting with everything from school work and cookery to play. While at the moment, children may grow fond of robot companions, the robots themselves can’t build up a bond with the youngsters over time.

The ALIZ-E project looks to change that by developing “the theory and practice behind embodied cognitive robots capable of maintaining believable any-depth affective interactions with a young user over an extended and possibly discontinuous period of time.”

The EU-funded project is looking to increase human-robot interaction timeframes from mere minutes to a range of days. Non-verbal interaction will be a strong emphasis of the research, with robots adapting their behaviour to different user profiles.

ALIZ-E involves researchers from Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, and while it’s unlikely to lead to robot-human marriages or anything so extreme in the near-term, if a robot can remember you, and over a number of days develop its interactions with you, it’s a step closer to creating artificially intelligent ’beings’ that really are our friends.

Do we really want that? Some may be creeped out by the idea, while others who are alone on Valentine’s Day may feel strangely comforted by it.

Online activist group Anonymous has reportedly taken down a number of Greece government run websites in response to the people powered uprising in Athens. This latest attack comes just over a week after the ‘hacktivist’ group defaced the Greek Ministry of Justice website.

As you read this, buildings are being set ablaze in central Athens against the approval of an enormously unpopular bill set in place to secure a second bailout from the EU to help avoid national bankruptcy.

Lawmakers voted in favour of the bill that imposes harsh new austerity measures in return for a €130 billion ($171 billion) new bailout agreement to shave €100 billion ($132 billion) off the country’s national debt.

As far as we’re aware, Anonymous have taken down the following sites: a Major TV channel, Prime Minister’s website, National Police, Ministry of Finance and Minister of finance Evangelos Venizelos’ personal site.

This is yet another involvement by Anonymous in international politics and people-powered uprisings. Most recently we saw the organisation hack Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s email server, accessing numerous inboxes of his staffers and revealing the most commonly used password to be “12345.” A timeline of all of Anonymous’ political involvements can be found here.

Whether Anonymous’ acts have any impact outside of raising awareness online and causing some embarrassment to its victims is another discussion all together.

Update 00:08 GMT: According to comments on our Facebook page, banks sites and political parties sites have also been taken down.

The small city of Newry isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find a thriving startup hub with a global profile, but that’s exactly what it could become if one highly ambitious woman and her team have their way.

Newry is in Northern Ireland; part of the UK, on the border with the Republic of Ireland. Its location made it a flashpoint during the Troubles – the conflict between the Catholic and Protestant communities in the country between the 1960s and 1998. While those days are largely behind it, the region still faces considerable challenges, not least rising youth unemployment and a strong reliance on public funding. However, there’s hope in the form of Emerald Valley, a new initiative launched in the city which has big plans to turn Newry around.

Emerald Valley is, in essence, an incubator. It offers startups a place to work closely with others, helps them find the right support and focuses on “nurturing, encouraging and growing the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.” With seven startups now at home in the facility, it’s already heading towards full capacity.

The startups include a mix of local companies and some from Silicon Valley that have set up a base there; but why Newry? It’s hardly the hive of tech activity you’ll find an hour’s drive down the road in Dublin, where companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter have presences.

Paul Graham (not Mr Y Combinator) of location-based commerce startup Phlok says that Dublin has largely priced itself out of the startup market thanks to the large salaries that the Internet giants there can pay. Graham has based himself at Emerald Valley to harness the talent in the nearby technology college, in addition to the support that the incubator offers.

Aaron Gibson of Yumpod is a born entrepreneur, who got the bug when he renovated a bike and sold it at a profit at the age of 8. He hasn’t been tempted to take his company to Dublin, London or elsewhere as he has faith in Newry’s trajectory. “I don’t think there’s much point of moving out of somewhere that’s starting to grow so rapidly. It’s better staying here when you know it’s going to be so big in the future.”

Meanwhile, early-stage Silicon Valley startups Kallsafe and Awayonbiz relocated to Newry not only for the proximity of Dublin but the beauty of the area. Its tree-lined hills and historic river (where Saint Patrick is said to have planted a Yew tree) ooze Irish charm that is irresistible to many Americans.

The woman with the vision

Emerald Valley was founded by Nichola Bates, who had a vision to build a tech community in Newry, which is already home to First Derivatives, a successful, publicly traded company that serves the capital markets industry around the world. Newry also benefits from being well-connected to the Internet via fast fibre optic cable connections that run through the city and being situated between Dublin and the Northern Ireland capital, Belfast.

Bates moved to Newry from Belfast and was surprised to find a lack of any technology community, despite First Derivatives employing 250 developers in the city. In an attempt to develop a more active scene, she organised Bizcamp Newry, which featured talks from figures in the worlds of business, entrepreneurship and digital media. “People said no-one would come to Newry and that it would be a flop, but we had over 100 people on our first time so it was clear that there was something there, and that’s where it started.”

For the past two years, Bates has been investigating how to build an ecosystem in Newry that can take advantage of its proximity to Dublin but offer the benefits of being based in the UK, such as tax credits for research and development, and a startup visa that allows companies to relocate to easily the country. One of the key things that was missing was a central location to serve as a focal point for the city’s technology scene, and with private investment from American investor Eve Earley, Emerald Valley officially opened its doors last month.

Bates says that the word ‘Incubator’ is over-used and under-delivered upon, but she wants Emerald Valley to be different. For example, she meets with each startup each month to review their progress and identify where they’re not pushing themselves hard enough. Emerald Valley aims to be a place where startups can develop, and learn the skills they need to be successful.

Turning the city around

Now that Emerald Valley is full, what next? “Now it’s a case of knuckling down and making the startups that we have really successful. Our focus over the next twelve months is getting out there to the world and taking our startups by the hand and saying ‘Come on guys, we need people to know that you’re here.’ We need to start raising them significant amounts of money to grow them, so that we can fill our building, fill the next building, build a city. It’s a huge plan.”

Emerald Valley has room for four more startups in its current premises, and its next step involves a 500,000 square foot property on a local industrial estate.

Bates’ ambition extends way beyond attracting a few startups to Newry – she wants to help turn the town around. “It’s a wee bit mad but I don’t think it’s totally insane,” she says. Emerald Valley wants to engage with deprived parts of the community to show them that entrepreneurship is an accessible, achievable goal.

The building will host CoderDojo coding classes for young people, to introduce them to the idea of building software and Web products. Meanwhile, building successful, high-growth companies in the city will have a wider positive economic effect.

Public funding: Welfare for the middle class?

Bates is resolute that Emerald Valley should be a completely private enterprise with no public money involved. She says that this is something that has been met with resistance from the public sector, which feels that it should be funding such projects.

“What happens in Northern Ireland is that the minute you take the (public funding) soup, they own you and the focus completely changes.” Bates describes public funding as ‘welfare for the middle class’, and says that companies can become addicted to it, and constrained by the conditions it imposes.

“A number of the public sector organisations around us are very uncomfortable and feel that we’re in competition with them. But I’m free – there’s no handcuffs on me, there’s no muzzle. I can say exactly what needs to be said without anybody saying ‘Well, we’ll just pull your funding.’ What I offer is entirely a commercial model.”

Keep an eye on Newry

While Newry is still a long way from being one of Europe’s key startup hubs, in Nichola Bates it has a figurehead with the guts and drive to make it happen. Bates admits that the coming year is crucial in proving that her vision can yield solid results, and  we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Emerald Valley’s progress in 2012.

Online video streaming services Netflix and Hulu are reported to be considering expanding their platforms to launch in Russia, a new report from Russian newspaper Vedomosti has revealed.

According to the report, Hulu executives visited Moscow at the end of last year and met with Russia’s leading film studios and video services, discussing the the possibility of launching in the country. Amongst the representatives from Hulu was Johannes Larcher, the company’s senior vice president of international.

Hulu’s mission was apparently to understand the current state of the online video market in Russia, the demand for advertising in online video and the strategies of existing services in the Russian market. Hulu’s interest is believed to have been piqued by the county’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and recent comScore research which suggests Russians view more online video than any other European country.

Hulu’s visit follows a similar fact-finding mission by Netflix, which is also reported to be exploring the possibility of a launch in Russia.

Netflix already operates in 45 countries (recently launching in the UK and Ireland) and Hulu has an office in Japan, but both companies are said to be extremely interested in bringing their services to Russia.

Whilst 22 European countries may have already signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trademark Agreement (ACTA), one of Europe’s biggest economies — Germany — will hold off signing the treaty after officials said it would wait for an EU parliamentary decision before moving ahead.

Techdirt tipped us to a Speigel Online report which states that Germany’s Department of Justice decided to hold off its decision to enter the agreement, with Justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger stating that it would wait until on the “online and offline” public debate on the new treaty had been concluded.

ACTA is a voluntary agreement between nations that covers a wide range of counterfeit goods, both physical and digital. However, it has stirred up controversy for both the secretive ‘behind-closed doors’ way in which it was drafted, and the effect it could have on our online lives.

ZDNet lists facts, misconceptions and questions about the act, detailing what consumers can expect if the treaty is ratified.

The EU must now decide whether it needs ACTA and wants [it]” said Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. ”This must be approved by the European Parliament only once. All controversial issues are being discussed at European level and must now be answered.”

Germany joins Latvia, Poland and the Czech Republic in pulling its support for ACTA, with Slovenia’s Ambassador to Japan making a quite incredible apology after she signed the ACTA agreement on behalf of the European country.

The announcement comes at an important time, especially given that tomorrow (February 11) will see an international day against ACTA. It isn’t likely that Germany’s decision to hold off signing the agreement is a direct result of the protest but it may certainly have had officials talking about its impact.

Given the response the SOPA and PIPA acts saw in the US, it appears some politicians are paying attention to online opinions, waiting for questions to be answered before anything is signed.

More than a year after former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted from power in Tunisia – an event credited with kick-starting the so-called Arab Spring – Google has announced that it’s teaming up with Le Monde to give six Tunisian journalists the chance to work at the French newspaper as part of an internship programme.

“Six Tunisian journalists are coming to Paris to work for three months in the Le Monde newsroom,” says William Echikson, Google’s External Relations and ‘Head of Free Expression’, Europe, Middle East and Africa. “The journalists will help cover daily news and the upcoming French Presidential election. Our hope is that they then will return home with new skills that will serve to construct a new, free but responsible professional press in Tunisia.”

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. Although French isn’t an official language of Tunisia, due to France’s former occupation of the country French does play a major role in Tunisia and is widely used, which should help ease the journalists into working life in a foreign country.

Google has been upping its efforts to distance itself from accusations that it’s destroying journalism, and has also sponsored a number of contests to “help stimulate innovation in digital reporting”. Organized by the Global Editors Network (GEN), the GEN Data Journalism Awards celebrate some of the best examples of data journalism from both established news organisations and newcomers.

This followed a $5m donation it made to non-profit organizations promoting new forms of journalism, including $2 million to the Knight Foundation, and $3 million invested internationally.

The fact that Google is aligning itself with more and more journalism initiatives is certainly a proactive PR move on the company’s part, but it will likely do little to stave off accusations that the search giant has eroded the revenues of major media companies, even though all it does is aggregate content.

The six Google internship winners include reporters from across the politics and digital culture sphere, covering editors, photographers and broadcasters.

“At Google, we are aware of the need to work with publishers to smooth the transition not only from oppression to freedom, but from analogue to digital distribution,” adds Echikson. “We are sponsoring a series of digital journalism prizes with Institut de Sciences Politiques, the International Press Institute in Vienna and the Global Editors Network in Paris. We also are the proud backer of Reporters Without Borders’ annual Netizen of the Year award. In addition, we have come up with a series of products such as Adsense to split online ad revenues with publishers.”

Echikson also notes that Google is building a series of “new Internet tools” to enable better interaction between politicians and voters “to support free elections” across North Africa and the Middle East.

Television is hurtling rapidly towards an online future – from watching shows on-demand on computers and mobile devices, to bringing apps and interactive experiences to the largest screen in the house. What exactly will that future look like? To find out, MIPCube next month should be an essential mark on your calendar.

With high-profile speakers, a startup competition and some of the world’s most innovative viral video and transmedia producers in attendance, this is set to help make sense of the shape that the future of TV will take.

Sessions lined up in the busy programme include ’How to rewire television for the new world order’, ‘Why today’s rising star would rather make it big on YouTube’, ‘Creating new wave cinema 2.0 with the Web techs’, and a look at how Microsoft’s Kinect is helping to bring motion and TV together. Speakers in attendance will include Twitter’s UK General Manager, Tony Wang and Allen DeBevoise of next-generation video entertainment network Machinima.

Exposing new talent

Meanwhile, MIPCube Content 360 will see digital creatives pitch new ideas relating to cross-media content and next-generation audience engagement via TV, Internet, social media and mobile applications, personalisation, viral content, social games and other digital applications. Three finalists will be awarded €5,000 each to create pilots to compete for the award. If you’d like to apply, the deadline for entries is 24 February.

MIPCube Lab is a startup competition that’s looking for the most promising, disruptive TV startup of the year. Whether it’s a new business model, an app or a technological solution, finalists will pitch and network with media VCs and strategic partners at MIPCube, so it’s well worth applying. You can find full details here.

We’ll be there – will you?

MIPCube takes place in Cannes, France on 30 and 31 March, right before MIPTV, the well-established TV industry event, so it’s a great time to network with some of the industry’s most influential figures.

Always keeping our eye on the future of media, The Next Web will be in attendance, reporting just as we did during the Midem music industry conference last month.

Established mainstream media models are being swept aside and it makes sense to stay on top of the changes. If you’d like to be at MIPCube too, you can register here, with special rates for startups and students.

Berlin-based EyeEm is keen to make sure you know that it’s not another Instagram clone, and the launch today of its API should help get that message across.

While EyeEm lets you take photos, add filters and share them to your social networks (sound familiar?), the key difference here is context. When you publish a photo, you’re encouraged to tag it with not only a location but with what you’re doing, too. This allows EyeEm to be able to compile themed collections of photos based around activities, events and locations automatically. As a result, for example, you can easily see all the photos of people playing the same sport, at a particular event, or all the photos taken in the same city, right within the app.

The new API allows developers to harness these feeds of photos for their own apps and services. EyeEm launched last summer and released a revamped app, which emphasised its key difference from the competition, in December 2011. While CEO Florian Meissner won’t give out any figures on user numbers, he says that the December relaunch boosted engagement around the app, and exploring at the photos shared on EyeEm, it seems that it’s certainly managed to break out of the ‘Berlin bubble’ to some extent.

The API is read-only at the moment, although the ability to post photos to EyeEm from third party apps is in the pipeline – something that Instagram seems opposed to. The API currently offers access to user photos, albums, favourites, likes and comments, as well as topics and photo tags by city, country, venue and by event.

The API’s launch precedes the upcoming Photo Hack Day in Berlin. This will see developers creating apps and services with popular photo-related APIs and beyond. As an example of what might come out of the event, Meissner suggests an app that identifies songs using Shazam and then creates a themed photo gallery for it from EyeEm photos.

Photo Hack Day is hosted by EyeEm in partnership with iStockPhoto, and if you’re in Berlin on 25 and 26 February and want to take part, you can find out more here.

Update at foot of post.

Google is considering opening a retail store in Dublin, a planning application noted by Bloomberg reveals.

The store, located on its campus in the Irish capital, would be open to the public and sell unspecified “Google merchandise,” the application says.

This would be Google’s first public retail store. Last year it opened a presence in a London branch of Currys and PC World, with a branded section of the store dedicated to Chromebooks. Google sells a wider array of merchandise online via the Google Store, and a Google Doodle store powered by Zazzle.

It’s unknown exactly what the Dublin store will sell, and indeed it may not even open at all – a Google spokesperson told Bloomberg “While we do have the option to open retail space, we are examining all potential uses… No final decision has been taken.”

If it does come to fruition, the Dublin store, at Google’s largest base outside its Mountain View HQ, would take up 123 square meters (1,323 square feet) of space, with a mezzanine floor.

Bricks-and-mortar stores are a growing trend among tech companies, it seems. eBay opened a pop-up shop in London before Christmas, and it’s rumoured that Amazon may be experimenting with a physical retail presence in Seattle. Meanwhile, Microsoft has a growing chain of stores in the US.

UPDATE: We’ve received the following statement from Google, indicating that the possible shop, if it goes ahead, will sell branded merchandise:

“We already have an online store selling things like Google T-shirts and pens. We have the option of a small space doing the same in our Dublin office but we’ve not made any decisions, it’s simply a planning application.”