With BFI, the online movie service will make up to 300 titles available to rent or buy, including movies from such filmmakers, as Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Terence Davies and Bill Douglas made between 1950 and 2000. Distrify gives movie content creators and distributors the opportunity to offer films to global audiences through building unique viral film sales platforms.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) has been incredibly protective over any website using its logo as the cost of companies being officially associated with the games is very high. Launching the official Olympic Facebook page today, at a large press event in London, attended by former gold medal winner Boris Becker and representatives from the International Olympic Committee, Facebook revealed that it would carry no advertising around its any of its Games-themed pages.

Some Canadian startups looking to tap into larger markets are bypassing the original Valley and instead heading east across the Atlantic. Hossein Rahnama, founder and chief executive of Flybits based out of Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone in Toronto, said he decided to set up a second office in London because it was similar to the company's home city in many ways. Europe tends to have higher adoption rates of new mobile technologies, which made London an appealing place to launch an expansion of his mobile software platform, he said.

In the second half of 2011, Google received 1,455 requests from the Government to hand over its users' private data and it complied with 64% of those demands. The number of requests made by the American government at the end of last year also grew by 37%, from 4,601 in 2010, to 5,950. However, interestingly, Google did a much better job at fulfilling the wishes of the US government, the country from which the technology company hails, than any other government, complying, at least partially, with 93% of all requests. Google only fulfilled 45% of the German government's requests for …

Circulation for The Economist reached more than 1.6m over the year, comprised of 1.5m in print and 123,000 in digital editions. Circulation-based revenue from The Economist and the group's other publications The World Inand Intelligent Life rose 6% with digital circulation revenue more than doubling. The Economist Group posted a record operating profit of GBP67.3 million for its financial year ending March 31.

IPC Media has announced that it is to launch digital editions for thirty of its brands with 14 to be made available internationally on Apple's Newsstand over the next fortnight and a further 16 to launch by the end of August. It follows a similar announcement from Time Inc that all of its titles will be launched on the platform. Seven IPC brands are currently available on Newsstand; Cycling Weekly, Decanter, Livingetc., Wallpaper*, What Digital Camera, World Soccer and Yachting World.

For GBP10.8 million, Tesco has bought a 97% stake in UK-based WE7 and plans to purchase the remaining shares within the coming weeks. Overall, Tesco intends to increase investment in its online business to around GBP150 million between 2012 and 2013. Last year, the supermarket chain acquired Blinkbox, a subscription-free online movie service available on PC, games consoles, tablets and smart TVs.

Martha Payne's images of uninspiring school meals-one consisted of two croquettes, a plain cheeseburger, three slices of cucumber and a lollipop -drew international attention. The blog, set up about six weeks ago as a writing project and to help raise money for a school-meals charity, has drawn more than 2 million hits. Martha, who lives in the coastal town of Lochgilphead, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) west of Edinburgh, gave each meal a "food-o-meter" rating, and offered an assessment of its contents. An online outcry prompted officials to lift a ban on posting photos of her school lunches.

Hot on the heels of completing its acquisitionof Findaproperty last week, Zoopla is increasing its online real estate inventory once again: it will operate the property portals for the UK daily newspapers the Independent, the Evening Standard, and the Evening Standard's popular standalone property site (itself an offshoot of a printed supplement) Homes And Property, on an exclusive basis. All three publications are owned by the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev. The partnership went live Friday.

Home Office security officials will rely on overseas-based social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to comply voluntarily with requests from British police and security services to collect and store personal data tracking web, email and mobile text use. Home Office officials appear to be relying on their claim that most overseas communication companies operate under "similar, if not more intrusive legal regimes without the rigorous safeguards" provided by the proposed UK legislation. But precise details of the powers to seize data and force companies to monitor it have been deferred until regulations are published.