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The head of a digital marketing agency founded in Edinburgh just over a decade ago has been crowned European Entrepreneur of the Year.

Steve Leach, chief executive of Bigmouthmedia, yesterday took the title, at a ceremony in Paris hosted by the European Business Awards. It follows similar triumphs elsewhere; in the last 12 months, he has been crowned Entrepreneur of the Year for both Scotland and the UK.

Through a variety of fully integrated digital marketing channels: Search (PPC and Online Media Planning, Affiliates, Social Networking, Brand Monitoring, Online PR and Web Analytics, Bigmouth Media develops, achieves and tracks client’s target result; whether that be sales, enquiries, brand exposure, brand buzz, demographic expansion, user engagement, relationship marketing and/or user reach.

Customers include British Airways, MTV, Hilton Hotels International, Tesco and Starbucks.

I don’t know about you but with 200 TV channels to go at I can’t find anything to watch most nights. It the usual story - soaps, reality TV (is there such a thing?), quiz shows, depress-u-dramas and third rate made-for-tv movies. So I increasingly turn to the web for my entertainment. As more and more deals are done I find I can watch some pretty interesting stuff, usually music or comedy centric shows or video clips. It is with a warm (well- tepid) heart that I report that MTV Networks has cut several online syndication deals with web sites.

MTV will supply short-form content to Veoh, GoFish, imeem, MeeVee and Dailymotion. These deals augment existing arrangements with AOL, Joost, MSN, Bebo and Comcat’s Fancast.

Why did MTV push Tila off the cliff? - Tequila!

The marketing hype with about as much sex appeal as a slightly attractive wooden horse and described as “the Paris Hilton of cyber-celebrities” (as if that’s an accolade!) will get a second chance at small-screen romance as MTV green-lighted a sophomore season of her series.

The network has ordered 10 more episodes of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila from 495 Productions in which the bisexual MySpace.com pin-up queen will once again try to find the right man or woman among a batch of straight guys and lesbians. The rookie season of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila was MTV’s top new series among its target 12-to-34 demographic in 2007, according to network officials.

Personally I would sooner scoop my brains out with a spoon than watch her performance, but hey, she has 1.7million MySpace ‘virtual’ friends. The online world is really, really sad!

The end of the year is closing in so I thought I would share with you my pick of the top three hottest tech companies. I have based my selection primarily on revenue growth and what I view as an interesting niche or sector. As ever, make your own mind up, do not rely upon my data for your business or personal decisions.

#1 GOLDEN GEKKO www.goldengekko.com

Revenue Growth 06-07: 900% (stg£34,000 - stg£359,000)

HQ: London UK

Sector: Mobile Application Development - Business Productivity

Investors: Active Capital Partners

CEO: Magnus Jern

Customers include: Coca-Cola, Paramount, Unilever, Vodafone

From the website:

Golden Gekko simplifies the development of mobile applications. Whether for marketing, sales or to assist your mobile workforce, Golden Gekko brings the world of mobile applications within everyone’s reach.

We’ve streamlined the development and distribution of mobile applications, allowing for quick and easy deployment, across any mobile network and on over 1000 devices.

Golden Gekko’s unique advantage is our platform the GG Mobile Media Engine(tm). This enables rapid, high quality development of easy-to-use and cost efficient mobile applications.

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