The business of half of all the start-ups is connected to cell phone applications, such as the Taxibeat application used for booking cabs.

Endeavor Greece said capital from the Jeremie initiative – channeled through four funds (Elikonos, Odyssey, Open Fund and PJ Tech Catalyst) helped in the spectacular increase of startup businesses in the country. The results also showed that Greece-based investors accounted for 72% of new investments in 2013, while IT enterprises accounted for 50% of total investments in 2013.

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A cheerful and energetic character, Kostas Koutrakis doesn't look a day of 60. Only his hands betray his love for wood and the tools of his trade. His career began in 1969, when he started off as a cabinetmaker, producing furniture on order for customers. He's also tried his hand at musical instruments, making three guitars. And he's dabbles in art, gifting his paintings to friends if they like them.

But now he's into making wooden bikes, rolling his first model out of his workshop in 2012, following a challenge from a friend.

"If you're that skilled, make a bike," she said and Koutrakis duly produced one, without much bother. But he wasn't pleased with the prototype and the fall-off in his specialised carpentry business as a result of the crisis gave him the time he needed to perfect it.

The carpenter, who is based in the eastern Attican town of Gerakas, came up with a new shape for the frame, which is made by gluing thin wooden strips of chestnut, beach and walnut together.

The fruits of his labour are a beautiful, varnished, no-gear bike, weighing only 13kg and which he insists is more flexible and just as sturdy as a metal equivalent.

It created a sensation when he wheeled it out in public. Taking it for a spin to Syntagma Square last December, everyone wanted to know where he had bought it.

"Every Friday, I do about 70km with a cyclists group called Freeday. Some of the others remark that my bike is so so nice that, apart from wanting to take it for a spin, they'd like to hang it up in their living room as a decoration," he says.

Koutrakis, who is working on five orders, is now designing models for women and children and is thinking of ways to get his bikes into foreign markets, like Holland where cyclists rule the streets.

By Pavlos Methenitis

To read the rest of the article, please visit enetenglish.gr

The companies are Folli Follie Group, Jumbo and Fourlis. Indeed, according to a report in "Kathimerini" newspaper, the three business groups were not daunted in efforts to expand abroad by the six preceding years of recession in Greece, but are planning to open new stores.

Folli Follie Group is finding recovery in the local Romanian market maintaining a long standing presence in the wholesale and retail distribution of clothing and footwear. Next September it will open the first store in Baneasa “shopping village”. According to reports in the Romanian press, the store will be operated by LT Apparel Romania, a partnership venture between the LT Apparel group and Folli Follie, which has the distribution rights for Brooks Brothers clothes for Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans and Monaco. Brooks Brothers clothes are available at 500 stores in 17 countries, while LT Apparel maintains 15 sales points in Greece and Monaco. The LT Apparel Romania with an initial capital of EUR 500,000, with 51% owned by LT Apparel and 49% by the FF Group Romania, a subsidiary of Folli Follie, according to the Romanian media.

Indeed, the Greek group will also invest in a department store in the center of Bucharest on a property already owned by Elmec. The total investment for the project comes to 5 million euros for the total reconstruction of the six-storey building. The property will be ready, in 2015, and will house the department store group in Romania, which has a wide range of FF Group brands, while the rest of the building will be leased to other users as offices.

Jumbo group will also immediately expand its presence on the Romanian market. After its original entry in Romania in the fall of 2013, with two stores in Bucharest and Timisoara, the group has reportedly already agreed to lease new large stores, taking over part of the network left by the German chain OBI. The aim of Jumbo management, which has presence in Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria and through franchise in FYROM, and Albania, is to operate 12-18 stores in Romania in the next five years, while estimates show that the first phase of development by 2016 they could obtain a sales volume of around 37 million euros.

To read more, please visit thetoc.gr.

The sculpture of god Ilissos is the first piece of the Parthenon Marbles that has ever “left” the British Museum. The sculptures were taken by Lord Elgin from Greece in 1803, when the country was still under Ottoman rule. Despite the efforts of Greek governments of the past thirty years, the Parthenon sculptures – or Elgin Marbles, as the British like to call them – were never returned to Greece.

Last Friday, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras spoke of the Ilissos loan and called it “an affront to the Greek people,” who are infuriated that the Parthenon sculptures “travel,” but not to their home. The British Museum’s argument had so far been that the sculptures cannot be moved. Now that argument is invalid, Samaras said.

To read more, please visit greekreporter.com

By Philip Chrysopoulos

Bookukoo then puts you in contact with the book-owner through email.

Location-based: For the first time, you have the ability to specify your location on the map and let others know where your personal library is located. Bookukoo gives you the ability to search available books in certain geographical areas, for example find booklovers that live in the same neighborhood as you do.

Easy to use: Managing your library is very easy. You don’t have to type anything. When adding a book to your library you just use your camera to scan the barcode on the back of a book. Immediately all relevant information, such as title, author, and cover page is automatically retrieved. That’s as simple and error-free as it can be.

Unlimited usage: Users can perform an unlimited number of book-swaps. In other words, users can endlessly “recycle” their libraries, at no cost.

Point system: A point system is used in order to ensure fairness and guarantee that you will receive as many books as you provided to the community. You give one book, you get one book. You give 10, you get 10. The point system gives you the flexibility to move away from a book-for-book swap scheme. You can now give away a number of books, collect an equal number of tokens and redeem them later, when you receive books from other members of the bookukoo community.

Disclaimer: bookukoo is designed to work only for hard-copy books, not e-books.

To download the app, please visit bookukoo.com

Hislop has since not only acquired broad recognition for her writing, she has also managed to divide her time between Kent in the South of England, where she lives with her family, the island of Crete, where she spends her holidays and, as of late, the central Athens neighborhood of Patissia, where she is now renting an apartment.

Meanwhile, the author is scheduled to talk about her new city of choice during a special event tomorrow at the Numismatic Museum. The talk, “The Beauty of Athens,” starts at 9 p.m. and comes in response to an invitation from journalist Nikos Vatopoulos and the Kathe Savvato stin Athina (Saturdays in Athens) team and public relations consultant Vasso Sotiriou.

So what else is the author up to these days?

“I’m finishing my new book. The plot is Cyprus, 1974, very new for me. The book will be ready for England in September.”

Why did she decide to get a place in Athens?

“I come to Athens nearly every month to see friends, do talks, or something with my books. Being in a hotel you are never part of a place. I very quickly found the perfect place. I am so excited. It’s very near Vaso [Sotiriou is also her manager]. It’s very lively and I want to write more about Athens, not journalistic, fictional things. It’s a very inspiring city. Staying in a hotel makes you an outsider, and I want to speak the language properly and this will help a great deal. I have to furnish it first,” said Hislop, who has already had a taste of local red tape in her efforts to get her apartment connected to the power grid.

To read more, please visit ekathimerini.com

By Marialena Spyropoulou

An empty taxi would stop, the driver would ask where you were headed and eventually answer with a grim “no” if they happened to be heading in another direction.

What about the shared rides that led to new acquaintances for those sharing taxis and heading, more or less, in the same direction? Nowadays you come across professional drivers – especially younger ones – driving clean cars, while the fares choose the destination and not the cabbies. As I observe new vehicles transporting tourists across town I recall the major disputes over taxis. The level of service in the country is improving and Greeks are getting jobs.

Look at the pharmacies. At one point or another we have all encountered difficulties finding one open out of hours. Many resembled abandoned warehouses in the past, whereas now you come across some that stay open from morning to night, and in most cases, people who are willing to serve you. You also notice the difference between old and new Greece, the difference in the mentality of the old generation compared to the new.

Greece is changing – with a lot of suffering for a portion of society. But it is changing. Whoever might have mentioned a few years ago that most transactions with tax offices or other public services could be done online would have been considered mad.

To read more, please visit ekathimerini.com

By Alexis Papachelas