I’m sitting here outside the Royal Festival Hall, and I’ll be here all day chatting to tech people and startups who want to drop by to the Techcrunch UK meetup. It’s 12.14pm right now and I’ll do a live blog throughout the day of the people and companies who swing by.

First up was “AJ” (pictured below) who is working on an interesting idea (here’s his blog, so stay tuned).

Update 2.13pm:

About 50-60 people have turned up and everyone is chatting away as planned. Best thing to do for updates is whatch my Twitter feed as getting WiFi out here is a little flaky….

I’m delighted to announce that TechCrunch / CrunchGear are holding a Berlin meetup with our partner and co-organiser twidox. The “TechCrunch / twidox German Web 2.0 Meet-up” will be in Berlin, on the 11th of June. Imedo.de has kindly offered to throw the networking event at their offices here from 7:30 pm onwards (pictured above, nice huh).

Peter Ha will be there from the US to represent CrunchGear together with Mike Butcher who writes for both TechCrunch UK and TechCrunch. We both look forward to being able to say “Ich bin ein Berliner”!

We still have a couple of sponsorship opportunities available, so should you be interested, please let us know via our amazing co-host and co-organiser Nicholas MacGowan von Holstein, Twidox Co-founder.

Please note that because we are restricted on numbers, this is strictly an ‘invitations only’ event, meaning only those that received an invite via the XING guest list will get in. We have 100 tickets to give away though. How do you get to be one of the 100? Just go register on the twidox private beta and the first 100 will get an invite.

We are looking forward to seeing you all on June 11th!

Thanks again to our great list of sponsors, who keep these events free to attendees. Here are the sponsors in alphabetical order (as we have not created a tier system on this ocassion).

Allyve - all you have, all live. Allyve is your remote control with preview for the internet: all you have, all live, alive!

Gimahhot – Gimahhot is the world’s first B2C Ecommerce platform on which brand products are traded like on the stock exchange. Similar to Amazon’s Marketplace, users can buy immediately at the current offer price or place bids that all merchants can react on

Imedo – imedo is a German health community that enables patients to take control over their health by sharing advice on such matters as diseases or treatment options and finding people with similar health challenges

Kyte – The future of digital content distribution, user engagement & monetization. Kyte makes it easy to create authentic digital content, instantly distribute it across the web, social networks and mobile phones, and engage with an audience through real-time multimedia communications

MediaVentures – an entrepreneur-driven venture capitalist with a successful track record in developing strong brands out of fresh ideas.

Mister Wong - Mister Wong is Europe´s leading social bookmarking service with more than 4 million unique visitors a month and did just aqcuired lifestream.fm, a media and services aggregator. Lifestream.fm is also a sponsor.

Plazes - is your social web to-go. Share your location, stay connected with friends, let them know where you’re at and make future plans, see who’s crossing your path and what’s happening nearby.

Qype - The largest user-generated local review site in Europe

Sevenload - sevenload is your social media platform for photos, videos and interactive shows. Our community offers all sevenloaders a ton of excitement and enormous creative potential – so get on sevenload today!

Sixgroups - With the new six groups livecommunities, webmasters can turn their websites into communities within minutes. They provide a new way of real time communication called the “livestream” which aggregates community activities, topic-related social media and chat messages.

Talicious – a web based community for talented people, no matter whether it is photography, art, music, singing or sports.

twidox - twidox is a free, user generated library of ‘quality’ documents that allows individuals and organizations to easily publish, distribute, share, and discover them.

Weblin - The social software weblin not only makes people visible on websites but also makes communication possible across all websites. It brings people with the same interests together and turns the entire web into a virtual world.

Xing – The business network connecting millions of professionals worldwide

The sun is shining, London is officially in Summer mode, so I think it’s time we started a series of TechCrunch UK meetups. The first is totally impromptu, organised at the last minute, has no sponsors (as yet) and no agenda other than to meet, chat and enjoy a drink on a Friday in the sun by the Thames. So the details are:

Date: This Friday, May 9th.

Time: Midday onwards (I will be there from then) until whenever.

Place: Royal Festival Hall on the outside Terrace, on a map here. (See also images above and below)

Nearest Tubes: Waterloo (follow the crowds to the SouthBank/Royal Festival Hall) or Embankment (walk over the bridge to the Southbank / Festival Hall)

WiFi: The Southbank has free WiFi!

Food: The RFI has a cafe inside which serves hot and cold food.

Tags: The “Official” Flickr tag for this event is TechCrunchUK1

PLAN B: If for whatever reason the Southbank Centre doesn’t work out we’ll switch to the BFI Film Cafe which is literally 100 yards away here under Waterloo Bridge.

How do I check where you are if I get lost?: I will Twitter any relevant info, or text my mobile on 077 2029 1095.

RSVP: Just tell us if you are coming in the comments below.

Agenda: There is no agenda other than TechCrunch UK being able to meet with startups, allowing startups to meet up with eachother, and pulling in anyone else interested in this scene.

OK so there is a little agenda: Helping a guy out who is currently in hospital with a very serious condition and unable to work on his startup. Paul Cleghorn is founder of TIOTI.com, one of the first startups I wrote about on TechCrunch UK in 2006. Anyone who knows Paul will attest to his generosity and good nature. So it was a real shame when he was stuck down with an unknown condition some weeks ago which confined him to the Royal Brompton Hospital’s intensive care unit. Thankfully he is doing slightly better now (he’s off the oxygen) and is now able to send out the occasional Twitter.

However, if there is another startup out there who can afford to help Paul out, that would be great - such as offering some free advertising inventory or perhaps some other form of service, just to help TIOTI tick over while Paul recovers. If you’d like to know more then perhaps contact me and I’ll pass you on to the right person please email eleanor[@]tioti.com.

Further events: Watch out for a TechCrunch meetup in Ireland soon, and some others around Europe, to be announced shortly. Please contact me if you are interested in being a sponsor of these, as we can offer sponsors promotion on TechCrunch UK and TechCrunch.com.

UPDATE: At least one startup is bringing some of its T-Shirts to hand out. Feel free to bring your own schwag along.

I’m not sure if they are going to have a clause in their contract which says “No terrorist clients”, but UK startup Cellcrypt is looking to raise several million pounds for its voice call encryption technology which works on mobiles over VOIP. It’s already closing in on deals with multinational companies and the British government, so it sounds like it will be vetting who it works with, and it’s understandably waiting for security clearance from the UK and US authorities. However, with eBay potentially looking to sell off Skype at some point, I doubt they’ll be looking for quite the same assurances from any new owner.

UPDATE: This event is now sold out.

I recently heard that Scott Rafer would be in town next week. Scott is a Silicon Valley Internet entrepreneur, CEO of Lookery (CrunchBase info), and former CEO of MyBlogLog, which was acquired by Yahoo! last year for $10 million.

So I thought I’d throw a quick dinner to get some startups together and chat. Scott will be talking informally about the scene in the US for startups, and his impressions about the European scene which he knows well. The event will be of particular interest to social networking startups.

You can get a ticket to the dinner here on EventBrite.

Unfortunately, due to the nightmare of booking a venue last minute there are only 12 places, so hurry and get yours. We’ll be throwing bigger, more open TechCrunch events in due course - this dinner is a sort of experiment. If it’s successful and people like the idea, we’ll do more.

(PLEASE NOTE: This is an all-inclusive “Ticket Only” Event, which means you’ll need to have purchased a ticket prior to the event. You can’t turn up and buy one, sorry about that! )

BIO:
Scott Rafer has been helping Internet publishers and users jump on What’s Right Now! since 1995. Today, that means delivering services for social publishing and discovery. Scott is CEO of Lookery, as well as co-founder of Mashery and chairman of Winksite. Lookery is an ad network and user-targeting service that is supporting the growth of social applications starting with Facebook. Mashery manages API and developer programs on behalf of web services providers including Facebook app providers. Winksite helps publishers large and small assemble active mobile communities around their brands based on the content they already syndicate. Just before all that, he was CEO of MyBlogLog until Yahoo! acquired the company in January 2007. Before MyBlogLog, Scott tried to build blog/RSS search companies in both 1998 & 2003. Before the first dotcom boom, Rafer led Internet products group Kodak Hollywood, worked in investment banking at Needham & Company, and graduated from the M&T Program at UPenn.

More info:
Lookery.com
BIO
LinkedIn

Tuesday/Wednesday next week sees the launch of the grand-sounding World Biz Online, and my Spidey Sense is already tingling.

Big London launch in a Mayfair hotel? Check. “Global internet portal”? Check. “The first functioning Web 3.0 site on the internet”? Check. Poised to “change the way that business is currently done on the internet”? Check.

So I just got off the phone to the PR guy who wouldn’t tell me anything about who is behind the site, like the CEO’s name for instance. However, I gather it’s about 20 web apps wrapped into one big site (video, blogging, directories, email, VOIP, chat, text, photos etc) and mashes up consumer and business target markets. Its been “some years in the making”, built across the UK, South Africa and Germany, and is a “home page where you can do everything in one site.” Double check!

I’m in two minds about whether to go to the launch because it already sounds like they have ignored the now distributed nature of the Net and the emergence of APIs and platform applications. Should I go?

UPDATE: I did in fact go along to the presentation.

The site is positioning itself against large business-focused directories like Alibaba, Wand and Yell.com. However, they rather laboured the single point that they had come up with the “alpha and omega” of taxonomies to cover all possible categories. They have also wrapped up a tonne of tools (VOIP, IM, SMS, video, you name it) and are giving it all away free (not that original) as an incentive to register, create a profile and start hocking your business. CEO Stuart Sterzel, who is ex South African Special Forces but also former head of a number of mining and oil/gas businesses, very politely told me that they were extremely confident their plan would succeeed. Indeed, he said they have been researching it for 8 years and had put in well over 6-figures of funding into it via private investors.

My Opinion? I think the site does indeed look like it is 8 years old. The interface is very old fashioned. Plus they will need a lot (and I mean a lot) of marketing to give it any traction. I admire their enthusiasm, but I’m afraid I don’t hold out much hope for it’s success, to be blunt.

Pikum has gone into an invite only beta. The site lets anyone create and play games called Pikums where they can see who’s better at predicting the outcomes of future events/sports fixtures. Pikums can be played for bragging rights, or users can compete for real cash, capitalising on the attention and engagement of fans. Think gambling social network. Technically an e-gambling site, its registered as business on Gibraltar but is run out of London. Early last year Pikum won a seed round from of $650,000 from First Round Capital and a Series A from Virgin USA of $5.27 million. When I can get my invite code to work I’ll let you know what it’s like…

Pixsta is a London-based startup with an image search technology which allows you to browse and search visually. Since launching trials with a handful of partners including Elle’s browse&buy as well as others like the News of The World, it’s now going on the warpath with an image-based advertising network for the online fashion retail market, similar to Google’s adwords model, but based on images not text.

This is how it works: You click on an image, say a dress, and new associated images (matching handbags, shoes etc) appeal in a cloud around it. Clicking on any of the displayed items re-submits that item as the search term. Pixsta argues that a click on its AdImage network is worth more than an AdWord click because for the advertiser, customer acquisition costs are lowered, with lead-to-customer success rates higher. Media brand owners get a new, visual way of monetising their site which is perceived as content rather than advertising. Consumers get to see all the products from various retailers presented in a homogeneous way, like in a shopping mall, with no need to visit numerous individual sites. Clicks go direct to the product landing page.

Pixsta’s patent-pending image search technology is based on research by Pixsta co-founder Dr Daniel Heesch, who came up with algorithms that enable any image to be compared with any other, to determine their similarity in terms of shape, colour, texture and more. Pixsta CEO is Alexander Straub, CEO and co-founder of Pixsta and of early dot-com Mondus back in 1999.

I don’t know where they plan to head with this technology but it occurs to me that if they allowed users to improve the image search by adding their own tags, the search may be improved. However, I dare say they thought of that already and are confident their algorithms can do the heavy lifting.

On March 31st this year Google and Virgin announced a joint venture: to create a human settlement on Mars. Sir Richard Branson penned a passionate statement on the Google Blog, saying:

“Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical…”

Virgle, the name of the joint project, took applications for the first Mars mission on its site, under Google.com/virgle. And there was even a YouTube competition and official video channel. However, the entire stunt was the day before April Fool’s day, and sure enough that’s what it turned out to be.

But it now looks like the joke was on Google and Virgin.

One enterprising individual went and registered Virgle.com, but way back in January. Who registered it, and why?

Back then a story surfaced related to news that Google and Virgin were working on “a secret project”, code-named Virgle, which was not to do with Mars at all. It supposedly had an environmental bent and may have been related to news that Virgin was looking to develop new kinds of environmentally friendly fuels (Virgin Fuels), possibly in conjunction with Google.org. Google’s non-profit arm is rumored to be working on a flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrid that could be powered by electricity, gasoline or biofuels.

So well before before April 1st, one Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Amsterdam-baseed entrepreneur and co-organiser of European startups conference The Next Web, already had the Virgle domain. Van Zanten is best known as “Boris” the guy in the white suit who invaded Mike Arrington’s house with his partner in crime Patrick Laive.

Whatever his reasons, it would be fair to say that registering Virgle will be useful publicity for The Next Web as Virgle.com now-redirects to a January 4 post on The Next Web’s blog where van Zanten commented:

“Guess what, the domainname Virgle.com was for sale and cheap too. I bought it and will make it redirect here. If this project becomes cool enough we could start another blog on that domain.”

That might have been the end of the story, until Virgin recently contacted him about the domain:

> Congratulations on registering virgle.com - swift work on your part!
> I have now been asked to retrieve the domain by both Virgin and
> Google. On that basis, we should be grateful if you would transfer
> the domain over into our control. We shall, of course, reimburse you the
> official registration and hosting costs you have incurred to date.

Van Zanten tells me “I haven’t decided what I am going to do with the [virgle.com]domain. Giving it back is an option. Starting a blog too. Selling it is always possible. For now, I’m just going to wait and see what Virgin/Google comes up with.”

So could there be more to this than meets the eye? Could Google and Virgin be working on something together after all? Id that why they want the domain back?

Stay tuned for more as this story as it develops…

Hobnox is a video and audio tools platform in closed beta coming out of Cologne, Germany. It’s aimed - mainly - at users who’d like to use rich tools to create and collaborate over video and audio. And I must say, what they have done with Flash tools is amazing.

The idea is to unite broadcast quality media with community tools. So the Hobnox Audio Teaser audio engine is a pretty complex Flash tool for sound, mimicking some real-life products, like effects pedals. Users get access to a digital media library and can collaborate with like minded creators and consumers. The lucky few get filtered into some editorial-led Web TV channels, which are quite high quality. Hobnox plans for the Audiotool to be scaled into a full browser-based audio production studio and the Livetool will become a fully functional broadcasting studio for live shows.

The site is still in a closed-beta phase, though some parts of the site are still accessable through invitation only.Althoug Hobnox is based in Germany (Cologne, Berlin, Munich) it also has an office in the USA (Boston, MA).

For a taster of what you can do Paul Proulx from Hobnox put together the below mashup of Tarantino films (via):