The Mobile 2.0 Europe conference is coming up in June and TechCrunch will be descending on it too in the shape of myself and Robin Wauters. The Mobile 2.0 Europe conference will be on Friday, June 19, 2009 at the Espacio Esade Forum, with the Mobile 2.0 Europe Developer Day the day before. There is also a Startup Demo Launch pad.

TechCrunch is hosting the official TechCrunch Mobile 2.0 party after the event on Friday and after the speaker’s dinner. We are pre-releasing the first 100 tickets here (there is a small ticket fee to prevent no-shows). We are also looking for sponsors of the party, who will obviously be branded at the event and in posts about it. Please email our events organiser petra(at)twistedtree.co.uk.

Meanwhile the organisers have released the names of the presenting startups for the Mobile 2.0 Europe Demo Launch Pad. Here are their descriptions:

Appswork (Santa Clara / London) - “This is an application based on Twitter that allows users to send files, online status, message backup, person to person (voice) chatting, all unified to get your contacts closer and in one place.”

Distimo (Utrecht) - “Distimo makes mobile app distribution and monitoring easy. Every phone brand or operator is launching its own mobile app store this year, enabling mobile developers and brands to reach a large audience. To truly compete a developer needs to distribute its app in multiple app stores making monitoring performance difficult and time consuming.”

Layar (Amsterdam) - “The World’s First Augmented Reality Browser. Layar shows you what is around you by displaying realtime digital information on top of reality through the camera of the mobile phone. Flip through the directory of ‘layers’ and find ATM’s, bars, houses for sale, hotels and other cool stuff around you.”

Pikkoo [pick-koo] (Oulu) - “This is the world’s first community for you to create, download and share interactive mobile screensavers and wallpapers for free. Pikkoo is an innovative startup based in Oulu, Finland. Pikkoo focuses on social, user generated and interactive mobile content for Adobe Flash Lite and non-Flash Lite enabled phones. The company is privately held and founded in early 2009.”

TheChanner (Barcelona) - “This is a mobile TV Tuner that allows to watch the best Internet TV, 24/7, on your mobile phone. theChanner aims to help everyone to discover channels close to their culture, expressed in their own language, push forward their popularity, and encourage new channels to start mobile broadcasting. Social Mobile TV is here!”

Vulevu (Berlin) - “Think Twitter for dating!” There’s not much more description from these guys - they’re still in alpha - no link yet.

TechCrunch is coming to Berlin next week on June 10 to create and event exploring the German startup scene. The event sold out even before we announced our programme, but we hope you’ll agree it’s going to be pretty good. Check out the schedule below and the awesome sponsors supporting this event. And we still have a few sponsorship opportunities available. If you are interested in supporting the event or any of the other forthcoming TechCrunch events around Europe, please email our event organiser Petra Johansson of TwistedTree. If you are a member of the press wanting to cover the event or any of the forth-coming events, please email Rassami Hok Ljungberg of rassami PR.

In addition, I am heading to Berlin for most of the week, attending Seedcamp on Tuesday, running TC Berlin Wednesday and I’m free Thursday for meetings with startups. I will be based in the Mitte area. Feel to get in touch.

Venue:
ZANOX.de AG
Stralauer Allee 2
10245 Berlin

Here’s our schedule:

3pm: Tea/Coffee

3.20pm: Introduction by the Chairman, Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch Europe

3.25pm: Speed Speech: Lukasz Gadowski, Team Europe, (Topic to be confirmed)

3.45pm: Panel Discussion: “German innovation and Entrepreneurialism”

Debate topics:

- Do German tech companies have what it takes against outsiders launching into the market?

- Management and marketing in Germany: What’s the situation?

- Does Germany have a Silicon Valley or a Silicon Valley mindset capable of creating the next Google/Skype?

Panelists:

Paul Jozefak is a Managing Partner at Neuhaus Partners one of the leading early-stage VC firms based in Germany. Prior to this, he was an Investment Director for Europe at SAP. Here he was in charge of the European region for SAP Ventures with more than 200 million Euro under management. From 1998 until 2000, in his function as Business Development Director Europe at Davis Polk & Wardwell, he accompanied the IPO’s of corporations such as Software AG, Freenet, Travel24 and comdirect. Starting in the mid-90s, Jozefak built up his expertise as a consultant for the software branch at Andersen Consulting.

Inma Martinez Stradbroke Advisors
Inma Martinez is one of the world’s leading digital media strategists, described by Fortune and Time magazine as one of Europe’s top talents in Human Factors and Social Engagement through technology. Switching a career in the financial markets at Goldman Sachs and The Institute for Infrastructure Finance, she joined Cable & Wireless in the mid-1990s to form their New Technologies Advisory, specifically focused on the Internet and IP services. Co-founder in 1999 of Escape Velocity, a 3i-funded AI software company in the early days of mobile services and selected by Lehman Brothers, in 2006 she founded Stradbroke Advisors, a digital media and fund raising consultancy working with Venture Capital firms (3i, Index Ventures), large corporations (NOKIA Finland, Blyk, BBC, MTV Networks, HP, IBM) as well as Web 2.0 startups and film and TV production companies. She is also an Advisor to the EU Technology Commission.

Stephan Uhrenbacher is the founder and was the executive director of Qype. On Germany’s largest assessment portal for local news, its users exchange tips and recommendations about stores, service providers, gastronomy and free time activities all over Europe. In the late 90s Uhrenbacher established the travel portal TravelChannel for Gruner+Jahr. In subsequence followed the supervision of the Northern European market for Lastminute.com in London and he created the reorientation of Bild.de for Axel Springer. At the despatch pharmacy DocMorris he was responsible as its COO for the growth of the corporation in 2003.

Hans Penz, is the CEO and founder of Couch Tycoon. The Hamburg based start-up financing community allows start-up founders to raise their first 20k $ online without a big business plan or a filed investment proposal and enables everyone to become a venture capitalist for only 100 $. Prior to CouchTycoon he worked as technical due diligence consultant for private investors in Munich after he co-developed and licenced a proprietary data transmission technology which allows to send short messages through GSM networks for free. His career as entrepreneur started in to highschool when he founded my first company, an advertising agency which was specialized in youth advertising.

Markus Berger-de León, was appointed CEO of studiVZ Ltd. on 1st March 2009. Prior to his current position he served as CEO of MY-HAMMER AG. From 2002 – 2007 he worked for Jamba, the leading provider of mobile content and entertainment services. During his last two years at Jamba he served as Managing Director, taking overall responsibility of the Jamba business unit. Markus has also previously acted as CTO and COO of a software company that he co-founded, where his responsibilities included establishing IT-driven business-to-business procurement services for customers across Europe. Berger-de León holds a degree in business administration from the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management in Koblenz, Germany. Additionally, he studied at the Columbia Business School and at Plekhanov in Moscow. Currently Markus still holds the position of CEO of the Abacho AG and supervisory board Chairman of the MyHammer AG. Berger-de León is an authority on mobile, media, web 2.0 and convergence topics and frequently speaks on mobile services and content, digital entertainment, mobile technology and industry convergence.

4.30pm: Tea/Coffee break

4.50pm: Speed Speech: Christian Geissendoerfer, CEO, Yoose.com on “Bootstrapping”

Christian has had various marketing and sales experiences in the enterprise software and IT environment. His professional experience includes developing “routes to market” strategy and lead management work at IBM for the EMEA geography across brands and customer sets as well as two years as a sales representative for Lotus Software in France (selling to financial institutions). Based on his interest and experience with mobile enterprise solutions, he has started in 2008 his own venture in the mobile marketing and advertising space. YOOSE offers a mobile couponing platform to reach the right person with the right message at the right time and right place. YOOSE was a Seedcamp finalist in London in September 2008 and launches its service in Berlin in June 2009. Christian is fluent in German, English, French and Spanish and holds a Diploma in Business Administration form the University of Bayreuth. He participated in INSEAD entrepreneurship classes with his venture, was leading the entrepreneurship club and the European Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program with INSEAD and IESE, while his wife attended INSEAD for her MBA.

5.10pm: Startup Pitch Competition

(Startups to be confirmed)

6pm - 8pm: Informal networking over drinks

Startups Judging Panel

Dwight Cribb is the founder and Managing Director of the executive search firm Dwight Cribb Personalberatung. Since 1998 he is an influential advisor of Germany’s leading new media firms in management searches and HR questions. Together with his team he is responsible for around 80 management placements per year in the German new media sector. The Hamburg born Briton studied Marketing with Psychology in Scotland and obtained an MBA with a specialisation in international business. Prior to entering the executive search field Cribb worked at innovative firms in the fields of electronic business information (Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing) and video conferencing (PitcureTel). Dwight Cribb is also the Chairman of the Aravati Global Search Network, a network of twelve owner managed executive search firms in Europe, North America and Asia and Co-Founder of myynto, an HR outsourcing firm. Together with his Partner Maren Freyberg he is an early stage investor and has recently invested in Cliplister, Tolingo, Spreadyo and Carsablanca.

Paul Jozefak
Inmaculada Martinez
Stephan Uhrenbacher
Thomas Hessler, CEO , Zanox

Our sponsors and partners:

Location sponsor: ZANOX.de AG is a global market leader for performance-based online marketing and has established a strong presence in all core markets around the world. More than 2000 prestigious international companies rely on the zanox affiliate network and sector-specific expertise in all sectors where innovation is taking place. Affiliate programmes provide companies with global solutions for efficiently marketing their products and services on the internet. zanox attaches great importance to the quality and the continuing development of its affiliate sites, whose owners are in addition being motivated by fast and transparent compensation. zanox’s international focus is strengthened by its Global Alliance Partner (GAP) programme. Furthermore, in May of 2008, the GAP Campus opened its doors at zanox headquarters in Berlin to serve as an international meeting point for developers and designers.

Media Partner: Gründerszene is the magazine for founders and people interested in founding a company. On a regular basis Gründerszene publishes news and expert content, dealing with the branch. Hands on reports and technical essays shall inspire founders and help them to implement their visions. Gründerszene explicitly wants to foster the passion and the respect towards entrepreneurship among young founders and experts of the branch.

Video partner: sevenload is a social media network for internet television and user generated content. Every channel on sevenload offers independent, intelligent and creative content from users producing their own content as well as professional production companies. sevenload was founded in 2006. sevenload is a global social media platform for photos, videos and interactive show formats. sevenload enables users to manage and share their photos and videos online for free. The site offers an array of different interactive internet shows in various languages and categories. In addition, some of the available channels are from famous and popular artists and musicians.

Strategic partner: Seedcamp is an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA. Seedcamp have set it up to provide seed funding and world-class connections for startups. September 2007 marked the first Seedcamp Week and group of funded startups. September 1009 will mark the third.

Drinks Spornsor: Dwight Cribb Personalberatung was founded in 1998 to provide executive search (headhunter) services to new media clients. The Hamburg based firm is responsible for around eighty high profile new hires in the industry each year. From the outset working with start-ups has been an important part of the business and Cribb in some cases offer “consulting for equity” arrangements to particularly promising start-ups wishing to recruit top-level talent whilst conserving cash. Talk to Dwight Cribb about your plans at Techcrunch Berlin.

It’s widely known that China runs a pretty tight ship - to put it mildly - on what its citizens get to see online, especially that content which exists outside of China. YouTube has been blocked for some time and although Wikipedia was blocked for a while, it’s gradually become more available. However today Chinese authorities have come down like a tonne of bricks on a number of services including Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com, Blogger and a number of other sites. And that’s no joke, given that we’re talking about the Great Wall of China here.

Since many of the sites don’t actually have Chinese versions, it’s hard to know how many people will be affected by this, but for those brave and resourceful business people, entrepreneurs and social commentators with strong links to the world outside China, it’s a crushing blow.

Having traveled to China last year I have a number of contacts there now who have all now confirmed the shutdown (all agreed to be named in this post). The shut-down is almost certainly related to the date. The Tiananmen Square Massacre happened in June 4, and the lead-up to any date like this is usually a time when the Firewall is tightened. The API to Twitter, used by clients like TweetDeck, Twhirl and Seesmic Desktop, has also been affected. [Update: News is coming in that the Twitter API has not been affected as badly as the Web site, making API based Twitter applications better placed in China].

Kaiser Kuo, a Chinese-American writer and consultant in Beijing working with Youku told me via direct message after the system shut down completely using a VPN (which, like proxies, are commonplace in China) that “My only surprise in this matter is that it took ‘em so long.”

Ryan McLaughlin, an ex-pat Amercian writer and web designer/developer based outside Beijing, said [updated:] that VPNs, which many Chinese use to get around the Great Firewall, are not being affected by the shutdown. He also blogs “Undoubtedly the blocks are in an effort to curb online commentary and the dissemination of information about the , which on celebrates its 20th anniversary.”

Mimi Xu, a China/San Francisco based product dev and entrepreneur who Tweets as MissXu, summed it up: “The 3 web services I cant live without - Twitter, Flickr, YouTube - are all blocked in China. Cheers, motherfuckers!”

Edocr, a smaller competitor to other document sharing startups like DocStoc and Scribd, re-launches today with new features and an API, after a long time off-radar.

Eschewing the publisher focus of Issuu, or the broad business focus on DocStoc, the boot-strapped Edocr focuses on corporates and enterprises. So for instance, companies can upload all their public-facing documents, whether they be company reports, press releases, guidance documents, you name it. Admittedly the slightly dull-but-necessary focus is not going to set the world alight, but with plenty of enterprises still getting their heads around the basics of blogging, RSS and even social networks like Twitter, edocr is a simple way for companies to share their PDFs without being lumped alongside a pirated copy of a Harry Potter novel. New features include an improved design, bulk uploading of documents, an API, document categories, better search and the ability to auto-tweet to a Twitter account when new documents get uploaded. Edocr’s Groups feature lets you allocate a bunch of docs to a group. You can also tag up documents with any keyword, which pulls all the docs on any subject in, similar to DocStoc.

The business model is a fremium one. Accounts are free but premium accounts delete advertising on a company’s page. Although pricing is in UK pounds right now (£25 a month, £145 per 6 months or £250 per annum) they are looking at launching US pricing as well, since a third of the site’s traffic is US-based. The site has the usual features like rating, tagging and embedding flash versions of the document in other sites.

Howwever, UK-based Edocr still has a long way to go. Scribd is the largest global player in document sharing by traffic, userbase and number of documents. Docstoc, the second largest, like edocr, also targets the business market, but it splits AdSense revenues 50/50 with anyone who uploads documents and wants to opt into the service. DocStoc has over 3 million documents uploaded and 1.6 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore. Needless to say Edocr is way below that right now. Then there is Twidox in Germany, which also concentrates on organisations, though largely German ones right now.

And if edocr is ever going to be able to compete it’s going to need to make more of its features appealing to this “niche” of businesses that want document sharing. Edocr is closer to Issuu in its concentration on enterprise customers, but Issuu Pro users are also professional magazine and newspaper publishers. Edocr’s concentration on corporates only may not be enough. Plus, Issuu charges a low $19 per month.

It’s to be hoped that edocr, which launched in October 2007, has put its somewhat erratic performance to date behind it now that former co-founder Rhys Jones has exited the business (amicably I gather) and sole remaining founder Manoj Ranaweera has full control to set strategy. I can see edocr being potentially successful in the UK, but a question hangs over its ability to scale internationally, unless, perhaps, it launches a US service soon.

ITV.com is leaping aboard the social media bandwagon to encourage realtime interaction around this afternoon’s FA Cup final between Everton and Chelsea FCs. The broadcaster has integrated updates from Twitter and our old friends AudioBoo in an FA Cup Buzz microsite.

The site uses Twitterfall to keep track of tweets about the match, with an added enhancement; a tool developed by thruSITES will track which of the players are generating the most chatter on Twitter at any given moment, with sliders for each player showing who’s the most talked about.

Fans will also be able to share their armchair commentary (and really bad jokes) using AudioBoo, a service which is rapidly becoming a darling of the mainstream media for making it so easy to transform an audience from passive consumers to active participants.

After the match, fans will be able to scrub along a timeline in the thruSITES buzz tracker to see which players caused most response at crucial moments – a sort of crowdsourced, visual post-match highlights package which, from the other perspective, will give the clubs a direct tap into public sentiment around their players.

A viewers’ backchannel is not a new thing – just watch the hashtags trend when Britain’s Got Talent or The Apprentice is on. However, this is possibly the first time a British broadcaster has attempted to integrate the backchannel into its online coverage. It’ll be interesting to see if any cross-channel promotion will be in place, i.e. if the TV commentators will direct viewers to contribute to the FA Cup Buzz site.

Dominic Cameron, MD of ITV.com, says that if the FA Cup Buzz experiment is a success, the broadcaster will be looking for more “new and interesting ways” to engage football fans.

Meanwhile, if all this engagement isn’t enough to slake your ADD-driven thirst for social media sports apps to distract you from the match, you can play along with Football3s, a realtime fantasy football game developed by Mint Digital, which also integrates with Twitter, Facebook and Chatzy.

Enjoy the match!

UK startup Imagini has launched the private beta version of its VisualDNA Shops widget to help monetise blogs and websites through a unique take on affiliate sales. The widget adds personalised product recommendations to any site, and immediately starts generating detailed demographic, psychographic and behavioural analytics of its visitors.

It does this using the company’s VisualDNA concept; working out people’s personality types based on the pictures they choose. Imagini draws the data from its consumer facing personality test site, Youniverse, which has profiled more than 15 million people since 2006.

VisualDNA Shop presents visitors with a few visual questions, and delivers real-time product recommendations from Amazon.com based on their responses. At the moment this means visitors can choose from mobile phones, digital cameras and gadgets. The company plans to include a broader range of products from sites like eBay and Shopping.com in the near future.

Imagini secured $13.5m in funding in February this year, a chunk of which no doubt went to getting Stephen Fry to explain the VisualDNA concept (doing a rather succinct job, too):

Anyone can try the concept with a free, limited VisualDNA Shop. There’s a Pro version for $2.99 a month which comes with  advanced analytics that tell site owners what their audience is like — coining titles like ‘funster’, ‘gamer’ and ‘active adventurer’ — and what appeals to them.

With the Pro version, site owners can make their own suggestions for new products to be advertised to different types of shopper, and show visitors other sites visited by people with similar preferences.

If you want to try it out, TechCrunch Europe has 50 access codes to give away using the invitation code ‘techcruncheuropevisualdnashop’.

Spotify, the streaming music service which is gradually gathering a large fan-base in Europe, has been plotting a mobile version. It recently hired a head of mobile and the speculation was that it would come out with an iPhone app first after releasing a teaser video. But today it’s released video of an Android app it’s being demoing to people at Google I/O.

The Android app is still very much a work in progress and subject to minor changes, but it gives a pretty good overview of their thinking. The demo highlights a number of features including playback, playlists, offline synch and music search.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet - the service has yet to launch in North America, although I’m about to send some lucky TechCrunch writers some preview codes we’ve gotten hold of - Spotify is a lightweight iTunes-like application for Windows and Mac that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music. Tracks are streamed via a encrypted P2P technology. The free service is ad-financed, hence a general comparison with Last.fm, but it’s primary service is subscription based. It works like a fully-playable iTunes store, creating playlists is easy and some bill it as an alternative to file-sharing, hence why it’s managed to sign so many music labels.

Spotify has raised a large round of funding so far, €15.3m from VCs Northzone Venture Partners and Creandum. It launched in the UK in February after building a big following in Sweden, it’s country of origin.

UPDATE: Please see after the jump for the archived video at the end of this post.

The TechCrunch Europe Roundtable event in Stockholm today (live video streamed below and on @TCEurope on Twitter, official hashtag is #tcen) will feature an afternoon of panel discussions and presentations followed by startup pitches and a great networking reception. TechCrunchTalk Nordic will be exploring the Nordic and Baltic tech scene - which produced amazing companies like Skype and, more recently, Spotify (not to mention the likes of Ericsson, Nokia and many other huge tech companies). Check out our full schedule and speakers here. We’ll be covering several topics such as the interchange between Nordic and Baltic startups, VC investment in the region, and the next wave of innovations that will come from this area.

TechCrunchTalk Nordic is sponsored by Bloglovin and Sunstone Capital. Our event partners include: ArcticStartup, Swedish Startups, The Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship and Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2009 . Our streaming video partner is Bambuser.

Our live streaming video will appear below shortly (from 3pm Stockholm time, 2pm London, 9am New York and 6am San Francisco):

TechCrunchTalk Nordic is sponsored by:

Bloglovin’

Bloglovin‘ helps you to keep track of your favorite blogs. We notify our members every time one of their favourite blogs have written something new.

Founded by an international team with more than 200 years of combined entrepreneurial, operational and investment experience, Sunstone Capital A/S is a leading Nordic venture capital investor headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. With over €400 million in funds under management, Sunstone Capital focuses on developing and expanding early-stage Technology and Life Science companies with potential to achieve global success in their markets. www.sunstonecapital.com

TechCrunchTalk Nordic media and event partners include:

ArcticStartup

ArcticStartup held its 6th pan-regional event taking place in Stockholm on 2nd April. The evening’s theme was startups and the future of mobile. Event’s high level panelists included Morris Packer of the Bonnier Group, Teemu Kurppa of Huikea (Formerly Jaiku/Google) and Gustav Söderström of Spotify. ArcticEvenings bring entrepreneurs together across the arctic region to discuss new ideas, experiences, challenges and developments and above all share knowledge and make those important connections in the Nordic and Baltic startup community. You can find out all about the event here http://www.arcticstartup.com/arcticevening-2nd-of-april-stockholm-sweden/

Swedish Startups

Swedish Startups is Sweden’s biggest community for Swedish web-entrepreneurs, developers and VC’s. We make it easier for you to keep track of events and connect with people who can help your company forward.

SSES - The Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship

The Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship (SSES) is a joint initiative between the Royal Institute of Technology, the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm University and the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. Uniting five of the region’s top academic institutions in a unique partnership, SSES acts as a catalyst for creativity, co-operation and knowledge-sharing. We offer students at all five universities accredited academic courses, training and activities in applied entrepreneurship.

Streaming Video Partner: Bambuser offers a service that gives its users the opportunity to stream live video from a mobile phone or web-cam using 3G or WiFi network. The simplicity of the application and the unlimited mobility gives you the opportunity to instantly share your experience with your viewers and interact and communicate through the web- to-mobile chat. Share the world, Live and Mobile with Bambuser, visit www.bambuser.com. Bambuser is drawing comparisons to mobile videocasting service Qik. The major difference is the lower latency that bambuser offers due to different technical approaches. Another difference between the services is that Bambuser offers streaming both from your computer and mobile, while Qik only allows streaming from the mobile.

Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2009 held at Kista Science Towerin Stockholm on 25 May 2009.

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Videoplaza, effectively an adserver for online video, has signed a deal with four of Denmark largest print publishers. Many of these sites concerned have served web video for some time - Denmark generally was an early proponent of broadband networks so the population is highly wired-up. But the news is significant because few online media owners have done much in the way of more sophisticated online video advertising like pre-roll and overlays.

The publishers involved are Berlingske Media, Ekstra Bladet, Jyllands Posten and Børsen. At the same time four major advertisers in the region, De Gule Sider, Nordisk Film, Nykredit and Nordic airline SAS are joinging the project. The publishers will use Videoplaza’s Monetizer product to manage, serve and track the ads for an initial three month long project.

The move has come after Videoplaza decided to look further abroad than its home market of Sweden towards Norway, Finland and Denmark. In Denmark they found that media owners and agencies were a less sophisticated market in terms of online video (though not much else I dare say).

Videoplaza’s CEO is Sorosh Tavakoli, who is one of the panellist at TechCrunchTalk Stockholm today.