I’m delighted to announce the members of The Europas Awards Advisory Board. As you can see there is an enormous wealth of talent here - these are people who know the pan-European tech and startup scene like few others.

Over the next few days, until the Wednesday deadline for public voting, our Advisory Board will also be looking at the nominations and selecting their winners for the Europas. After which, their picks will be aggregated with the public vote. And of course it goes without saying that they won’t be able to vote for any company (or person for that matter) in which they have any kind interest.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes here at TechCrunch Europe HQ we can see just how much and how often everyone is voting in these awards (thanks to PollDaddy for some awesome tech) and, well, let me just say it’s A LOT. It’s great to see such passion out there amongst tech startups, so come on everyone, keep voting.

In addition we have some more news: New UK startup OneDrum (which literally just launched) will be sponsoring the refreshments at The Europas Awards party. Latitude and Park Lane Champagne are the awards prize sponsors. And Mixcloud is going to supply a some banging DJs for the after party.

Plus, Techfluff.tv/ Newspepper will be streaming the event live.

Here are the CrunchBase entries for our Advisory Board:

Supposedly, the The Pirate Bay guys were found guilty in their recent trial in Sweden, and, supposedly, they got sentenced to a year in prison and had to pay $4.5 million in damages. But back in the parallel universe which happens to be the real world, they’ve appealed the verdict and could probably do so for the next few years. Which means that in the meantime they need to keep busy, and what better way to do this than start a new user driven video portal to take on YouTube. Seems reasonable. It’s not like they need to attract any more legal interest or anything.

OK, the VideoBay site currently doesn’t have much - a big logo, a search box which doesn’t yield much and some explanation:

To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology™, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly the

However, they’ve “decided to give everyone a sneak peak” but it didn’t work for this particular browser. A supposed sneak peak at thevideobay.org/20/ didn’t work either. In fact it appears the site is riddled with 401 errors, so it’s not an auspicious start. Update: Those who want to try out need a web browser that supports the HTML 5 tags such as the latest Firefox Beta or Safari 4.

According to TorrentFreak. The Pirate guys say there is still a lot of work to do behind the scenes - the encoder is not finished yet and the design is also a work in progress. And they’re not in a hurry, their window is “in, like, a year or five.”

So what’s the big idea? Well in common with their stated views the idea is to host and allow users to share video clips without having to worry about getting them taken offline due to copyright violations, in true Pirate Bay-style. Hello, YouTube, hear that?

They actually announced this idea two years ago, but I daresay most thought they’d never pull the trigger on this particular cannon.

Dutch mobile startup Nimbuzz is to be preinstalled by O2 Germany, initially on the Toshiba TG01 handset. The application can be set to be “always on”. It’s significant that a Tier 1 global operator has chosen to do this, though terms of the deal were not disclosed. We’ll check if Nimbuzz is paying O2 to go on the handset or if O2 is paying Nimbuzz for the app.

StudiVZ, Germany’s most popular social network, is pre-integrated into the app. Nimbuzz is the application that allows mobile chat with the largest German speaking social network StudiVZ (15 million users).

Nimbuzz claims 900,000+ sign-ups per month and now operates in 200 countries. It recently partnered with Voxbone to allow users make voice calls without 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity to their contacts over IM and VOIP services, including Skype, by sensing when the handset is out of Wi-Fi or 3G range.

iPhone will still have to wait for the 3.0 release of the app.

Here’s a video of how it works on the handset.

Social Whale is a brand new startup company from Greece which aims to extend Twitter’s abilities by introducing some new digg-like features on the famous microblogging service.

At this point, Social Whale is only available as a web based client, however the company’s future plans include also the release of a client based application. Social Whale is build based on Twitter’s layout, which means that it has a clean and familiar interface. Arguably, the most unique feature of the application is the digg-like voting system which appears on the left side of the timeline stream. The user can actually categorize and vote every tweet he thinks is valuable enough, while he can create or join a group which about a specific topic, such as Social Media or Business.

When it comes to posting new tweets, Social Whale provides a build in spell check in both English and Greek. Moreover, just like -almost- every other Twitter client it will do image uploading, url shorting and auto refreshing.

TCE has 40 invites to give away to you for the private beta period of Social Whale. To get one, leave us a comment below including your Twitter Username.

While Bing might have been a hit at launch, plenty of us have gone back to using Google. But now a small new web service makes comparing the two far easier.

Bing vs. Google lets you - obviously - search Bing and Google at the same time by providing a split screen interface. Both screens (frames) scroll at the same time and can be arranged either vertically or horizontally. One thing Bing vs. Google can’t do is switch between the result pages of both search engines simultaneously, but using it I’ve rarely had a real need for this particular feature. Even when I did, two clicks instead of one wasn’t as tiring as having two separate tabs open for Bing and Google separately.

The service was developed by Domagoj Pavlesic, a Croatian web developer and IT journalist, who says he created, tested and launched Bing vs. Google in under six hours: “The idea came to me in bed and I ran to my computer to register the domains bing-vs-google.com and google-vs-bing.com. The next morning I got to work immediately and it was finished in about five hours: setting up the server, design, development, testing,… It was made in Javascript with a couple of lines of ASP.NET in the backend.”

With some looking for an alternative for Google and others just wanting to test the latest new service, Bing vs. Google gets the job done. Now, do we also need Wolfram Alpha vs TrueKnowledge?

Though the consolidation of Web 2.0 services in the last years has changed the way we use the Internet, some online services have remained almost unchanged for the last 5 or 10 years. Buying and selling tickets seems to be one of these areas.

So far, US companies like Eventbrite or Ticketleap dominate this market, although Germany’s Amiando is giving them a run for their money and Belgium’s Oxynade is gearing up for launch.

Now Spanish startup Ticketea, an online service that tries to boost the traditional management of events, has entered the game, raising a modest $280,000 and will launch in the next few weeks. The company will be based in Spain and is backed by American and Spanish business angels. Investors include Jaime Diaz, founder and CEO of the NYC Investment company, Worldwide Wealth Management. Diaz is also an experienced investor in relevant Internet companies such as Digital Domain, Artica or Domin-8.

This Spanish company aims to develop a different way to promote events and sell tickets for small and medium size event organizers by levering 2.0 tools, and will try to make organizers’ life easier in six areas when it comes to manage an event: Attendees Registration, Event Promotion, Event Monetization, Ticket Distribution, Ticket Validation and Data analysis.

This will be the first venture of this kind in Spain, and was set up by two friends who came across this business idea when they were trying to organise a party in order to raise funds for a non-profit organisation: the 2009 Mongol Rally. Javier Andrés, founder of the venture, initially developed this original idea as a student project for the Instituto de Empresa’s Venture Program.

In a terrific example of a self-organising industry, some of  OpenCoffee Greece’s founding members and a number of web entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have launched Openfund, offering seed capital for internet startups in Greece and South East Europe.

The model draws inspiration from  YCombinator and Seedcamp, with plans to fund up to five startups per round. The startups will receive €20k- 30k in return for up to 20% equity. Perhaps more importantly, Openfund aims to mentor  the startups too. To this end it has enlisted  a number of well known business figures from Greece, that are willing to consult the startups free of charge — among them: the country managers of Microsoft and Google.

Timeline for first round:

• Call for applications:  Open, up to  September 30, 2009
• Evaluation and selection: October 1 to November 15, 2009
• Seeding: Starts December 1, 2009
• Next call:  December 1, 2009

The fund has been hailed rather enthusiastically as a game changer in a traditionally VC dry region. Venture capitals in Greece tend to make late stage investments and are rather risk averse  in comparison to their counterparts elsewhere.

Very few technology companies have been funded so far. Opencoffee Greece has managed to attract 200+ people audiences every month, giving space for new and old startups to present their work. Complaints about the lack of funding have been a constant theme of these meetings. It is out of these complaints that the idea of Openfund was conceived. And the name denotes the connection.

Despite legitimate questions about the next financing rounds (such as, a) whether they will happen and b) who will be willing to undertake them),  the overall reception of the idea has been positive.  In other words, the seed is sown. We have to wait and  see if it will bloom too.

Chiara Cicenia and Dejan Strbac, two MSc students of Politecnico di Milano in Italy wanted to give some advice to big companies about their products, marketing strategies and operations, but couldn’t find an easy way to do it. So they created Aleveo, designed along the principles of the good old-fashioned suggestion box.

Similar in principle to Uservoice, Get Satisfaction and other consumer feedback services, Aleveo’s USP is that its user base is restricted to students.

The model assumes that students posting ideas and feedback to companies will be talent-spotted by recruiters, or at the very least be able to take credit for successful ideas in their CV. Companies get fresh, new and most of all free ideas.

As a student-centric service, their product is free for students and companies to use. Companies and small teams can use the tool for soliciting and evaluating internal ideas, receive external ones on defined tags.

The model is however a classic freemium with other two plans available. With the “supporter” plan companies will be able to post “public challenges” for USD30/month, while for USD 100/month you can become an official sponsor of the project (as well as getting everything in the other plans).

Dejan Strbac says the research he and Chiaria conducted in setting up Aleveo indicates a strong presence of discrimination in organizations against students. The hope is that the platform will allow students to narrow the gap between the expectations of skills between the worlds of education and work.

What I see in the future of this project is a merit-based job-marketplace, with students competing for jobs through their ideas.

The guys are really aiming high, but we’re still not sure if they will go for the corporate route or keep small businesses in the game.

We have now opened voting in The Europas, the tech innovation awards honouring the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. On July 9, TechCrunch Europe will hold the first Europe-wide tech awards ceremony in London, for 300 people: you can get a ticket here. There is more information about the awards here.

Voting will close on Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm. Go vote now!

You can now vote for the nominated companies and personalities from the industry. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in each category. You’ll notice that the lists of nominees is long, but we wanted plenty of companies and people to be recognised in this initial round. There is one category that can’t be voted on which is “Best Overall” - this will be decided upon following the public vote and consultation with The Europas Advisory Board.

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

Award categories (A list of nominees is below)

The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Design

The Europas: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)

The Europas: Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)

The Europas: Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)

The Europas: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Mobile Application (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Startup Founder(s)

The Europas: Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)

The Europas: Best Investor Personality (EMEA)

The Europas: Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

THE NOMINEES

The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

3scale
ActionBase
Allyve
Adjug
Allyve
Amazee
Amiando
Babbel
Badoo
Blip.pl
Busuu
coComment

Diary.com

Dopplr
eBuddy
Funambol
HammerKit
Hiogi
Hobnox
Hubdub
imedo
Jagex
Jimdo
Jinni
Kublax
Kyte
Locr
LouderVoice
Mekanist.net
Metaversum
Mister-wong
MoFuse
MyDeco
Myfab
Myngle
Nasza Klasa
Nestoria
Netlog
Openfilm
Oxynade
Passpack
Plista
Polar Rose
PutPlace
Radionomy
Restox
Sclipo
Seatwave
ShoutEm
Sidewinder
Silobreaker
Smule
sobees
Songkick
Spotify
Squareclock
Stardoll
studiVZ
Stupeflix
Tarpipe
Tipped
Toksta
Topify
Tripsay
TripWolf
Trueknowledge
TrustedPlaces
Tupalo
TVtrip
Tweetmeme
Twenga
Twidox
Twingly
Txtr
Unlike
Viewdle
Wakoopa
Watzatsong
Webjam
Webnode
Wonga
Xing
Yoose
Zanox
Zemanta
Zoopla

The Europas: Best Design

Babbel
Hubdub
IRL Connect
Jimdo
Pasaj
Songkick
Spotify
Tweetmeme
Webjam
Wonga

The Europas: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)

Asgoodas.nu
AskMarkets
BaseKit
Billmonitor
BookingBug
Boxed Ice / Server Density
Busuu
Clear Applications
Crowdstorm
Devunity
Doctr
Doodle
Gigulate
Kvittar
learn10
LovelyCharts
Mixcloud
Mollom
myfi
Myfolia
Paperc.de
ParkAtMyHouse
Peeralism
Prezi
ReceiptFarm
SimilarWeb
Scred
Soup.io
Storytlr
Studdex
Struq
Vooch
VouChaCha
Wosiak
Woobius
Yiid
Zookel

The Europas: Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)

Aleveo
Amazee
Decisions For Heroes
Dopplr
Mendeley
NewsCred
Peuplade
School of Everything
UnLtdWorld
Worldeka

The Europas: Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)

Adconion
blueKiwi
BusinessITonline
Cereproc
Coclarity
Corebridge
FreeAgent Central
Garlik
Huddle
Knowledgeplaza.be
MirriAd
Mtivity
Mydeo
MyID.is
OpenX
PeoplePerHour
Proofhq
Programeter
Skimlinks
Smarta
Sosius
Tactilecrm
TrampolineSystems
Viapost
VideoPlaza
Woobius
Youcalc
Yuuguu
Zenbe
Zendesk

The Europas: Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)

Alertme
Amee
Arduino
Dopplr
Elaphe.si
Intamac
Pachube
RiverSimple
RouteRank
SpeedSell (for recycling)

The Europas: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)

AlertMe
Poken
En-Twyn
Fon
INQ Mobile
Modu
My Name Is E

The Europas: Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)

7digital
Blinkbox
Bragster
Coull
eRepublik
floobs
GameDuell
Gigulate
Ipadio
Joost
King.com
MiniClip
Moshi Monsters
Muxlim
MuzuTV
Playfire
Playfish
Quick.tv
Qype
Sellaband
Sevenload
Skinkers
Slicethepie
Songkick
SoundCloud
WatZatSong
Wuala
We7
WeeWorld
Zattoo

The Europas: Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)

A2dm
Aka-aki
Apisphere
Aradiom
Audioboo
Babajob
Bambuser
Belysio
Biggu
Biolocate
Blummi
Blyk
DeviceAnywhere
Dial2do
DialPlus
Fortumo
Fruugo
Funambol
Futurlink
GetJar
Goojet
HulloMail
Instinctiv
Joikusoft
Keynetik
Kimia
Kimiasol
Kooaba
Locamatrix
Mapmytracks
Mippin
Mob4Hire
mobanode
Mobiluck
Mobintech
MoFuse
Mojiva
My6Sense
MyBooo
NAVX
Nimbuzz
Orbster
Palringo
PhoneTopp
Playsoft
Popcatcher
PushupFu / GymFu
Smaato
Rebtel
Realeyes 3D
Secufone
Skout
Smule
Solaiemes
Soocial
Streamezzo
Taptu
tauyou
Tellmewhere
Toro
Truphone
Unkasoft
Unkasoft
Viamobility
ViiF
Vuclip
Xumii
Youlynx
Zensify
Zipiko

The Europas: Best Mobile Application (EMEA)

Aka-Aki
Bambuser
Cellity
eBuddy
Flirtomatic
Fring
Locle
MaxRoam
Mippin
MobyPicture
MoMail
Palringo
Rummble
Shozu
Spinvox
Spoonfed Radar
Tweetdeck Mobile
Zipiko

The Europas: Best Startup Founder(s)

Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, jointly, Huddle.net
Alexander Ljung, Eric Wahlforss, jointly, Soundcloud
Alicia Navarro, Skimlinks
Andrew Scott, Rummble
Brent Hoberman, Mydeco
Caglar Erol, Cember.net (The “LinkedIn” for Turkey)
Cary Marsh, Mydeo
Charles Armstrong, TrampolineSystems
Daniel Ek / Martin Lorentzon, Spotify
Errol Damelin, Wonga
Felix Haas, Armin Bauer, Markus Eichinger, Dennis von Ferenczy, Sebastian Baerhold, Marc Bernegger, for Amiando
Ian Hogarth, Ian Hogarth, Pete Smith, Michelle You, (Jointly), Songkick
Joe Cohen, Seatwave
Joe Drumgoole, Putplace.com
Kristian Segerstrale, Playfish
Maria Sipka, Linqia
Martha Lane Fox, Luckyvoice
Martin Källström, Björn Milton and Niclas Wiström, Twingly
Matt Jones / Mat Biddolph, Dopplr
Michael Acton Smith, Moshi Monsters
Peter Ward / Jerome Touze, Wayn.com
Rachel Armitage, Alistair Hann, jointly, Zoombu
Richard Jones, Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, jointly for Last.FM
Richard Moross, Moo.com
Sarah McVittie, Texperts
Shaa Wasmund, Smarta
Sophie Cox, Worldeka
Stefan Uhrenbacher, Qype
Toon Coppens, Netlog
Wendy White, Moonfruit
William Tunstall-Pedoe, Trueknowledge

The Europas: Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)

360 Capital Partners
Accel Partners
Advent
AGF PE (France)
Alven Capital
Amadeus Capital
Atlas Ventures
Balderton
Covestor
Creandum
Creatum
Dpixel
DFJ Espirit
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
EarlyBird
Eden Ventures
European Founders Fund
Fidelity Ventures
Holtzbrinck Ventures
Index Ventures
Intel Capital
Kennet Partners
Mangrove
Neuhaus Partners
Northzone
Octopus Ventures
Oxford Capital Partners
Partech
Pentech Ventures
Seraphim Capital
Seventure
Sofinnova
Spark Ventures
Star Ventures
TAG - The Accelerator Group
Wellington Partners

The Europas: Best Investor Personality (EMEA)

Alex Hoye, Angel
Andreas Schlenker, Partech International
Angel Gambino, Angel
Charles Grimsdale, Edenventures
Christoph Janz, Angel
Christophe Maire, Angel
Fred Destin, Atlas Venture
Gianluca Dettori, Dpixel
Guillaume Lautour, AGF PE
Lukasz Gadowski, Team Europe
Mattias Ljungman, Atomico
Morten Lund
Nic Brisbourne, DFJ Espirit
Nicolas Celier, Alven Capital
Olivier Sichel, Sofinnova
Patrick Coquet CEO, Cap Digital
Paul Fisher, Advent Ventures
Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners
Philippe Colombel, Partech
Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
Roberto Bonanzinga, Balderton
Robin Klein, TAG
Sandy Mckinnon, Pentech ventures
Saul Klein, Seedcamp/Index Ventures
Simon Levene, Accel
Sitar Teli, Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
Sonali De Rycker, Accel Partners
Alex Straub, Straub Ventures
Will Dawson, Amadeus Capital
William Reeve, Angel
Yossi Vardi, Angel

The Europas: Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

Aroxo
Habit Industries
Kontoblick.de
OneDrum
Plista
Polar Rose
ShoutEm
Smarta
SofaTutor
Songkick
SoundCloud
Spoonfed
Spotify
Squareclock
Stupeflix
Topify
TrueKnowledge
TweetDeck
Tweetmeme
Wonga
Yoose