TheStartup.eu

Another huge round of funding in Europe, as AlertMe secures £8 more millions in a series B round from Index Ventures, Good Energies, SET Venture Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

AlertMe offers a really great and innovative product that will help you save energy, money and secure your home. They produce a kit composed of a hub and some accessories. You plug the hub into your broadband connection and power source and then all AlertMe accessories will comunicate wirelessly to the hub, which sends the information to the AlertMe servers. You can then go on their web application and check your energy consumption, control your appliance and electricity usage remotely.
It is cheap, looks easy to install and use and could really be a game changer in the “run to green”. Consumers can save up to 25% of their residential energy costs. This means that AlertMe pays for itself in about 1 year, and saves approximately 1 ton of CO₂ per home per year. If every UK home had AlertMe, this roughly equates to taking half of the cars off the road.
The company claims to have sold more than 15000 units and have no competition in Europe. They will also soon release addons for heating and hot water behaviours.

Pilgrim Beart, AlertMe.com founder and CEO said: ‘We recognize that major players around the world – government, consumers, large retailers and utility companies – have a strong interest in working together to reduce domestic energy consumption as quickly and efficiently as possible. AlertMe.com, with the backing of our investors, offers a truly global solution to this issue that is available to use today.’

Another cool feature of their system is house security. If you buy a standard (£249) or premium kit (£399) you get motion sensors for doors and windows, the ability to monitor and control security in your home and updates on your mobile.

Saul Klein, Partner, Index Ventures said: ‘As energy demand increases worldwide, we see an urgent need for a disruptive and game-changing technology which is capable of leading a true revolution in home energy consumption. As investors, we’re excited to work with the experienced AlertMe.com team who are at the forefront of what we believe will be a huge and beneficial shift for both consumers and energy companies alike.’

That has to be one of the coolest promo videos I’ve ever seen!
Today I had a great talk with Danielle Grossi, co-founder and CEO of Smeepe, a platform where you can find, rate and share vendors across the world.

They are offering their service for free to the first 5000 vendors who will register on their site. Users don’t need to pay to search and browse, and (great-feature-here) don’t even need to be registered (although they should, if they want to take advantage of rating and sharing capabilities).

Smeepe helps you in choosing your service providers for your project and events based on what other people have to say about their previous experiences. They are also prescreening every applicant in order to keep the quality to a good level.
The site is heavily relying on their search functionality, but you can also browse vendors by category.
They plan on becoming “Amazon for services”, that’s a pretty huge objective, but I like who thinks big.

“What’s significant is that smeepe.net is a powerful platform for users to rate vendors and to give feedback – positive and negative – to help others with their selection process,” Danielle says in a press release. “We’re looking for vendors who are outstanding in their category. Smeepe.net will not allow vendors to buy ratings or bold listings, and will not list vendors who suck!”

The Switzerland-based company counts on a team of 4 people, plus developers and key contacts to attract and prescreen vendors. They are distributed around Germany, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

Grossi, who has worked in IT for more than a decade, said, “Our target users embrace new ways of doing business with leading technology. They are the audience who will use smeepe.net for finding IT & social media vendors, planning corporate events, and international meetings, and for saving time and money with the most efficient means available–smeepe.net.”

Below you’ll find a recent interview with Danielle on Startup Lucky:

Online social travel guide website Tripwolf just launched its free iPhone application. (iTunes download link).

The Vienna-bases company provides crowd-sourced information thanks to the 18000 members and adds on top of it content from guides such as Marco Polo and Footprint, for more than 400.000 destinations.
That’s a lot of stuff, but how do you access it when you’re away on a trip? That’s what they have been asking themselves lately, and answered with an awesome iPhone application. City guides, restaurants and hotel reviews, everything at your fingertips.
The usage is not limited to tripwolf members, but it is highly recommended to have an account as you can synchronize it with the application.

Alexander Trieb, the tripwolf co-founder responsible for the implementation of the iPhone application, says: “By offering the tripwolf iPhone application we are taking the logical next step in the evolution of travel guides: Beyond the book.”

One of the most important features I spotted is the offline mode. Tripwolf lets you choose what you would like to download and save you from those huge roaming costs. Users have the choice of downloading either text only or the whole package that includes pictures. You will then be able to synchronize everything back at the hotel.

“The possibility of using the tripwolf iPhone application offline was extremely important to us. We wanted travelers not to worry about paying high roaming costs”, Sebastian Heinzel, CEO of tripwolf explains, “while still being able to access their personalized tripwolf guides and benefit from location based interactivity.

This is a great news for every traveller out there. The application is currently available in five languages – English, German, Spanish, French and Italian – in any part of the world.

IT-focused vehicle Notion Capital has led an undisclosed investment into mobile voice solutions provider Cellcrypt, alongside existing investors.

Cellcrypt provides end-to-end, real-time encryption to protect conversations from being compromised without the need for specialised equipment or expensive new infrastructure. Their product, available for Windows Mobile and Nokia phones, is now supporting Blackberries too.
Notion Capital, the investment firm set up by founders and senior executives from successful internet security company MessageLabs which was sold to Symantec in 2008 for $695M, took part in the round alongside former investors. The additional funding will be used to further expand Cellcrypt’s international presence, following the recent opening of its US office.

“We are really excited to invest in Cellcrypt, as a company with ground-breaking technology and a compelling proposition in a currently under-served market” said Stephen Chandler, partner at Notion Capital. “Traditionally, high security voice calling has only been available using specialised military-specification equipment, but Cellcrypt now makes this easily accessible to all with no impact on service performance.”
Stephen Chandler, a founding partner at Notion Capital and former President, EMEA and CFO at MessageLabs, will join the Cellcrypt Board.

Chandler continued, “Cellcrypt is ahead of the market in delivering unmatched voice call quality, international calling capability and high reliability across wireless networks, using standard devices and infrastructure. We believe that Cellcrypt is well placed to lead this fast growing market and that we have highly relevant skills and experience across the Notion team to help them to execute successfully.”

“Most governments and corporates now secure their email – voice is the last unsecured data service,” said Simon Bransfield-Garth, CEO at Cellcrypt. “Cellcrypt has demonstrated product leadership and this funding supports the company’s growth internationally from the Americas, across Europe to the Middle East and Asia. I am delighted to welcome Stephen to the Board of Cellcrypt and look forward to working closely with him and the other industry experts at Notion Capital to benefit from their unique combination of knowledge and experience in this sector.”

CloudCamps are unconferences, in the classic barcamp style, where early adopters, developers, businesses and end users exchange ideas about Cloud Computing. Topics range from the classic Infrastructure as a service (Joyent, Amazon Ec2, Nirvanix, etc), Platform as a service (BungeeLabs, AppEngine, etc), Software as a service (salesforce.com) to every new technology related to “the cloud”.

Here are the 3 european dates for this summer:

• June 11: Paris
• June 15: Barcelona
• July 9: London

If you are interested in cloud computing you should definitely attend one in your area.

Today I’m attending Frontiers of Interaction V conference in Rome, a great event that each year brings together all the innovators and interaction designers.
Each year they chose a theme, and 2009’s is “smart cities, internet of things and social networking”.

The program is very interesting:

09,30 Welcome message from Leeander & Matteo Penzo
09:40 Bruce Sterling (Video) | Science Fiction Writer
||| About the Real Frontiers of Interaction |||
09:50 Fabio Sergio | Creative Director FROG DESIGN
||| Sing the Body Electric|||
10:10 Daniele Galiffa & Manuel Lima | Infovis + VISUAL COMPLEXITY
||| Discover the beauty of visual complexity in the age of infinite interconnectedness |||
10:30 Antonio Tombolini | CEO at Simplicissimus
||| Tutto parla: impara ad ascoltare le cose |||
10:50 Demo Site.
11:00 coffee break
11:20 Roberto Bonzio | Journalist at Reuters
||| “Frontiers Italians” |||
11:40 Riccardo Luna | WIRED ITALIA Director
||| ItAliens |||
12:00 KEYNOTE: Adam Greenfield | Author of “Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing”
||| Elements of a networked urbanism |||
12:30 David Orban | European Lead, Singularity University.
||| The Consciousness Panopticon |||
12,50 …video
13,00 Lunch
14:15 Joe Ferrari (Web Art Director di Wave Group) | Korinami (Sound Designer)
||| MUSIC & Video Live performance |||
14:30 KEYNOTE: Davide Bocelli & Alex Rose (video) | Long Now Foundation
||| La Long Now Foundation |||
15:00 Andrea Gaggioli | Università Cattolica di Milano
||| “Ecologia Partecipativa” |||
15:20 Matt Jones | Founder DOPPLR
||| The New Negroponte Switch |||
15,40 Coffee Break
16:00 Max Ramaciotti, Davide Casali & Luca Lisci | Maison,the
||| Community di Percorso: Pollicino nel bosco crossmediale |||
16:20 Carlo Maria Medaglia | Università La Sapienza, CATTID
||| Ubiquitous Computing |||
16:40 Luca Simeone & Salvatore Iaconesi | Vianet + Rhizome
||| Ubiquitous Anthropology |||
17:00 Andrea Vaccari | Senseable City Lab, MIT Boston
||| The Real Time City |||
17:20 Luisella Giani | Country Manager Italy Netlog
||| Web Celebrity |||
17:40 Conclusions with Leeander, Matteo, Carlo
18:00 End

I will try to write about the most important and cool stuff that comes out today, and maybe interview some entrepreneurs.
They also offer live streaming of the event.

Update: Online the first batch of pics.