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Last week I attended the Europas award ceremony in London. The event was hosted by Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe, and I must say was really interesting.
I still haven’t had time to write my proper thoughts on it, but I will soon. In the meanwhile I’ll post what others think of the european startup scene after the event.

• Techcrunch Europas Awards: And the winner is..

on Nick Point

• The European startup scene is building stronger bonds

on Laurent Pierssens

• Highlights of TechCrunch’s Europas

on Computer Weekly

• The Europas: Winners, Losers & Wine

on Bitch Buzz

• TechCrunch Europas: Awards for everybody and a kicker for the next 12 months

on Inma Martinez

• TechCrunch hails European tech stars

on Smarta

• The Europas: The Winners Champagne

on Fhoke

• Techcrunch europas rawked!

on Random Mel

• TechCrunch Europas: Optimisim & Creative Destruction Alive and Well

on Dimen Designs

• and the official winners post from TechCrunch Europe.

This is a pretty long list of great articles since last week I didn’t post the usual weekend reading. There is some really great content here.
Not in a particular order.

• Unveiling the New Influencers

on PR 2.0

• What CEO’s wish they knew

on Dean Holmes

• Whatever it is, begin it now. An enter the cave of pain!

on Tom Keller

• When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free

on Blog Maverick

• It’s a great time to get seed round money

on Nesheim Online

• #10 Rules for Bootstrapped Web App Startups

on Less Everything

• Social Entrepreneurship Revisited

on Stanford Social Innovation Review

• Thinking of selling your company in the future? Go Strategic. It pays a lot Better

on Active Garage

• Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley

on The NY Times

• Startups: Eight Common Arrogance Traps
• All Great Ideas Don’t Make Great Startups
• The Entrepreneurial Revolution is Here

on Startup Professional

• The Five Most Promising Female Startups

on Tiburon TV

• The Generation M Manifesto

on Harvard Business

• 10 Things Most MBA Schools Won’t Teach You About Startups

on OnStartups

• Startup Fundraising 101

on Entrepreneur Corner

• Startup Hotbed Inferiority Complex

on A VC

• Why I will never be a founder

on Startup CFO

• Spotify Looks For A New Tune

on Forbes

• The Dreaded Lunch Invite From Your Venture Capitalist

on The Great Startup Game

• UK Entrepreneurs: Get Your Funding While You Still Can

on Tech Crunch

Yesterday I had the pleasure to have a chat with Scoreloop’s CEO, Marc Gumpinger. I recently wrote about their SDK and their vision about mobile gaming. He told me they are announcing a game-changing iPhone application and web platform today, Scoreloop Community. This is huge.
The Munich-based startup already offers a free, easy to implement and highly customizable iPhone SDK that makes games “social” in a matter of moments.

Their new Community application will introduce “challenges”, that means you can now play against your friends and challenge them in a particular game.
The user will also be able to see who is playing that particular game, who has the highest score and so on.
That’s a win-win situation for both the customers/gamers and the developers, as Scoreloop Community significantly broadens the visibility of Scoreloop-enabled games and increases customer loyalty by bringing online high scores and player challenges which only the Scoreloop platform offers.
For small developers here’s the real kicker: as soon as you make your game Scoreloop-enabled, as a bonus you get push notifications. Scoreloop offers Push Notifications to every game right out of the box and without requiring a single additional line of code or server knowledge.
It’s not finished: they can make money too. You may be in fact wondering how Scoreloop monetizes all of this.
They created a virtual currency system, shared between all the games. Players can purchase this currency and (major kicker again) they are sharing 50-50% the profits with the developers.
Oh, by the way they are the only ones in the world to have such a product. And it’s free.
So not only do they offer their technology 100% free of charge but they also allow for monetizing even free games.
Among other features are web widgets, friend activities, custom avatars and a lot of other stuff.
“Scoreloop is raising the level of play for game developers,” Gumpinger said. “We’re focused on continuous improvement for our developer ‘partners’ in this fast-moving environment by delivering new features and functionality that gamers want. We don’t create our own games because we don’t compete with game developers. We want them to become even more successful so we can drive the market forward together.”

Disclosure: I have no stake or interest in Scoreloop. I just am genuinely interested and excited about their technology.

Technology is moving faster than ever. We are using and developing ourselves things that we couldn’t even immagine a few years ago. I think augmented reality will be the next big thing.

You may have already heard the “augmented reality” term, but just to be sure you know what I’m talking about here is how Wikipedia defines it:

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.

We are starting to see the first augmented reality phone applications for Android and Iphone, and now London-based Accrossair announced a game-changing iPhone application.

Nearest Tube, as you may guess by its name, will let you see in real time the closest London tube station. It is really very easy to use: when you load the app, holding it flat, all 13 lines of the London underground are displayed in coloured arrows. By tilting the phone upwards, you will see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to your location, how many kilometres and miles away they are and what tube lines they are on.

Check out a demo video (careful with the volume, this video is extremely loud):

The application is ready and awaiting approval from the App Store. To use the app you will need an iPhone 3GS.

Hightech Gründerfonds and  Neuhaus Partners have invested in Hannover-based antispameurope, a company which provides spam protection as managed service for private customers and businesses. This is their second round of funding.

If you understand german you can read the official press release.

If you already know what SeedCamp is and can’t wait to apply, please do so right here.

Seedcamp Week will be held from 21^st to 25^th September at UCL in central London. It is a weeklong programme that connects 20 early stage web tech startups with over 400 highly experienced and sought after entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, product and developer experts.  Along with current board members Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni, the chosen teams will also have access to Seedcamp’s recently appointed board members who have been selected for their broad range of entrepreneurial experience and international background in order to help Seedcamp deliver its mission to build a world-class, sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Just to name a few:

• Fred Destin, partner at Atlas Ventures
• Charles Grimsdale, co-founder of Eden Ventures
• Alex Hoye, co-founder of GoIndustry plc
• Christoph Maire, Head of Maps & Explore Unit, Nokia Services
• Dave McClure, Founders Fund
• Richard Moross, founder and CEO, Moo.com

The week will include interactive panel discussions, master classes and several informal 1:1 sessions. Teams will gain invaluable insight and a solid foundation to help kick-start a viable business in Europe today.

“The beauty of Seedcamp is that a start-up can fill his or her Rolodex in one day with quality business contacts that it would normally take five years to build.  We want to help entrepreneurs experience the whole rainbow, not just the pot of gold at the end.” Reshma Sohoni said.

At the end of the week Seedcamp will invest up to €50K each in 5 teams for a small equity stake (5%-10%). That’s enough money to move to London for 3 months and start building the product and the company. It’s not just work: weekly dinners, topical lunches, conferences, and continued mentorship, culminating in further Demo and Investor Days will make the stay invaluable as well as unforgettable. A trip to the Valley is also planned.

You can check the highlights of the 2007/2008 editions and follow Seedcamp on Twitter. If you missed the application link, here it is.