Earlier this morning, online music startup Spotify announced on its blog a new iPhone application.

There is a video showing how the application works and I must say it looks very promising. I think the killer feature will be the “Offline Playlists”  that will let you cache music while you have a wireless connection and then listen to it wherever you are.

Mobile access will only be available to premium members, so this will be a nice incentive for users who haven’t signed up for a paid plan yet. The iPhone app has just been submitted to the Apple app store and we’re all eager to see if it will be accepted.

Take a look at their demo:

The Pirate Bay, the famous and controversial swedish torrent tracker has announced that it has been acquired by an unknown (to us and the general public anyways) software house called Global Gaming Factory X for SEK60 Millions, approximately €5.5 Millions.

That is bad news for p2p fans, and it really reminds me of Napster and its story.

As you know, the founders of the pirate bay have been recently sentenced to one year in jail and a millionaire fine for running the site. Is this their attempt to get off the radar? I really didn’t expect it from them, seeing how they reacted every time someone tried to attack them.

Now the question is: what will the new owner of the site do with it?

TechCrunch Torrent Freak, who first broke the story, doesn’t seem to be much worried about this, but from the few lines they gathered from the managers of the company, we all better be: “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.”

That pretty much translates to pay-site for me. In their announcement, however, they invite their users “not to worry”.

Certainly to be continued.

Update: Shares of the company are up 166%. Read the TorrentFreak post to get latest news.

Update2: The Pirate Bay will stop hosting torrents and decentralize everything: TorrentFreak post.

Today was an unusually generous day for the VCs in Europe, after the Innogest’s funding of Bee.tv, we have other 3 deals to announce.

• Sweden, Finland: Nexit Ventures, €3M into Aava Mobile


Nexit Ventures, a mobile venture capital firm focused on wireless technologies and services, today announced the investment of 3 million Euros in Aava Mobile, a developer of smartphone platform designs. The funding will leverage Aava Mobile’s growth and help it become a market leader.

Aava Mobile develops smartphone platform designs based on open technologies such as Linux and Android. The open platform technology will provide more flexibility for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and mobile operators to incorporate their own brand, user interface, content, and services into the devices.

“Our open platform concept has been well received by the global mobile operators, who see this as a new revenue opportunity from new and existing subscribers. The open platform lets operators and OEMs customise their devices easily and differentiate from their competitors,” explained Markus Appel, CEO from Aava Mobile.

The new platform has been designed with operators in mind. As the platform includes both hardware and core software components, it accelerates the development of new handset models significantly. The flexibility of the open platform design also brings new business opportunities for application developers as well as mobile operators.

”The smartphone market is growing fast and steady. With their open platform, Aava Mobile is one of the leaders that will take the market to another level. Operators can have a truly white-label option to brand their handsets and offer more choice for consumers. There will also be new business opportunities for Linux developers that can expand their offerings to smartphones,” comments Pekka Salonoja, General Partner of Nexit Ventures.

Nexit Ventures invests in mobile and wireless high-growth companies, primarily in the Nordic countries and the US. Nexit’s other portfolio companies include Axel Technologies, Brightkite, Conformiq, Ecrio, Ekahau and Futuremark.

• Italy: TTVenture, €3M into Directa Plus

Directa Plus srl, early stage milan based company that operates in the nanotechnology sector, received a €3 Millions funding today in exchange for 25% of the company, by TTventure, a technology fund of Fondamenta Sgr.
The operation is focused on the industrialization process of Directa for the production of “nanoparticles”.

• Germany: High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and Dr Rolf-Christian Wentz, undisclosed sum into Maxment GmbH


High-Tech Gründerfonds invests in maxment GmbH, which supports companies in increasing the return on their investments in human resource development, and in numerically proving their benefit. maxment® is a very user-friendly online software (SaaS), which via the internet is ready to use. A security server ensures a confidential treatment of the data, in line with works council requirements. Thanks to standardisation and extensive automation, the effort for training participants and personnel development managers is really low. Companies like Dürr AG and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG already use the maxment® software.

27 billion euro are spent every year just in Germany on the training of employees. Yet, studies show that on average, only 10-40% of classroom learnings are actually applied on the job afterwards. Thus, companies face the challenge to find ways to increase the transfer of learnings to the workplace. In addition, the benefit of the human resource development investments is to be proven numerically. maxment® offers an efficient solution for both challenges.

Dr. Christoph Mehl, human resource development manager at Dürr AG, appreciates what maxment® offers: “maxment® convinced us with a functionality that fits the requirements of sustainable human resource development processes in all regards. Hence, we obtain key indicators of transfer success, which for us constitute an important component of a human resource development focused on value creation. High return rates, positive feedback from participants, trainers and managers – we are very satisfied!“

Christoph Rappe, founder and managing director of maxment GmbH, considers an important milestone for the next growth phase reached: “With the investment of the High-Tech Gründerfonds, we can now substantially enhance our software. We are going to present the new version in autumn at the industry’s biggest fair in Europe, the “Zukunft Personal” in Cologne on September 22nd to 24th, 2009.“
Dr. Björn Momsen, investment manager at the High-Tech Gründerfonds, states: “The satisfaction of the existing customers with the maxment® software has convinced us. We see a big opportunity of maxment® setting a new standard in personnel development.“

Dr. Rolf-Christian Wentz, who as a business angel invests in maxment GmbH along with the High-Tech Gründerfonds, adds: ”From my industry experience, I know that maxment® solves a real problem of the personnel development practice. If maxment® had been available years ago, I definitely would have used it.“