[UK] AlertMe, the Cambridge-based home energy monitoring service, has hired ex-Tiscali UK boss Mary Turner as its new CEO.

Turner ran the ISP’s UK business from 2001 where she took the company from less than half a million dial-up customers to the third largest DSL provider in Britain with revenues of €608m in 2008, according to the press release.

She also oversaw the acquisitions by Tiscali of npower’s telephone base in 2003, Video Networks IPTV business Homechoice in 2006, and the Pipex broadband and telephone business in 2007. Tiscali UK was sold to The Talk Talk Group in 2009 where Turner has remained an advisor.

[France] Zimbalam, the digital music distributor from Believe Digital, launches in the US today.

The service lets artists submit and distribute their music through 25 of the most popular music platforms, including Apple’s iTunes and Spotify, in addition to “several hundred additional stores worldwide”. This makes Zimbalam the largest music distribution network as measured by number of stores and geographic reach, says the Paris-based company.

To distribute their music via Zimbalam’s network, artists are charged a simple annual fee ($29.99 in year one then $19.98 per year after for an EP or album) and then once the fee is recouped, get to keep 100% of royalties – after, of course, whatever commission is taken by each store. Additionally, following year one, artists won’t be charged by Zimbalam if they don’t make enough sales to cover the annual fee.

Fits.me, a virtual fitting room for internet clothing retailers based on robots (yes really) has won the European startup competition in Brussels, Plugg.

It’s actually even cooler than it sounds. By creating robotic shape-shifting manakins and testing how people reacted by seeing clothes on the robot with their dimensions, sales actually went up.

Only 7% of all clothing is sold online today, a $36bn market It’s $20bn for computers), because you can’t see how the clothes look on a human body. The fits.me trial with partners showed these pictures of adjustable manakins wearing clothes increased sales three times and dramatically reduced returns by 28%.

[Israel] FlyScreen, the mobile phone lock-screen replacement from Israeli startup Cellogic, has added Foursquare integration to its Android app ahead of this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) festival.

The new Foursquare widget lets users of the location-based social network access its main features, including the ability to quickly find places nearby, “check-in”, share their location with friends via Foursquare, Twitter and/or Facebook, as well as access their foursquare friends-list.

The company says it’s the first time that a location-based mobile service has been made available on Android’s lock-screen, and that the app now offers the fastest way to “check-in” to Foursquare on a mobile since you can do it without even unlocking the phone. No need to drill down into apps or Android’s web browser.

[UK] Anything that makes the form-filling associated with claiming a refund less tedious is a win for consumers. But it’s also a potential nightmare for governments and companies that provide the services we rely on. Les paper work, more claims.

Enter Tube Refund, an iPhone app that aims to significantly reduce the time and effort it takes to file for a refund for a delayed train journey on London’s Underground (metro).

[France] French start-up Regioneo launched a participative investment program yesterday to help the company raise the €200,000 it needs for development. The company has already raised more than €20,000 by merely turning its users into investors and allowing them to invest directly on their site.

Regioneo’s e-commerce platform provides local producers a marketplace to sell their products online. Thus, the once inaccessible independent foie gras producer can now sell directly to consumers, by opening an online boutique with Regioneo. And for producers that don’t have internet access, Regioneo offers to take care of the boutique and simply relay online orders to the producers.

[France] France’s MyERP has just announced a partnership deal with Google, in which the company’s platform will be one of the first available in Google’s new Apps Marketplace.

MyERP, which was founded in 2000, provides an all-in-one cloud-based business suite for small and medium-sized businesses. Aiming to substitute for a patchwork of business applications – like Salesforce, ACT! and Quickbooks – the platform includes modules for CRM, sales, projects, purchasing, inventory and accounting.

[France] France-based eXo has just raised a €4 million series A round with Auriga Partners and XAnge Capital to expand their business in the US.

The company, a provider of open source java middleware for cloud-based services, first set-up shop in San Francisco in October 2009. The opening of their US office followed a partnership deal they made with Red Hat, which led to the joint-development of GateIn. eXo’s new round of funding will go towards sales, marketing and R&D efforts, as well as establishing additional partnerships throughout the US.

[Finland] This is exactly the type of distribution that Spotify needs to achieve the kind of economies of scale that should reduce the cost to end-users with regards to its Premium offering. And of course, generate much needed revenue. The music streaming startup has signed up telco TeliaSonera as its exclusive partner in Finland to market and sell Spotify Premium. The two companies already have a similar arrangement in Sweden which started at the end of last year.