TechCrunch UK will be running a “TechCrunchTalk” event on December 16th. Similar to the event we ran during Seedcamp week recently, we’ll be running some panels and startup pitches, as well as a networking party in the evening. You can get your ticket to both the panel session and the party here. We’re calling it “Christmas Crunch”. Fun name huh? If you are a startup and would like to pitch at the event then please contact editorial. Coverage of the event will appear on TechCrunch.com (which now has over a million daily readers) as well as TechCrunch UK. Startup pitches will be selected on an editorial basis only (we don’t do all that “pay to pitch” crap). If you are interested in hearing about sponsor packages, please contact our events and and sponsorship person Petra Johansson. I gather they are going fast…

This is a guest post by Ed Freyfogle, co-founder of property search engine Nestoria.

OpenStreetMap started four years ago in the UK as a project to create a free and editable world map. What began as a few geogeeks wandering the streets with their GPS’s has turned into a global movement with over 75,000 registered contributors. The database has improved rapidly in quality and comprehensiveness, as have the tools and services around it. OSM is becoming a viable datasource for complex projects.

The project’s stats are another demonstration of the awesome power of a motivated online mob. The passion of some of the volunteers is shocking; there’s even a student attempting to go his entire time at uni using only OSM maps. The result is that the OSM now compares favourably versus some professionally gathered geodata. Most impressive has been the takeup in Germany: 300 volunteers mapped 99.8% of Hamburg (German), and there is now a German-language OpenStreetMap book.

OSM has spawned numerous related projects, the most prominent of which is OpenCycleMap which takes the base OSM data and renders it slightly differently, giving emphasis to features relevant to cyclists. OCM was recently commended by the British Cartographic Society and is an example of the technical innovation that free access to the underlying geographic data allows. Similarly several groups are working on using OSM for open source routing applications.

As the biggest commercial geodata providers Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ have been acquired, the intensity of their competition in (and focus on) major markets has increased. As a result in many parts of the developing world OSM is now the most comprehensive online mapping available, for example see this comparison of online maps of Baghdad or compare for yourself: Mashad in Iran (OSM, Google) or Kinshasa in the Dem. Rep. of Congo (OSM, Google). This summer’s annual State of the Map Conference had representatives from most major European countries and five continents.

Tellingly, while most of the audience at the conference was the usual hard core of geo-enthusiasts, many businesses were represented (including Google and Ordnance Survey) and there were a few VCs in attendance. Which brings us to the next phase in the OSM’s growth: commercial utilization. Companies have been using OSM data in proof of concept implementations for some time. Recently though the examples have become more prolific and more public: see flickr’s use of OSM. Some businesses are starting to rely on OSM for parts of their product offering, for example Wikitravel uses OSM derived maps in their printed travel guides.

New start-ups like CloudeMade in the UK and Geofabrik in Germany are being founded and funded around the business model of providing services around OSM (see TechCrunch coverage of CloudMade funding). The exact revenues of these companies is unclear (and likely still negligible) but the general concept of providing consulting and value-added services around a free (and complex) asset is well entrenched. This year’s acquisition of MySQL by Sun is only the most recent successful (and European) example. One certainty is that the recent explosion of interest in online cartography has lead to the development of an increasingly sophisticated “open source geo stack” that will pressure traditional GIS software companies.

The big players are increasingly trying to use crowd sourcing methods to improve their proprietary databases – see Tele Atlas’s use of Tomtom data or Google’s MapMaker, while savvy (and smaller) businesses are realising that there is much to be gained by working together with the OSM community. Smaller digital mapping services like Autopoietic Systems, Tann Limited (ASTL) and Holland’s Automotive Navigation Data (AND) have donated significant amounts of data OSM.

OpenStreetMap and the tools around it still have a very geeky feel, making it
easy to be dismissive. Nevertheless, there is no disputing the rapid growth,
improvement, and emergence of a surrounding ecosystem of ventures make this a
project likely to a have global impact for both internet users and businesses.

Full disclosure: the author is a member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

The following is a guest post by Nigel Eccles, co-founder and CEO of Hubdub, the prediction trading game.

If Silicon Valley checked into hospital, it would be diagnosed with severe bi-polar disorder. In mid-September, with the bad economic evidence mounting and the markets in freefall, its mood swung from vaunted optimism to extreme despair. Sequoia summed up the change in mood, titling their recent presentation “RIP Good Times”.

So, as we officially head into Bad Times, the first question is, will we see a period of mass extinction similar to the one that occurred after the dotcom bubble? Unlikely. Firstly, the dotcom bubble gave rise to thousands of companies with heroic growth assumptions and high cost bases, serving markets that didn’t yet exist. In contrast, while many web 2.0 companies are still propositions looking for a business model, they often run at less than 10% of the cost of an equivalent dotcom business. Secondly, in retrospect we see the market peak in early 2000 and then the gradual slide as if it were inevitable. However, right up until 9/11 there was a feeling that the market might pick up again and the good times return. This resulted in many companies failing to adjust quickly enough to the new reality which caused many to enter, what Sequoia described as, a ‘death spiral’. Given the speed at which start-ups have cut costs this time around it looks like that mistake is not being repeated.

In fact, Bad Times can be very good for start-ups. In the last tech downturn we saw the birth of Last.fm (founded in 2002), Skype (2003) and MySpace (2004), along with a plethora of other successful web 2.0 start-ups. Tighter times mean less competition, not only for staff but also for users. This is highly significant as pay-roll and cost of user acquisition are the two biggest costs for any start-up. More importantly, a tougher environment forces start-ups to ruthlessly focus on only those opportunities where they can bring value.

On entering a downturn it is often hard to see if the economy will ever recover. I remember in 2002 wondering if there was any future in the web economy (and at least one of my developer friends retrained as a cocktail waiter!). However while expectations of growth got wildly inflated by 2000, the underlying trends continued. People continued to migrate to the internet and also massively increased the amount of time they spent on it. In a downturn, the allure of the web as both cheap entertainment and as a utility gets stronger. And while it may be hard today to picture the wider economy coming out of recession, the most likely scenario is that it will, and indeed within the next two or possibly three years. What will the world look like for start-ups when it does?

Very. Well. Positioned. To understand why, consider Start-up Economics 101. Big companies struggle with innovation, even at the best of times. During the past 10 years in the technology and media industries the smart money has been on start-ups out-innovating more established companies. Whether it is Google besting AltaVista in search, Flickr out-performing Yahoo in Photos or YouTube whipping Google in Video, it was the start-up that came out top.

However in downturns, innovation in big companies is pretty much closed down as the focus moves to cutting costs and eliminating any product lines that arenít showing immediate profits. Last week we saw AOL shutter XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile, BlueString and AOL Video Uploads. Innovation at AOL, like most big companies, isn’t seeing much love these days. However the media sector, like the technology and mobile sectors, is seeing deep structural changes. Consumers are moving rapidly from print and broadcast to digital media. And consumers are being swiftly followed by advertisers. Over the next 2-3 years innovation within the media sector will happen in start-ups, not big media companies. That means when the market returns, media companies will have to acquire if they wish to remain relevant and grow.

Of course many things will stay tough over the next couple of years, with finance in particular remaining tight. However start-ups that can work through that constraint and focus on opportunities where they can create value will be excellently positioned when the economy picks up again. Now is a great time to be an entrepreneur.

Back in February, in a small acquisition, UK mobile services provider 3Bill acquired UK social network Profile Heaven for an undisclosed sum. The idea was to integrate the youth-focused social network with 3Bill’s mobile software and content platform. Then in October, they also bought the nine year old Face-pic.com, a global photo-sharing site boasting around 700,000 users.

Now the resulting site has emerged. Faces is aiming to be the tall-order of “not just another social network”. Unfortunately, it looks more or less like MySpace clone, but let’s hear them out.

Here’s their idea: Faces.com is a picture-based, entertainment-focused social network. Users can upload pictures, interact through chat or messenger and earn “Faces Tokens” to spend on merchandise or activities. A key feature is ‘Faces Islands’. With this users can colonise their own virtual island communities with their friends and colleagues. They select the island they want and can then send messages “in bottles”, and photos “in the waterfall”. Users can run their own island and appoint frineds as “staff”. You can travel from island to island visiting the public communities and applying for “Visas” to visit the private ones. Assuming this works.

The background to this is that Faces started as an Australian social network in 2004, focused on multi-media sharing, but it struggled until being picked up by 3Bill, the mobile division of Symbios Group and incorporated the existing ProfileHeaven.com (now re-directing to Faces.com) social network and Face-pic, also owned by Symbios. Faces has an existing user base of 400,000 users.

In theory then, the new Faces will launch with a million members, but in reality this is anyone’s guess.

The CEO of Symbios Group is Martin Montague while Symbios is based in Southampton, UK.

Somehow I don’t see this flying, especially given that Bebo the big site in this demographic and they have yet to try gimmicks like islands. And with the with the majority of Faces members being 13-24 years old, the site will be subject to strict guidelines on content. At least the URL is pretty good.

This week a new UK startup, Hubbub (note the .me domain), launches a new kind of desktop application for the semantic web, built on top of FriendFeed. That’s an interesting diversion for the UK. Many services coming out of the UK and Europe have been built on top of Twitter, not FriendFeed, although the latter is being tipped for big things next year by key commentators such as Robert Scoble.

Hubbub has been created to allow the different types of information within FriendFeed to be ‘skinned’ with a variety of gadgets and widgets. The gadgets can be created with a varioey of means, including HTML, XForms, Flash or Silverlight, which means it is pretty straightforward for other developers to extend the Hubbub application.

Hubbub launches initially in private beta but for a limited period, anyone can sign-up. It will launch with gadgets to show the time and location where an individual is, play the person’s last.fm radio station, view a person’s streams (such as blog posts or YouTube updates), and a gadget to update your Twitter status.

The idea is to work on the Hubbub API to the point where others can develop widgets and gadgets that make use of both a person’s FriendFeed data and other information that the user has stored, to create “rich” gadgets in terms of user interaction and semantically.

There are several videos of Hubbub in action here.

Hubbub has been created by Hubbub Inc., a company set up by London-based webBackplane, a team application developers. Mark Birbeck is CEO of webBackplane, and works with the W3C on a number of related standards. He is also the inventor of RDFa, a new way to place semantic web information into any web document.

I just hope people don’t get them confused with HubDub.

Here’s an introductory video to Hubbub:

It’s cold and dark in November, especially in Finland. Following on from yesterday’s “Slush” conference in Helsinki, TechCrunch is hosting some panel discussions on startups in the Nordic and Baltic area of Northern Europe, featuring some of the hottest startups to come out of the region. Tune in for the live recorded video from our Brunch event below, courtesy of Floobs

Read More

Danish start-up TrustPilot has launched a UK version of its consumer watchdog portal which claims to use algorithms to crowdsource an idea of what to expect from a particular retailer – in the same way that you might poll your friends or family to get their recommendations based on their good and bad shopping experiences.

The company’s software aggregates and analyses reviews and comments from sources all across the web to create what are essentially user-generated company rankings. It also provides also a Firefox extension that accesses ratings as you surf vendor sites and displays a traffic-light icon in the browser navigation bar if that company appears in the TrustPilot database, giving you an idea – for what it’s worth – of whether or not they’re to be “trusted”.

The rankings are based on what the company calls the TrustScore, weighted for relevance so  for example, older ratings count for less, while ratings from trusted sources count for more. The rating is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the happier consumers are about the company being rated.

The viability of TrustPilot’s offering is based on the fact that customer service levels across the board are pretty inconsistent. Online purchases especially are influenced in part by appearances, with many e-shoppers still determining the trustworthiness of a company based on design and branding, or who appears first in Google.

TrustPilot is still ironing out a few known bugs – excerpts from reviews don’t currently display properly, and I had to uninstall the Firefox extension double quick, after it appeared to disable my browser address bar. But on the whole it strikes me as a great way for consumers to save themselves some time and peace of mind – and to find new and interesting places to spend money.

For companies, it’s an opportunity to either show off their already excellent customer service, or to make the terrifying realisation that no amount of marketing spend can sweep their shoddy customer service under this particular carpet.

Its 26-year old founder, Peter Mühlmann, about to complete a degree in business studies and statistical measurement of customer satisfaction, says the company chose the UK as its first international rollout because… his French isn’t that good – and because it represents a stepping stone to the wider English-speaking market. The company has a German launch planned for the near future.

TrustPilot is backed by SeedCapital, the largest early stage venture capital firm in Denmark to the tune of somewhere up to £5m (Mühlmann won’t be drawn on the specifics). The company’s revenue stream will rely on a blend of affiliate marketing, enhanced profiles a la Yell.com and blind benchmarking data sold directly to businesses. The first B2B services will be launched in January 2009.

Interestingly, UK entrepreneur Paul Walsh proposed something similar (Firefox Extension, trusted sites etc) and set up Contentlabel.org and SearchThresher a while back, but both initiatives seems dead in the water (e.g last blog update Nov 2007).

A whirlwind of rumours surrounding Xing late last week implied that the talented Lars Hinrichs, co-founder and long-time CEO of LinkedIn competitor Xing, was poised to resign. Twitter was alight with the chatter but when I emailed Xing for comment, spokesman Thorsten Vespermann came out with a blog post and statement which seemed to suggest all was well.

“There are currently some rumors in some German media and they are more or less based on a news from the News agency dpa-afx. After we realized this we called them and asked for an update and this is the result (sorry, I didn’t find any English translation from them..)”

He basically said that because Xing is a listed company it couldn’t comment, but they did deny the DPA-AFX story that Hinrichs was off.

However, today we have confirmation that Dr Stefan Gross-Selbeck, former head of eBay Germany, will succeed Lars Hinrichs as chief executive. Hinrichs will join Xing’s Supervisory Board, after five years at the helm, effective January 15, 2009.

Although a co-founding CEO normally leaves the firm only if it has sold, the fact that Xing floated a while back means Hinrichs will have realised an exit of sorts.

He blogs today that: ” I’ve decided to dedicate more of my time outside of my commitment to XING to new entrepreneurial challenges.”

With over 20,000 reviews on under the company’s belt, Reevoo is a service that may be influencing what you buy, and what you don’t buy. Founded in 2005 (previous coverage here) the British based startup recently released an iPhone web app. A native application is yet to shows its face, so we’ll be taking a look at the iPhone web-app.

Search for a product you may be interested in and you’re given a list of related products. What I like about this is on the same screen you’re given a clearly displayed rating on every listed item. It’s convenient and saves time. If you’d like to go deeper when researching, or if you wish read those staple reviews the company is built upon. You simply select a result and you’re presented with a clear list of reviews, a guide price and a product image. The format is clean and the information is plentiful.

I spent this morning in my local town center drinking too many cups of coffee, and looking at various electronic indulgences. This is where the application shines. The ability to research the product whilst you’re in the store is an in-expendable tool. Another nifty feature of the app is the ability to purchase products though the merchants signed onto the site. More convenient, and you can now compare prices to find the best credit crunch beating deal.

For what it is Reevoo isn’t anything groundbreaking, even delivered through the iPhone. But the service is good, the app is useful and you will discover that Reevoo is a tool you want to use. Price comparison services are also about to become a great deal more important in the coming recession. Alas.

(By Grant Bell, TCUK’s current intern)

One of the interesting debates that surrounded today’s story about the BNP was what to do with the data once it got out. So far it’s pretty clear that the names and addresses of members of the BNP are way out of bounds in a legal sense. The political party, whether you agree with its far-right, largely racist policies or not, is still considered legitimate by the authorities, even though members of the Police force are banned from becoming members. BNP members remain private citizens under the law. So taking the data from the list and mashing it up with Google maps is, to use a technical term, pretty damn dodgy.

Even more problematic is using the default Google Maps pin image, which literally pinpoints a spot on the map as being the house of a BNP member. Obscuring the location of the pin by moving it around turned out to put it slap bang onto someone’s house who almost certainly had nothing to do with the BNP, as the original mapper found. As I said on Twitter, I was starting to see some really evil shit being done with the BNP list (in terms of data mashups) and implored any geeks out there to think twice and stop.

The debate was also raging on the list run by MySociety, a non-governmental organisation which has built mashups using government data before, often sailing close to the law in the interests of creating more transparency to the democratic process. One poster said they should do a mashup, but the suggestion was convincingly slapped down by MySociety’s Tom Steinburg:

“…the moment you sacrifice the values and compromises that hold together liberal democracies (such as a presumption of innocence and a right to privacy for people who’ve not actually been convicted of crimes) for the sake of humiliating your political opponents, you’re starting on a path far more likely to result in ruination for us all than a bunch of marginal wing nuts.”

Aside from that, MySociety has stayed clear of the data not least because the Information Commissioner has yet to pronounce on its use. Anything anyone does in the meantime could probably mean fines, and maybe some sort of knee-jerk legislation. Most likely the ICO will recommend all copies of this data should be destroyed.

The trouble is, the data (or at least, what we think is the data) is already out there. It’s too late.

And ominously I hear it’s being added to. There are already whispers circulating that “amended” copies of the BNP member list are doing the rounds on Bitorrent. People are settling scores with neighbours by adding them to a bogus BNP list. The potential for abuse is sky-high.

Now there is yet another Google mashup map which has used the data, still illegally under the strict letter of the law. “John Doe” and his (or her?) crew at BNP Near Me have obscured the actual addresses and aggregated BNP members into clumps around the main postcodes.

So instead of saying, effectively, “A member of the BNP lives right on this spot, we think, so feel free to go harrass them,” the result is “X BNP members in this postcode district” with a smudged red circle rather than a pin.

Even The Guardian newspaper has now wayed-in with a mashup plotting the data against constituencies.

However, I think most would agree that the entire episode has opened a complex can of worms that will still be crawling around for weeks, possibly months and years to come.

Following today’s news story about the far-right British National Party losing its member database, which was then mashed with a Google map, at least someone is retaining a sense of the absurd about the whole thing. Enter LOL Griffin, another mashup site of sorts, but this time between the LOLCats series on the ICanHasCheezburger site and Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP. Enjoy.

BREAKING NOW:

Creator of the Map, Ben Charlton, removes it from his site. Here’s his post explaining why:

Update

I have decided to take down the map. Many people have commented that the map does give a false impression of accuracy, despite my making this clear, and I’m tempted to agree. I do not want to single anybody out and by removing the accuracy from the map it is possible that it ends up incorrectly implying a property contains a BNP member. It has been suggested that an inaccurate map that doesn’t make that clear is worse than publishing the list itself, and I think that’s a reasonable comment.

[More coverage on this story here and here.]

[Updated: Please see further updates below]

Original story:

As news about the leaking of the membership list of the far-right/racist British National Party broke in the UK, it quickly became a headline story in the mainstream media. But the chatter amongst geeks on Twitter this morning was about the possible “mashup” that could be done of the members’ postcodes with a Google Map. As soon as that idea had propagated, it was bound to happen, since the list has been available on Bitorrent and on Wikileaks for around 24 hrs now. Frankly I thought it would take a little longer, but as I debated the issue on Twitter this morning, someone sent me a link to an already-built map.

And it’s scary.

The map is a sea of red pins, indicating that there are in fact BNP members spread pretty widely across the UK. London is barely visible under the map. Zooming out means that the map can no longer render all the data points adequately. It’s worth remembering that Britain is in fact one of the least racist, most tolerant nations in Europe, but the map looks pretty scary covered in these large red pins.

Ben Charlton, owner of the site Spod.cx has created the map here.

He writes:

As various news organisations have been reporting, the membership list for the British National Party has been leaked online. It seems a court injunction kept this quiet for some time, but the list has well and truly escaped – currently hosted on bittorrent and the always excellent wikileaks site.

Curious about the list, I managed to find a copy and after checking it for the obvious odd family members or people you know and think might be members, I thought it’d be cool to make a Google Maps mashup of the data. I extracted the postcodes from the member list and converted them into latitude and longitude co-ordinates, which are then plotted on the map.

The map is a bit slow to render, especially if there are a lot of data points, but it’s interesting to see the distribution of members. As I’m only generating a list of latitude and longitude points, I’m not revealing any of the actual list data. If you want to find out who the hate-filled racist that lives near you is, you’ll need to find and look through the list yourself.

The implications of this action are pretty big. I speculated on Twitter this morning that a mashup which identified the actual locations of BNP members would be highly problematic, and possibly even subject to vigilante attack. However I still believe that a map which showed more general areas, like towns and cities, could actually be helpful to local authorities for creating policies to tackle attitudes towards diversity. If you were a local councillor and had been made aware that there were lots of BNP members in your area, you may be able to do something about the attitudes which lead to support for such a far-right political party.

But now this more accurate map is out of the bag, and others are probably planning similar maps, the implications are far reaching. What no-one would wish is for a witch-hunt to begin. Plotting this map will make the data available to just about anyone. My personal opinion is that in this, quite accurate form, it should be taken down. On the one hand the BNP has a notorious history of violence. On the other, it also has a history of attracting disaffected young people who later regret joining – their lives should not be tarred by their actions as naive youngsters.

UPDATE 1: I emailed Ben Charlton about the map and emailed him some questions to which he has now responded.

He says the map is not as a accurate I feared: “I deliberately only pulled out postcodes from the file, converted those to latitude/longitude, then stripped a chunk of precision off the end. It gives a vague location, probably to street level, but it’s certainly not accurate by any means.”

1. Why create the map?

“I thought what I’ve seen a lot of people say – it would be interesting to visualise the data in a way that makes sense to people. It’s all very well being able to look for people in your home town, but it’s nice to see easily how that compares to membership in other locations.”

2. How accurate are people’s locations? Would someone be able to work out they lived next door to a member.

“The original list is very specific – listing addresses and names. I deliberately only pulled out postcodes from the file, converted those to latitude/longitude, then stripped a chunk of precision off the end. It gives a vague location, probably to street level, but it’s certainly not accurate by any means. Of course, there’s nothing to stop people then looking on the proper list – it’s not hard to find now.”

3. Do you plan to maintain the map?

“It’s based on the leaked list. If there’s a new list leaked I might update it, but for the time being it won’t change.”

4. Are you worried about BNP members identifying you?

“It’s always a concern, but I deliberately kept my app vague so as not to directly identify anyone as it’s not my intention to cause upset. I’d hope I’m not a target for too much abuse – especially compared to what a lot of other sites are saying.”

Update 2: However, an inaccurate map could be more dangerous than an accurate one. As others point out in comments below, the Google pin can, and perhaps should, be changed to something more like a “circle with fading semi-transparent edges” to prevent someone getting the wrong idea about their neighbour.

Update 3: Map creator Ben Charlton has now posted a heat-map of the data here but it largely shows what you might expect – that BNP membership roughly maps to urban centres of population.

Addendum: Others are making interesting use of the data, such as this graph by region.

And at least some can see the funny side now.

FineTuna is a rather nifty web app from Irish-based Spoilt Child Design that allows you to upload, comment and share images from around the web. Spoiltchild were also the creators of other web apps such as Toddle.com.

So how does FineTuna work? Well, remember that drunken picture of you and that person you don’t know? Upload that image file and FineTuna will present you with a unique URL. This is where the service comes into its own, as you are then presented with the ability to comment on parts of the images. Maybe not the most practical example of what you can do with the service, but the feature set is definitely there to help you along the way.

Not content? Well FineTuna offers up a very handy FireFox add-on. Install and right click on an image, or even an entire browser screenshot. Upload to FineTuna and get the same services as before.

Now there are as many image sharing services on the web as there are fish in the sea. But FinaTuna is one I could actually see myself using. It’s simple, intuitive and an absolute delight to use.

(By Grant Bell, TCUK’s current intern)

Tweetdeck – the Adobe Air application which has taken Twitter addicts to a new state of nirvana – is due to be updated this week, and UK-based developer Iain Dodswoth emailed me with the new version.

It will appear at v0.20 and is quite different from the previous one. Now, Tweets are no longer stored for long periods as they were before. Dodsworth says the reason is that the sheer volume of tweets (his TweetDeck was storing 10,000 per day) was having a huge impact on the speed and reliability of TweetDeck. Now when, you start up TweetDeck, it will initially be empty and then all the columns will be populated from the live API data within a second or two.

The advantages are myriad. The maximum number of tweets per Twitter call has been increased from 20 to 200 – theoretically you can now get 200 tweets every 36 seconds in your All Tweets column. Twitter searches have also been increased, from 20 tweets to the maximum of 100 tweets per minute. The startup of TweetDeck is much improved. Column actions such as adding, moving or deleting columns are much faster (they were pretty slow in the older version).

However, these new features have a cost: The removal of local searches – since these were totally reliant on the local database store of tweets – but I won’t miss that. Group columns will on first startup look a little sparse – since groups are populated from the All Tweets data feed when you first open TweetDeck. There will only be 200 tweets in the All Tweets column to populate the groups, but of course if you leave TweetDeck running then it will hold all the incoming tweets and the groups will soon fill up.

You can also set things up so that Tweetdeck will auto-add someone to your friend list when they follow you, or remove them when they unfollow. You can track conversations better with the new “in reply to” link. You can also now delete tweets from Twitter from within Tweetdeck.

The most important for me is the new ability to click and “add to group” button the profile panel, which means I can track particular Twitterers better. Roll on Twitter heaven…

The new version of Trutap – the mobile social network and aggregator – has a slick new design which gives users live updates from all their friends on just about any java handset. The new application’s features include: a personal newsfeed, ‘who’s online’, status & location, extended profile, searchable user directory, private messaging, email, SMS, blogging, photo-sharing and mobile IM. See the video below. In October Trutap added more social networks to the roster of social networks it aggregates.

Trutap is targeted at mid-to-high-range mobile phones that make up 85% of the market and has its biggest market share in emerging markets like India and Indonesia, where the iPhone and Blackberry are still considered luxury handsets. The new version will be rolled out to over 450 mobile phones by the end of 2008.

Right now the London-based startup has 250,000 users around the world and is currently raising a Series B funding round. To download Trutap, go to http://trutap.com on your mobile or PC browser and it should auto-detect your browser version.

Trutap, the free mobile social network – video demo from Trutap on Vimeo.

Digital SMEs in the UK with their sights set on South by South West interactive should get their skates on; Chinwag and UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) are currently auditioning for 40 companies to take to the festival in Texas in March 2009. Those that make the cut for this Digital Mission will get the chance to reconnoitre the local market, make connections and pursue new business opportunities.

Chinwag and the UKTI are planning a few high profile networking events and marketing campaigns, and offering the successful companies exhibition space at SXSW Interactive as well as a masterclass to help British companies understand how to establish and develop their business in the US.

The slots are open to any SME working in the digital sector ranging from web application developers, widget specialists, game developers through to web agencies, e-commerce operators, mobile developers and analytics providers. The judging panel includes our very own TechCrunch UK editor, Mike Butcher, ex-Dragon Doug Richard and Codeworks CEO, Herb Kim.

The closing date for entries is 9am on Monday, 24th November. Further information, entry criteria and the application form is available through the Digital Mission website.

This is the second Digital Mission which Chinwag has organised for UKTI; the first saw 21 British digital firms visit New York City in September 2008.

Sometimes it pays to be on this side of the pond, especially if you’re a Facebook addict with a yen for mobile gadgetry and don’t mind switching to 3 if you’re not with them already. The network will be the exclusive carrier for the INQ¹, a Hutchison Whampoa handset launched in the UK only which integrates all the big social networking sites and services – Facebook, Skype, Windows Live Messenger and Last.fm – and also handily makes phone calls.

So far, so iPhone/G1/Storm. The killer USP may come in the price – 3 is firmly targeting the budget end of the mass market with a contract pricing plan that begins at £15 per month for unlimited web access and social media app usage, unlimited texts, email and 3-to-3 calls and 75 minutes of calls to other networks. The leap to the next rung up, which offers all that and 200 minutes to other networks, comes at a mere £5 more per month. The pay-as-you-go plans aren’t that much more expensive.

Already dubbed the Facebook phone, the INQ¹ is positioned as a ‘live contact book’, with friends’ online status and Facebook profile pictures displayed against their contact details. Early reviews suggest this phone will go a long way to helping newbs realise the potential of mobile social media networking.

The time’s probably ripe for this launch; 3 says it handles more than a million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls every day and Mark Zuckerberg reckons more than 15 million Facebook users access the site through their mobile devices (though it’s not clear if this is a UK specific stat).

The phone is named INQ¹ to distinguish it from the manufacturing company INQ Mobile, referred to as INQ. The name’s also good for confusing people who actually do use superscript to indicate the presence of footnotes.

British and European Obama fans, rejoice! Zazzle.com, the on-demand e-commerce shop that allows users to create and sell their own products has launched a UK site at Zazzle.co.uk, which now means you can get all the Obama branded stuff your heart desires without paying import duties though as TCUK’s eagle-eyed readers have pointed out, the goods will still be shipped from the US, so import duties will still apply. On the downside, you have to pay in pound sterling – no more exploiting the old GBP-USD exchange rate.

The UK site launched yesterday; to celebrate, Zazzle’s offering free shipping on all UK and EU orders over £30 until the end of November. This ain’t no sneaky pseudo-secret discount code either – it’s plastered all over the new website.

The launch means Zazzle‘s effectively stolen a march on its closest US competitor, Cafepress.com and may yet shake things up for European counterpart, Spreadshirt. The company acquired its other major competitor, GoodStorm, last year. Founded in 1999 and backed by $16 million in VC funding raised in 2005, Zazzle.com won the 2007 Crunchies award for best business model.

As the downturn bites, VCs are putting more into the companies they feel most confident about rather than the spray-and-pray approach of the last three years. That, combined with companies that have proven models, and developing revenues. The latest example of this is the €15 million investment from the European VC Index Ventures into Be2, the Munich-based global dating site. But this is not your average dating site. This bases its business on an algorithm which identifies specific personality traits and characteristics and uses them to match potentially compatible partners. The engine draws its data from an in-depth personality test for subscribers, creating a higher success rate than humans could achieve left to their own amorous devices.

The test is mainly based on the “New York Longitudinal Study” about the five factor model of personality development and Sternberg “triangular theory of love” – if that floats your boat.

The user demographic of be2 is also slightly older, compared to other dating sites, with an age range of 25 – 69 years and a majority of users aged 30 – 49 years. Not a demographic well served by most dating sites. Perhaps as a results of this focus it now has 12 million members in 34 countries and was cash flow positive 6 weeks after a launch, despite having 225 employees.

be2 will use the capital to further international expansion. Angel investors and Paris-based Banexi Ventures were the company’s initial investors and Index partner, Dom Vidal, will take a seat on the board.

Coming out of Munich, the founders – such as CEO, Robert Wuttke – are mostly ex-Lycos Europe people from back in the day.

Europe’s biggest annual event for the tech industry is looming once more, and this year Le Web’s regular startup competition – run alongside the conference itself – has attracted 30 companies from Europe, and a few from the US, across a wide range of sectors. This year the overall organisation for the competition is being handled by the Europe-wide early-stage investor SeedCamp.

However, I’m as dissappointed as you guys that there’s only one startup from the UK and none from Ireland, which seems like an amazing oversight. I’ve asked Seedcamp for some comment on this and will update this post when they come back with a response.

Meanwhile, we have 5 free tickets to give away to Le Web, so pitch your case as to why you really need to go to Le Web. I’m particularly after entries from UK and Irish firms.

TechCrunch readers get a 20% discount code via this link. Techcrunch is throwing a closing night party – details about tickets will be announced in due course.

They are (in alphabetical order)…

2Win-Solutions – FRANCE
3scale networks S. L. – SPAIN [TC50 Demopit]
Apture – USA
Box.net, Inc. – USA
Brozengo SA – FRANCE
Charge Ventures – Malta
Cmune – CHINA
ConTrust – ISRAEL
DoctorSIM – SPAIN
Edicy – ESTONIA
Haploid – FRANCE
IZI-collecte – FRANCE
Kaltura – USA
MyID.is Certified – FRANCE
Nimbuzz – NETHERLANDS [Reviewed]
Popego Inc. – USA
Producteev Inc. – USA
Publing – FRANCE
Radionomy – BELGIUM [Reviewed]
Samedi GmbH – GERMANY
ShoutEm Ltd. – CROATIA
Silentale SAS – FRANCE
SquareClock – FRANCE [Reviewed]
Tellmewhere – FRANCE
Trendiction – LUXEMBURG
Viewdle, Inc – UKRAINE [Reviewed]
Westcom, s.r.o. – CZECH REPUBLIC
Zavedenia.com – BULGARIA
Zipipop Ltd (Zipiko) – FINLAND
Zoover Holiday Reviews – NETHERLANDS

The companies get 7 minutes each to pitch to the judges on the day. There’s also a new element – a special Start-up Competitors’ Lounge where companies will have a chance to informally network with interested parties. Here’s how they were selected.

The judges who will be judging the competition at the actual event will be:

Ola Ahlvahrsson – Result
Roberto Bonanzinga – Balderton Capital
Mike Butcher – TechCrunchUK
Laurent Chiozotto – Sun Microsystems
Julien Codorniou – Microsoft
Don Dodge – Microsoft
David Hornik –August Capital
Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet – Price Minister
Simon Levene – Accel Partners
Om Malik – GigaOM
Dave McClure – 500Hats
Freddy Mini – Netvibes
Marc Samwer – European Founders Fund
Axel Schmiegelow – Sevenload
Gary Shainberg – British Telecom
Megan Smith – Google
Pascal Thomas – Orange
Martin Varsavsky – FON