[UK] We didn’t exactly heap praise on O2′s Incubator Project, describing aspects of the scheme as ‘pretty dumb’. However, in what appears to be a U-Turn, the mobile operator has, at least to some degree, addressed one of our main criticisms.

Rather than a single startup receiving support, O2 will now sponsor a number of start-ups for an initial period, one of which will then receive extended funding in return for giving the operator the right to acquire them.

Here’s a quick re-cap of how the O2 Incubator Project will work.

[UK] We knew it was sitting pretty at the top of the paid news chart in the UK but now The Guardian newspaper has revealed that its iPhone app has seen 70,000 downloads in its first month.

Initially launched on the 14th of December 2009 and available in the UK, Ireland and US, the app has since extended its distribution to also include most European countries, as well as Australia and Canada. With much wider circulation, expect sales (and revenue) to remain strong.

That said, the app represents a one-off payment and it’s not yet known how the newspaper plans to make revenue sustainable.

[UK] HulloMail, the visual voicemail provider, recently released its dedicated app for the iPhone, available in the UK and US-only. The app brings the complete HulloMail visual voicemail feature set to the device, most of which is fairly redundant for iPhone owners whose networks already support Apple’s own visual voicemail implementation.

(Orange UK, which recently began selling the iPhone, currently doesn’t, something that HulloMail is obviously keen to point out.)

Where things get a little more interesting, however, is that the app also offers the ability to record and send audio messages to other HulloMail users or to any email address via a the phone’s data plan, therefore bypassing the operators own voice carriage.

Not only is this another example of a future where voice is just another form of data but it puts HulloMail on a trajectory where it could begin to compete with ‘phonecasting’ service iPadio and, to a lesser extent, the more high profile AudioBoo.

Today sees the public launch of GetApp.com, which aims to position itself as the leading vertical portal for software, SaaS and cloud-based business applications.

The premise of GetApp is fairly simple: offer (potential) professional IT services and software buyers a chance to browse and research business tools, give providers a low-cost way to be found in the directory, and guide both parties in getting the most out of the experience.

[Germany] Tolingo, the online translation platform, has secured a Series A round of investment. The investment comes from Neuhaus Partners in Hamburg which is using a local start-up fund run by a public programme in conjunction with the local KfW bank (hey, this is Europe remember). The investment will be used to expand further in Europe and internationally. Terms were undisclosed but sources say it is in the €1 million to €2 million range.

Spartoo.com, the European version of Zappos.com, has closed a €12 million Series B round of funding round led by Highland Capital Partners and Endeavour Vision with A Plus Finance and CM-CIC Capital Privé participating. This brings the online shoe retailer’s total funding to €17.5 million.

Launched in 2006, Spartoo claims over 4 million unique visitors per month (Nielsen, November 2009) and a base of 600,000 regular customers. Spartoo operates sites in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg.

[Italy] Rome-based iWikiPhone, a social network for iPhone users where they can discover, share and discuss the best apps, has closed a €250k round of funding. The money comes from a number of private investors and also from Egolab, a Rome based company specializing in online media. Egolab has provided 100k of funding by way of services and a cash investment in return for 20% equity in the company.

With 100,000 apps available from the iPhone App store, finding the good ones is becoming increasingly difficult. iWikiPhone’s answer is that the best way to discover the most interesting and relevant apps for Apple’s smartphone is through recommendations from friends and from knowing which apps your friends are actually using.

The most interesting part, however, is that they also plan to crowdsource ideas for new iPhone apps from the iWikiPhone community. Users will be able to suggest apps and make money. The “idea owner” will be paid $500 and a share of revenue generated through selling the app in the iPhone App Store, which of course is how iWikiPhone plans to make money too.

[Germany] A few people have been saying for a while that online education remains a fertile ground and the latest evidence to confirm this comes from Germany. Sofatutor, the video platform for short courses, has closed a Series A financing round from Hamburg-based investor J.C.M.B. and a Berlin-based public fund, IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft. Terms were undisclosed but we understand from sources that the amount is in the €700-900,000 Euro range. The company plans to use the fund for growing content and marketing.

Founded in 2008 in Berlin and launched in 2009 at Plugg the site has short video clips covering a variety of courses at various subjects and at different levels. For instance, it now has over 2,000 video clips covering high school and basic college maths.

[Spain/Germany] In what looks like a classic example of old media trying to stay relevant in the social web era, PONS Publishing Group, the second biggest publisher in Germany as part of the Klett Group, has teamed up with Madrid-based startup busuu.com.

The free-to-join language learning community now comes with a ‘powered by PONS’ badge in reference to the site’s inclusion of content from the traditional publisher. PONS has a 30 year legacy of producing and selling a range of language learning courses and dictionaries in 35 different languages – from Chinese to Hungarian – and says it want to reach new audiences. Busuu.com, founded at the start of 2008 and with more than 250,000 users from over 200 different countries, appears to fit the bill.

Private equite firm TA Associates announced this morning that it has signed a definitive agreement for a majority investment of over €60 million in eCircle, a decade-old email marketing service provider headquartered in Munich, Germany.

Founded in 1999, eCircle specializes in a range of digital marketing solutions, but it’s mostly known for its high-end email marketing software and related services. The company says more than 550 enterprise clients, including Argos, Nintendo and Samsung, are currently using its eC-messenger Web-based email marketing software, and the company has a transmission volume of over 5 billion emails per quarter.

eCircle has over 200 employees, spread across offices in Germany, the UK, France and Italy.

[UK] Consuming news-on-the-go is a perfect fit for the iPhone, evidenced by the plethora of news-oriented offerings in the App Store.

On that note, Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News announced today that its iPhone app (iTunes link) has hit the 1 million download mark – a quick visit to the UK iTunes Store reveals that it currently sits top of the free apps chart in the news category.

Interestingly, on the paid app front The Guardian newspaper’s recently launched app is still number one in the UK charts.

The Sky News iPhone app was launched in May last year and delivers “breaking news” by text, images and video, taking advantage of the device’s media playback capabilities. While only announced today, the app reached a million downloads at the beginning of January and Sky says its popularity shows no signs of slowing down – the chart position seems to back this up.

[UK] Self-employed ad man Sam Butterfield, who describes himself as “an ideas person”, has created possibly the world’s most pointless iPhone application iPhone Pilot.

That said, with its ability to turn grown men into excited children, it may also be a work of pure genius.

The app turns the iPhone itself into a WW2 fighter plane that you hold in your hand and fly around the room, accompanied by flying and shooting noises, and attachable paper wings.

Check this out:

[France] Nomao defines itself as a personnalized search engine. It helps you to find places, based on what you like or what you Facebook friends like and where you are. Their search is using not only the data they have about the places, but also what they found on the web about them (a kind of aggregator). To show the tool what you like, you just have to use a “like” button, and to find what you friends like, you can connect to Facebook.

They have had a web version for a long time that helped them to build a good database of places (classical ones such as restaurants, bars or hotels but also any kind of shops, theaters, sport centers etc. or even dentists :p) but it also showed interest in mobile from the beginning, with a mobile version. Even if Nomao on the web is available in different languages, their iPhone app is only available to French users by now.

[UK] The real-time bandwagon remains irresistible. This time it’s the turn of Mixcloud, the on-demand radio service, to jump on board.

The London-based startup, which wants to be the ‘YouTube of radio’, has added a real-time activity stream to its home page that auto-updates to show what its users across the site are listening to, favoriting, commenting on and uploading. There’s, inevitably, a social aspect too.

[UK] The UK government today announced that its Next Generation Fund will invest £1 billion to help bring “super-fast broadband” to 90% of the country by 2017, particularly rural households and businesses who might otherwise be left out of so-called Digital Britain.

The “additional” investment will be funded directly by the British tax payer as a continuation of the “duty of 50p on all fixed lines”, which was previously announced in the Digital Britain White Paper as part of the government’s unambitious ‘Universal Service Commitment’ to deliver broadband speeds of 2Mbps broadband to the whole country by 2012. The Next Generation Fund certainly ups the speed stakes, though it appears to be an ambition rather than a guarantee and, conveniently this time round, “super-fast” broadband isn’t actually defined.

Jamendo, a community of free, legal music published with Creative Commons licenses, is actively looking to sell to or merge with another company, TechCrunch Europe has learned. Jamendo CEO Laurent Kratz has confirmed rumors that had made their way to Twitter earlier this week.

The reason is fairly simple: Jamendo is running out of money after failing to raise a follow-up round of venture capital. The startup was looking to raise 1.5 million euros (roughly $2.15 million) after securing a ‘significant amount’ in Series A funding back in June 2007. The company failed to come to an agreement with Mangrove Capital Partners, its original backer, and a potential new investor.

OpenFund, an Athens-based seed level Venture Firm, has announced the first bunch of startups selected for funding. Besides the actual funding, which is between €20-30k for a 20% equity stake in the company, OpenFund provides a four-month incubation period.

In this round, OpenFund selected four companies in total, one from the UK (its founders are from Slovakia), one from Ukraine, and two startups from Greece. Now, let’s take a quick look at the winners.

Well, who knew. It turns out trying to hire a baby sitter is actually a pretty competitive space online. In the US, there are three big players: Sitters.com, Sittercity.com (which recently raised $8m) and Care.com, which has raised $16m. But in the UK-based Findababysitter has been building buzz about its service and has now raised a further £220,000 for expansion outside of the UK into wider Europe. This brings their total funding to date to £480,000.

The investors are the PHC Group, an investment group based in New Zealand which specialises in health tech and biotech. It’s also hired a new Marketing Director, Ben Ferrier who comes from Photobox. The CEO is Tom Harrow.

[UK] That’s that for Popjam then. The site has put up definitive evidence that it’s all over, pictured. For those of you none the wiser, here’s the run-down.

After a few months in stealth mode, Popjam launched in February 2009 as a ’social humour’ site with a the Twitteresque ‘friend/follow’ model of social networking. It was a kind of Twitter-meets-Humour site.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite capture the public’s imagination beyond it’s traffic spike from appearing on TechCrunch.com. Plus, it never integrated with Twitter. This was probably a mistake, as we pointed out.