Oracle is acquiring Secerno, an Oxford, UK-based provider of database firewall solutions for Oracle and non-Oracle databases. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and Oracle expects the transaction to close before the end of June 2010.

Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently.

Secerno’s solution adds a critical defensive layer of security around databases, which blocks unauthorized activity in real-time. With the purchase, Oracle intends to enhance its portfolio of database security solutions, including Oracle Advanced Security, Oracle Database Vault and Oracle Audit Vault to “further ensure data privacy, protect against threats, and enable regulatory compliance”.

AlertMe, the home energy monitoring service, is revamping its home energy kit and accompanying web service, and will launch a rather neat looking iPhone app this July.

The UK company sells a home energy kit that lets users measure and track their home’s energy use online by retrofitting hardware similar to so-called ’smart meters’. The service also ties into Google Powermeter, the search giant’s own home energy monitoring tool available via iGoogle.

The ‘Energy Starter Kit’ itself is being given a makeover and will now come with a colour display for the same price – no big deal – but more significant, the web-based UI and feature-set is also getting a revamp giving greater insight into the user’s home energy use.

As of July, the feature-set will include:

The Samwer brothers are at it again. Shortly after cashing in on Citydeal, Germany’s most prolific startup investors have put millions into Panfu. Their incubator Rocket Internet joined by Holtzbrinck Ventures has invested a seven digit Euro sum in the multi-language online gaming world for kids.

It’s their third joint investment in Panfu, former rounds were done together alongside other investors including Lukasz Gadowski of Team Europe Ventures and Oliver Jung from shopping club Brands4Friends.

Since its launch in December 2007, Panfu has become Europe’s leading website for kids between 6 and 14 years with nearly 13 million registered users and is profitable since early 2009. The company claims a turnover growth of 25 per cent every month during the last half-year. Its neat multi-player online games in eleven different languages are educational and deal with the adventures of cuddly panda bears, bunnies and hippos.

For Nantes-based Doyoubuzz, the days of the Microsoft Word-based resumes are numbered. So what better to do than set-up shop in San Francisco in hopes of conquering the US web 2.0 generation with its online resume service and personal branding platform?

Founded in 2008, the company currently counts roughly 45,000 resumes – primarily in the 20-35 age-range. The “MySpace of professional resumes” is a Netvibes-like widget-based platform, allowing users to create personalized resumes online. But while the service obviously resembles that of Linkedin or Viadeo (who also recently launched in the US), Doyoubuzz oddly sees itself in competition with the traditional, word-processed resume format. OK, sure, when you can add rich content and multimedia to your Doyoubuzz profile, I guess it doesn’t really resemble the one-size-fits-all standard profiles of online professional networks. Plus, users can actually export their Viadeo profiles onto Doyoubuzz to avoid having to regenerate the same content. Practical.

BREAKING: The Apple iPad store is now popping up in other countries allowing iPad users to purchase apps directly on iPad using your their iTunes account.

So far we’ve confirmed it’s appeared in the UK, Belgium, Spain, Israel, France, the Philippines and New Zealand among others.

In fact, a quick check around the other stores also confirms that this looks like a worldwide release.

However it looks like there is no iBooks or iWorks app outside the U.S., yet.

European iPad users could pre-order the iPad on May 10, with shipping expected on May 28.

In a typical Jason Calacanis move today, the West coast based entrepreneur will delete his Facebook page live on the Internet. He has 22,969 fans. You’ll be able to watch it here. Jason announced this move today on his JasonNation newsletter, which replaced his regular blogging way back in 2008.

In a less typical move however, he now appears to have set up the newsletter list to allow every one of his 23,286 members to reply to the entire list. Whether this was intentional or not is unknown.

So far only 6 members have replied to the whole list, perhaps because the majority are in the US, where most people are asleep right now. [Update, make that over 50 and counting]

But somehow I doubt turning JasonNation into a discussion list, rather than one where Jason’s sage words can simply be broadcast to an adoring fan base, was really in the plan. We’ve reached out to find out the truth. [See updates below].

It’s been a four year ride, but TrustedPlaces, the UK’s earliest and oldest Yelp-like local reviews site, has been acquired by Yell Group Plc, the holder of the Yell.com local business directory. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but we understand both founders and investors HOWZAT Media, the fund setup by dotcom veterans Hugo Burge and David Soskin, are “very happy”.

Sokratis Papafloratos, chief executive and co-founder of TrustedPlaces, is now joining Yell as head of social products in the UK. His former co-founder Walid Al Saqqaf departed last year for other opportunities but we understand the parting was amicable.

The reason for the purchase is clear. Yell has been unable to innovate well enough to generate recommendations from local consumers. As a small fast moving startup which has iterated well TrustedPlaces now has a tonne of expertise in this. And the last we heard, the site also become profitable last year.

Touchnote, the mobile app startup which allows you to snap a picture and send it to someone as a physical postcard, has signed a non-exclusive deal with Sony Ericsson which will see it distributed on SE handsets on a global basis.

The deal means the Touchnote-branded app will appear on SE’s Android and Symbian handsets and integrated into the camera and gallery. On first use users will get offered free product to whet their appetite.

But why a postcard app? There’s no doubt it was Touchnote’s business model which probably swung the deal with Sony Ericcson. Unlike with most applications, SE will get a revenue share from postcard sales made via the Touchnote application. Very few other apps actually general money for handset makers. It costs $1.49, Euro 1.49 or £1.50 to send the postcard to anywhere in the world.

We already knew it was hours if not minutes away – see TechCrunch US report – and it’s perhaps no surprise that New Zealand gets the goods ahead of Europe and the US (a bit like New Year’s day).

Yes folks, the official Twitter app for iPhone is here, you know the one expected based on Tweetie ever since Twitter bought the company.

We expect other iPhone app stores around the world to propagate shortly.

Michael Birch, who co-founded social network Bebo along with his wife Xochi Birch, has invested an undisclosed amount in social media agency Punktilio. He’ll also become an adviser to the company.

Punktilio, whose clients include Arsenal F.C, Harper Collins, Phones 4u and Simon Cowell’s SyCo Music label, was founded by ex-Bebo Head of Music, Hal Stokes, so there’s an existing relationship between the two. Stokes launched Punktilio with his brother Sam after leaving AOL last year.

AOL of course purchased Bebo for $850 in March 2008, and is only now looking to shut down or offload the site, which has suffered badly in the last few years with the rise of Facebook.

When Spotify upgraded its player, adding a bunch of social features, we feared for the many startups who were already piggybacking the service with their own playlist sharing sites.

In fact, on the very same day one such offering, ShareMyPlaylists.com, announced that it had received a significant round of funding, news which was largely buried under the weight of Spotify’s news.

Which begs the question, will Spotify’s new found social ambitions eventually bury ShareMyPlaylists altogether and the other 20 or so similar sites that currently co-exist in the music streaming site’s burgeoning ecosystem?

But first, let’s delve into the details of ShareMyPlaylists’ new funding.

For anyone that hates leaving tradeshows and conferences with stacks of business cards, brochures and catalogues, Belgian start-up Getyoo has just released a device that could make your life a lot easier: the Clickey. As of today, this interactive USB key-like gadget can be purchased online for €25 so that you can leave professional events empty-handed. Well, almost.

So, essentially Clickeys are USB keys that can communicate with one another. Thus, you can upload your contact information onto the device (as you would with a business card) and can then send the info to other Clickeys in “a single click” (according to Getyoo’s pitch).

Even better than simply sending contact info is the fact that the little Clickey can also read barcodes and recognize certain tags of objects and documents at tradeshow stands and booths. Translation: you can simply use your Clickey to pick-up digital copies of brochures, documents and catalogues instead of lugging around paper copies. And since all the information is digital and as easy to upload as any info on a USB key, organization of professional contacts and documents just got that much easier.

SoundCloud has just announced they have hit a million users. It followers their deal earlier this year with The Hype Machine, but it’s clear this is a startup that is scaling globally now from its base in Berlin.

The audio sharing site that’s geared towards those who work in the music industry is an online audio platform which lets musicians collaborate, promote and distribute their music via widgets and apps. It’s been variously described as a “Flickr for audio” or a “Vimeo for audio”, but whatever it is, it’s clearly got the kinds of tools and distribution platform which is winning both the hearts and business of artists.

The web measurement firm Quantcast has appointed ex-Yahoo! MD Philip Macauley to lead the company’s operations and expansion into the UK market.

Macauley spent ten years at Yahoo!, where he was most recently Director of Business Development and Commercial Relations.

His tenor at the Internet giant saw him take on various “senior roles” including “driving media agency relationships as Agency Sales Director and leading the company’s publisher efforts as Head of Publisher Partnerships.” All of which would appear to make Macauley a very good fit for Quantcast.

Mobile music recognition and discovery startup Shazam this afternoon revealed that it has grown its user base from 50 million to 75 million members in the last six months.

Stunningly, the company also says it has identified more than one billion songs to date.

Shazam has now become a global phenomenon with a footprint in over 200 countries across six continents through partnerships with leading carriers and handset manufacturers. The company has every right to claim that its brand has now become one of the biggest in mobile.

Perhaps acknowledging that the competitive landscape has changed, Spotify has introduced new pricing plans today. Premium desktop and mobile access is now split into two separate tiers, £4.99 and £9.99 per-month in the UK respectively.

Rival We7 introduced identical pricing when it launched its premium offering in late January this year, while US-based MOG is also planning to enter Britain at a very competitive price point, according to reports.

Swisscom Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Swisscom (Switzerland’s leading telecom operator), is making a strategic investment in Poken. Swisscom is participating in a $1.8 million round, and will be represented on Poken’s Board of Directors by Dominique Mégret, who heads the investment subsidiary.

In a statement, Megret says Poken is “at the nexus of the mobile and events spheres, with unique capabilities relating to NFC, RFID and Social Networking” and that it foresees huge growth for the fledgling company.

Described as a “stepping stone” for enrepreneurs and startups, Hanse Ventures launches today, a new early stage fund based in Hamburg, Germany.

Its founders are Dr. Bernd Kundrun, long-term Chairman of the Management Board at Gruner+Jahr, Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, Jochen Maaß, founder of SEO-agency artaxo and Sarik Weber, former member of the management team of XING.

The company has already taken a stake in 8 businesses, including founding carmio.de, hochzeitsplaza.de, 1000Kreuzfahrten.de, and toptranslation.de, but plans to invest in 6-8 startups a year over the next three years. There isn’t just financial backing on offer but also incubation: start-ups are offered a “full-service infrastructure ranging from design, programming and online-marketing specialists to office space and administrative support.”

Hanse Ventures is looking beyond Hamburg and Germany and welcomes interest from startups across Europe.

Next week it’s TechCrunch Disrupt, but for those of you that can’t make it and are in the Nordics, TechCrunch Europe will be hosting its 3rd TechCrunch Nordic event on May 26 – joining European startup programme Seedcamp on their European tour in Copenhagen at the end of May. Join us!

Last year’s was a blast and it’s long been clear that the Nordics are a key tech cluster in Europe. And we hear Copenhagen is fast becoming a hotbed of startups. Our early bird tickets are now sold out, but the final tickets are available here.

We’re excited to have a stellar lineup of speakers and panelists and we’ll also be showcasing new and existing startups on the day. We can’t wait.

We earlier reported that much-hyped online music startup Spotify was launching in The Netherlands on May 18, according to Dutch media, and it looks like those reports were correct.

In a blog post, the company acknowledges that it has launched in Holland (sign up here), and says it is the seventh country that Spotify is available in.