Good news for European startups who like investors who shoot from the hip, tell it like it is and throw in a few good Pirate phrases for good measure. Dave McClure, venture capitalist and founding general partner at 500 Startups, an internet seed fund and startup accelerator program in Mountain View, CA, is to speak at GeeknRolla, the European startup conference in London on March 30.

Dave has been working in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and in his time has worked with PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel, and Microsoft, to name just a few. In addition to this he has has been an investor in over 100 startup companies including: Mint, SlideShare, SendGrid, Credit Karma, Wildfire Interactive, Bit.ly, CrowdFlower, KissMetrics, TeachStreet, MyGengo, Mashery, and… well the list goes on.

In the coming together of two Dutch startups, Adyen, the Internet payment solutions provider, has been selected by casual gaming portal Spil Games to power its online payments.

Adyen’s pitch is that its technology enables payment via a single page and single click by making nifty use of AJAX and, the company claims, is shown to boost conversion rates and reduce costs by as much as 50%. Additionally, Adyen’s system offers tools to measure and optimize online conversions, and merchants can control the look and feel of the payment page. It’s already been used to power Barclaycard’s new SmartPay payment service and has also been implemented by Vodafone and Groupon, amongst others.

Jagex, which claims to be the UK’s largest independent games developer and publisher and is the company behind the popular MMOG RuneScape, has raised new funding from Insight Venture Partners, Spectrum Equity Investors and The Raine Group. The undisclosed investment will “enable Jagex to accelerate growth of its development and publishing capabilities.”

Freespee, which provides call tracking and pay-per-call solutions for the “lead generation industry”, has closed a second round of funding of 1.1 million euros.

The new investment comes from Finland’s Inventure and will be used to fuel growth across Europe. It follows previous funding in October 2009 to the tune of €800k also from the Finnish VC fund whose other investments include Whitevector, Conmio, Rightware and Thinglink.

Back in November last year the UK’s Prime Minister said he was announcing a number of initiatives aimed at technology companies. Since then there have been a few periphery announcements from the various large tech companies (Google, Facebook et al) about what they would do to help. But one thing that was on the agenda was a review of the Intellectual Property rules. PM David Cameron confirmed a six month review into IP law that he hopes will help attract technology companies to the UK.

The US position on IP leans towards a ‘fair use’ environment, whereby IP can be used to a certain level without owner consent. This is very close the to Creative Commons licenses which aided the growth of startups like Flickr. In the UK copyrighted material is more highly restricted in use. Generally in Europe we rely too much on copyright and not enough on innovation. Witness Nokia’s suing of Apple for instance.

Stardoll, the online fashion game aimed at teen and “tween” girls, is to enter a multi-year licensing agreement with toy giant Mattel to create toys based on the characters in the game.

The first products will ship this autumn according to Mattias Miksche, CEO of Stardoll at the International Toy Fair. Mattel already knows Stardoll well from having advertised its own brands on the site, like Barbie, Fashionistas and Monster High. It’s also sponsored fan clubs, created exclusive dolls and a virtual store. Miksche says Stardoll is now “very focused on entering the licensing space.”

With Nokia expected to unveil a shift in its long term strategy at the company’s annual Capital Markets Day this Friday, it should be no surprise that rumor and conjecture are rife. Much of that has focused on whether or not the Finnish mobile giant will be adopting a third-party platform with talk of Windows Phone 7 given new CEO Stephen Elop’s previous connection with Redmond. A rumor that our well-placed sources would appear to confirm – see below.

But we’re also hearing that Nokia is planning to lay down stronger roots in Silicon Valley too – like so many a European tech outfit – something that The Register’s Andrew Orlowski is also reporting. And in what looks like preparing the troops for a major change of direction, an internal Nokia memo titled ‘Standing on a burning platform’ has been doing the rounds. The widely distributed circular penned by Elop himself is a description of Nokia’s somewhat precarious position – and I say that as someone who has been fairly bullish on the handset maker’s recent products.

Zoopla, the real estate startup, is now one of the top 100 most visited sites in the UK and number two in its space. That’s according to web measurement firm Experian Hitwise’s January figures, says Zoopla, which positions the site at 98 and ahead of older rivals Findaproperty (ranked 125th) and Primelocation (ranked 193rd).

The three year-old startup can’t, however, claim to best market leader Rightmove. This time quoting MediaTel/UKOM data provided by Nielsen for December, Zoopla bags the number two spot with over a million unique visitors for the month but less than half of that seen by Rightmove. It should also be noted that during this period of growth, Zoopla has run a high profile TV ad campaign.

While many ‘social audio’ startups like Audioboo, SoundCloud and Cinch continue to battle each other on the consumer field, there is one company that, while offering a consumer service, is starting to get a considerable amount of traction in the business and enterprise space – largely ignored by the consumer players.

ipadio, bills itslef as a live phone-casting company, and for a while it looked a lot like AudioBoo or Soundcloud. But today it’s secured a £1m ($1.6m) investment from the London Business Angels network, Nemisys (the company that founded ipadio) and backing from the UK government’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme. The company is initially taking just over £700k, with the remainder available later in 2011. The investment will be used to expand the business. It has a number of clever new products like ‘Voice Forms’ and is developing the high-definition live streaming of phone calls to the web.

Founded in 2009, ipadio live-links the telephony system to the Internet. That means consumer can just “call in” audio, instead of having to use data via the company’s iPhone or Android app and then cross post to social media platforms. Here are some examples from the recent turmoil in Egypt, where the calls were literally called-in, without the need for a smartphone app.

United Prototype, the German browser-based gaming company behind Fliplife, has closed a second round of funding after their original seed round last year. The new ’7 figure’ investment comes from existing investors HighTech Gründerfonds and Rapidshare Entertainment (the venture arm of prominent file host Rapidshare), and new partners Mountain Super Angels and United Prototype Ventures, the investment vehicle of founders Bachem, Evsan and other executives. The additional funding will be invested in product development and international expansion.

AudioBoo, the social sound sharing startup, has developed an iPhone framework that gives drag and drop audio recording functionality to any iPhone app. That means any app developer can now add Audioboo recording functionality to their app, thus adding a new kind of social functionality. Apps developers can sign up for an API key, download a Zip file and easily incorporate Audioboo functions, allowing users to share audio from within a iPhone app containing, say, recipes.

But that’s probably not what will immediately kick off a new wave of users. Audioboo plans to officially launch this with a number of high profile media partners “in a couple of weeks” including the BBC, ABC Australia, Guardian, Aljazeera, Sky News and more all trialling the beta versions of the new platform that works with the plugin. A revamp of the Android version of the app will bring it up to par with the iPhone and have a similar plugin environment.

Audoboo CEO and founder Mark Rock believes this will “fundamentally change the nature of how audio is captured and then distributed on the Internet.”

So now that everyone is pretty much in agreement that Quora was the hottest startup of 2010, we’ll definitely start to see a lot of Quora-inspired platforms and services for niche markets. Like fashion. Wheretoget.it is a brand new platform launched last week that is essentially Quora for shoppers. And yes, just as the URL indicates, the site seeks to respond to one very simple question: where to get it?

You don’t have to be a fashion expert to appreciate the concept. I’m sure many of us have been in a situation where we’ve seen someone with a nice bag, tie, scarf, etc. and would like to know where to get it. But since it can be hard to approach a random person in the street (or better yet, a photo in a magazine or on a blog), we never find out where to get the item. With Wheretoget.it, users can upload a photo of the item to the platform and let the site’s community do the work.

Demotix is a London-based startup which has attracted a new wave of attention since the wave of civil unrest has swept the Middle East, particularly in Egypt.

The idea is not new: upload photos and videos to a platform to create an alternative news wire / agency. What is new is that as the mainstream media’s coverage of international events has been shrinking – it is no longer cost efficient to have a guy in some far-flung bureau filing the one annual story a year – so has Demotix’ coverage expanded with professional and semi-professional contributors. In each case Demotix checks out the credentials of contributors, who can then earn news agency fees from their output. It splits the revenue with photographers 50/50 each time the photo or video is sold (major photo agencies take a much larger cut and only pay photographers once). Photos sourced from Demotix have appeared on the front pages of New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Guardian. In August last year it signed a deal with the Publish2 news exchange giving it access to US distribution.

Founder Turi Munthe came up with the idea while he was a political analyst, and now Demotix is becoming a highly efficient middle-man between news producers – the professional and semi-professional photojournalists and videographers – and the news distributors “in all channels in all media.” The site now has 4,000 active contributors for Somalia to Sril Lanka and everywhere in between and operates in over 190 countries around the world

Ah yes, it’s almost that time of year again. You know, when the love birds come out and cupid’s arrow starts flying around. With good old Valentine’s Day right around the corner, some couples are  most likely already preparing to celebrate this so-called holiday in style.  But what about everyone else? Well, there are always that crowd that tends to opt-out of the romantic commercial holiday for numerous reasons, but what about the few that are somewhat in limbo? I mean, what if you just don’t know if she likes you?

Well, SecretPoke is yet another new French dating startup that should help you figure things out. Unlike more traditional dating sites, you don’t have to fill out a form or create a profile to sign-up for the service…

GoSquared, the real-time website analytics startup, has announced that it’s raised an Angel round from Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge, Robert Dighero, and Thomas Jones. That’s the early-stage investor team at White Bear Yard where GoSquared has been resident for some time but it’s only now that the funding is official.

That said, terms remain undisclosed, which is interesting in light of competitor Chartbeat’s impressive $3 million Series A. The fact that GoSquared is keeping its own numbers close to its chest suggests perhaps that the London startup’s funding isn’t quite on the same level even if the product itself is impressive (I’ve been using it extensively for a few weeks now).

Three years ago I created the concept of the GeeknRolla annual conference to bring together Europe’s technology startups to network with investors and talk about how they create and build themselves. This year we are stepping on the gas pedal. We want to launch 15-20 brand new startups there and our tagline this year is this: “Investor Dealflow. Startup Exposure”.

If you are a European startup in stealth or in private beta and want to launch at GeeknRolla, then fill out this form. The deadline is February 24. Any startup selected to pitch on stage will get one free ticket (for the person pitching) and there is no charge to pitch. We will notify all companies invited to pitch by March 4. If you have not heard from us by that time, your application was not successful. If you wish to attend the GeeknRolla conference you will then have to purchase tickets.

As with last year there is a special emphasis on launching startups and connecting them with investors, who will comprise our judging panels. There will also be a DemoPit for startups to showcase their products. We have some interesting plans to give exposure to even more. The venue will be Park Plaza Victoria, 239 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1EQ. The now legendary GeeknRolla Afterparty, which will take place at the amazing, world-famous London nightclub, Pacha, will also help the networking. Ticket holders for the main day-long conference will automatically get in to the after-party, so fear not! We may release a limited amount of After-Party-only tickets at a later date. Details of how to get these will be available in due course, so stay tuned to the GeeknRolla Twitter feed and the event web site.

For sponsorship opportunities please email events director Aléna Dundas ( alena [@] techcrunch.com ) for further details. You can follow any specific updates on the GeeknRolla twitter feed.

It’s about time that somebody took the highly efficient Kickstarter crowdfunding model, added a dash of gaming metrics, and applied it to something that’s purely about benefiting society. This is great.

YouHelp, a recently launched Austrian startup, is doing just that. It enables users to create “challenges” that benefit certain NGOs or participate in ongoing social fund raising. To date, the site has launched in German speaking countries only. However, the company plans to expand to other countries soon. Among the founders is Last.fm’s first CTO Thomas Willomitzer who designed the architecture behind the application and obviously brings experience of scaling from his Last.fm days.

Geomium has announced a tie-in with CBS-owned Last.fm that sees the latter’s 1.5 million music event listings get added to the discovery features of Geomium’s location-based social network.

Under the commercial arrangement, local gigs and festivals pulled in from Last.fm will show up on Geomium’s GPS-powered iPhone app, along with existing listings such as bars, restaurants and local offers. Should attending one of those Last.fm-listed events require purchasing a ticket, users are, of course, sent Last.fm’s way where the music recommendation service gets a kick back. Geomium users can also share their intent, thus increasing the likelihood that others in their local social graph will also make a booking.