ThingLink, which allows anyone to add clickable tags to any web image (useful for brands) and Savalanche, a Finnish social shopping startup, are today launching a new image-based social shopping model. In effect it will allow anyone to set up a web store and become a retailer for anything they want, while making their their shop appear on images.

Ulla Engeström, founder and CEO of ThingLink says it “makes social media exposure convert into sales.” An we’re talking one click here: thus speed. One click between a product and its buy button increases the chances of a sale. However, I must admit ThingLink will need a bigger partner than Savalanche if this is to take off outside of Finland.

Last year Hertz Rent A Car launched a new service offering electric vehicles at an hourly rate in New York City, with expansion of the service to San Francisco, Washington D.C. and markets in Texas and China by the end of 2011. One of the cities on that list was London, and this Friday the service goes live.

ConnectByHertz “car sharing” service makes electric vehicles (EVs) available to rent by-the-hour.

The scheme is launching with 16 charging points set up across the capital. Cars on offer initially will be the iMieV, Nissan LEAF and Renault Kangoo van. This Friday they will be demonstration of the cars from the London Marble Arch location in London.

In today’s world of cloud computing, the ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ approach is very often the only sensible one for small to medium-sized businesses on a budget. And so it’s always nice to see two Software-as-a-Service offerings come together, especially when they bridge the Atlantic.

Such is the case with today’s announcement that the UK’s KashFlow is integrating its online accounting software with US-based MailChimp to make it easy for SMEs to create targeted email campaigns for existing customers based on their historic spending patterns.

Dailyplaces, the social recommendation service for places, has upped the social today by adding realtime chat to its iPhone and Android apps.

Dubbed ‘Places Chat’, users can communicate directly and in realtime with other users that are checked-in at the same location. Additionally, it’s possible to chat with other users that aren’t nearby via a user’s friend-list. The idea behind the feature is to enable users to converse with each other around locations so that they can ask about the place, give recommendations or even book appointments, says the Frankfurt-based startup.

Online booking and reservation system BookingBug has been bootstrapped for some time now, but today it announces the inking of a solid Angel round to the tune of $350,000 from a small group of Angels. Among them, Philip Crawford (ex-Oracle, current chairman of Lombard Risk plc and Avanti Capital) is joining the board.

BookingBug enables businesses to share their availability – by hour, day, week or as classes, courses or events – and take bookings and enquiries online. The system is both realtime and distributed in that it’s booking and enquiry widgets can be embedded onto other sites, or affiliate partners and through social media.

There used to be an interesting argument for Christianity. Either Jesus was ‘right’ or he was mad. But he couldn’t be just misguided. A similar argument occurs to me regarding the case of Paul Ceglia who has returned to the fray after claiming back in August that he owned 50% of Facebook. Well, it appears he may, potentially, have some interesting evidence to back up this claim.

He started from a tough place. A convicted felon, about to be charged with fraud on an unrelated company, Ceglia had waited seven years to file his first lawsuit. Facebook dismissed the claims. But now he’s back with DLA Piper, a bigger law firm used to tech cases, which has gone through his email archive with a fine toothed comb and come up with a devastating initial salvo.

This is a guest post by Danvers Baillieu and Emma Peacock who are both senior associates at international law firm Pinsent Masons LLP. Danvers is the co-founder of Bootlaw.com, the legal meetup for tech start-ups and entrepreneurs and he specialises in technology law; Emma specialises in immigration and employment law and contributes to HRnetwork.tv and out-law.com.

The news that the British government has introduced the new “entrepreneur visa” has been widely welcomed by the start up community, not least here on TechCrunch Europe, and cited as evidence that the UK has in one respect stolen a march on Silicon Valley as the US government seems unwilling or unable to make progress with its much vaunted Startup Visa Act.

In the short time that the new rules have been in force, we have already been asked by London based start up clients to advise them on obtaining visas for overseas based founders under this new route and wanted to share our views – and specific concerns with the community, in the hope that this new regime can be further improved. The headline takeaway is that, to quote Jon Bon Jovi, “we’re halfway there”, but to quote John Reid, the regime is not yet “fit for purpose”.

SoundCloud, the audio platform not unlike Cinch or Audioboo, has launched Takes Questions, a new product in beta that lets anyone pose questions and others leave answers in audio, from a customisable webpage. Is this trying to be Quora for audio?

Maybe not. There are far more ‘media’ reasons to create this feature. Takes Questions is going to allow celebrities and musicians who use SoundCloud – and there are a few, as the service has grown up as a predominantly music platform – to “engage more deeply engage with their fans, followers and friends in a simple-to-use and personal way” says the startup. This feels more like a public voicemail box to me.

Proof that online fashion remains a hot space, StylistPick, the fashion buying site that offers members a personalised offer each month, has raised $8 million in a Series A round co-led by Accel Partners and Index Ventures.

Founded in 2010, Stylistpick offers a neat take on the fashion club model: Customers signup to StylistPick and are asked to take a short quiz to “identify their fashion profile”. Then each month via email they receive tailored recommendations for fashion items such as shoes and bags, which claim to be matched to their taste as well as being picked by “leading fashion personalities” or professional stylists as used by celebrities such as Alexa Chung, Dannii Minogue, Paloma Faith and Pixie Lott. Interestingly, each offer is pegged at a set price of £39.95p including postage and members can also choose to decline said offer and therefore skip the month.

There are now, by some estimates, 35,000 social games. Can you name the top five? I thought not. In other words, the sheer number of social games across the web, mobile and social platforms like Facebook mean they are now presenting the same problem as iPhone or Android apps: how do you discover the good ones?

TeePee Games is a consumer portal that aggregates social games. It’s starting with Facebook but will soon extend to smartphones and other online games, allowing gamers to tailor games to their profile, cutting through the usual noise. So far so similar to a thousand other aggregators. The difference is that it’s built a discovery engine, not unlike the way Pandora or Last.Fm suggests new artists to you. A year in development, and despite still being in open beta, it plans to offer 300 Facebook, 2,500 Flash and 100 Android games – and it’s already signing investment.

Today the startup, which already has $500k in Angel backing, has signed a ‘strategic partnership’ with Turner Broadcasting Europe (home to Cartoon Network, TNT, Adult Swim and others). The fact that Turner is ‘backing’ the development of TeePee’s games discovery platform is code for some kind of investment in the company, but so far both, including CEO/’Chief TeePee’ Tony Pearce, are coy about how much this amounts to.

Mediastay is a French company that kind of stands out from the rest – and not just because it was founded by a group of teenagers back in 2000 (co-founder Eric Bennepthali started back when he was 16). Today, the 60-person company specializing in online gaming payment solutions is announcing that it has closed a €15 million ($21.5 million) round of funding for further international development.  The money comes from Iris Capital and IdInvest Partners (formerly AGF Private Equity).

WorkSnug, the location-based service for mobile workers, has raised £110k in funding from nine UK-based Angel investors. Yes, you read that correct, nine separate investors, which seems a little extreme for what from the outside looks like a seed round.

However, in actual fact, WorkSnug has generated revenue almost from the get-go through partnerships with Plantronics, Cisco, Skype and, most recently, HP. Having launched its app globally over a year ago, the London-based startup is only now taking funding in order to step on the gas as it were by launching on more mobile platforms (beyond iPhone and BlackBerry) and broadening its offering. Interestingly, this could include helping mobile workers not just locate places to co-work and other resources but, eventually, people. Thus unlocking the serendipitous or dare I say temporal social networks that potentially exist in places frequented by mobile workers hunched over laptops. It’s not hard to imagine how that could create all sorts of exciting opportunities.

Is there no end to the group buying craze? It seems not and today news comes that Huddlebuy, the ‘Groupon for small businesses’, has raised £350,000 in Angel funding. Those that participated in the round include Alex Chesterman, co-founder of LoveFilm and Zoopla, and well-known Angel Sherry Coutu.

UK-based Huddlebuy is founded by Per Larsen (ex-Apple), Chieu Cao (ex-Microsoft) and Saurav Chopra (ex-Deloite/Yahoo!) and like a typical group buying site, offers discounts – this time aimed at small businesses – through the so-called power of group buying, which in reality is achieved through a sprinkling of economies of scale supported by a heavy dose of social media marketing as offers are designed to go viral.

Niche Groupon-like site Goodypass.com has secured the services of 12 UK celebrities (someone please name them, it’s a mystery to me). Each are are now tweeting out offers to their numerous Twitter followers. The site, headed up by TV presenter Kate Garraway, is understood to be in final discussions for a round of significant funding, but has seed money from investor Kite Ventures,

The new ‘flash offers’ startup offers members goods at cut down prices by working with celebrities to promote the offers. A pre-existing audience for those celebs is almost certain to push the offers out through social media.

For instance, Garraway herself joined Twitter on 15 June last year but already has over 38,000 followers. New’y signed @angela_griffin, TV actress, has 43,422. The site will also win brownie points with the public by donating 5% of all profits to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for kids.

Last week the UK’s Technology Strategy Board, run by the government as a booster of the tech business world, unveiled a new £1m fund to support “digital businesses” in the small area around Old Street and Shoreditch in East London (known as ‘Silicon Roundabout’). The announcement was badly handled as it lacked detail. But instead of asking for more detail (and getting it), the tech community has let loose with both barrels. Why, asks Daniel Tenner, the founder of GrantTree and Woobius (a collaboration hub for architects), is this? He also blogs on swombat.com. You can follow him on Twitter here.

The questioner, looking nonchalant but determined, was in his thirties, held a small black dog in his lap and wore thin spectacles.

“I have a question. What’s in it for the taxpayers? Who’s going to be assessing entries and how are they qualified to do that?”

There was a chuckle from the audience, at the obviously antagonistic question. I muttered to the person next to me, “Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth!”

More investors pouring more money into Spanish group buying site Groupalia as the company just announced that it has landed $15 million from current shareholders and new backers like General Atlantic, Insight Venture Partners and Index Ventures. The round follows a 5 million euros investment secured back in October 2010 and a 2.5 million euros round secured back in May 2010.

Groupalia is a site that features a daily deal, in the form of a discount coupon, on the best things to do, see, eat and buy in the cities where it is present. The company expects a turnover of $150 million in 2011, which would be 16 times the turnover booked last year.

Rolling up video advertising is the order of the day its seems. UK advertising tech company and network Burst Media has been acquired for £18.5 million ($30 million) in cash and shares by video indexing and advertising company Blinkx.

Burst was the 16th largest ad network in the U.K. in February 2010, reaching nearly 12.3 million unique viewers, and itself acquired ad network OTP Media, as well as entertainment ad network Giant Realm for $2.1 million, both last year.

Oh, how I wish I’d done this myself. The Startup Kids is a to-be-released documentary about young web entrepreneurs in the U.S…. and Europe. That’s actually what’s nice about it – for the first time we have (outside of our work here on TechCrunch Europe) some media which finds a common thread of entrepreneurs running between the two continents.

There’s a nice underlying theme here too. The recession has created many new startups often out of sheer necessity, and that’s exactly what these two Icelandic girls, Sesselja Vilhjalmsdottir and Vala Halldorsdottir did – they went out and got started. But although they got an EU grant to do the filming, they still need additional funding to finish post-production as well as funds for promoting and premiering the film.

So in order to help them we’re releasing the trailer exclusively on Techcrunch, watch it below. You can pledge your support by backing them on Kickstarter so they can finish the film – and we can get to see 70 interviews with leading entrepreneurs.

SohoOS is a cloud platform for small businesses where they can manage everything from invoicing to billing (without the need to open a merchant account), CRM, email and SMS broadcast, a sales flow manager, as well as document and project management. Since debuting on TechCrunch nearly a year ago, over 20,000 businesses have become active accounts on SohoOS’s platform.

In Tel Aviv for Techonomy3, I caught up with SohoOS’s Ron Daniel, founder and CEO, and Orit Mossinson, CMO.

When I first heard about Mail.Ru’s “Russian Code Cup“, I was instantly reminded of that scene in The Social Network whereby Mark Zuckerberg is interviewing for a programing intern for Facebook. Two candidates are fighting it out for the position in a hackathon/drinking game in which they have to drink shots every 10 lines of code and every 3 minutes or something like that. Upon completion, Zuckerberg utters those famous words to the winner:

“Welcome to Facebook”.

And while the Russian Code Cup probably won’t be such a feisty affair, it’s likely going to be just as hardcore in its own way and there’s $10,000 up for grabs for the eventual winner.