Ten startups were showcased to investors at the brand new Springboard accelerator programme in the UK today, which has joined Seedcamp, Startup Bootcamp and Hackfwd as one of the bigger programmes across Europe.

The startups to present were the following, (click the links to get our coverage of each company):

Adwings, Arachnys, Apiary, HubFlow, Mayday, MiniMonos, Playmob, Publification, Tastebuds.fm, and TotalGigs.

Perhaps one of the most interesting new startups to emerge from the Springboard accelerator programme at its first investor day today has been Publification.

Right now there is a problem with ebooks. They are files. They are not dynamic. You need a reader. Not all readers work with all files. Plus, publishers are in hoc to the platforms like Kindle and iBooks. It’s a total pain, for publishers and for writers. Publishers don’t have any control over what is promoted and don’t get enough data about the customers. The companies that win are the platforms, Amazon and Apple and the rest.

Publification disrupts that model by creating an ebook reader for browsers, creating a beautiful reading experience through an HTML5 app inside a browser. That means it can access 2 billion existing devices. The HTML5 based Browserbook reader automatically fits any screen size and having seen it myself I can say it actually works extremely well, including swiping on an iPad. No files to download, no software to install, no dedicated e-reader devices.

Springboard Startups: A “Color for live music” might be stretching the analogy (and the comparison) but Total Gigs wants to be in the same location-based content sharing field, even if it probably wouldn’t like Color’s negative press.

They intend to launch an app on the iPhone, RIM and Android to allow sharing of Pictures, Messages and “Moods” based on location. Then, when the event finishes, the stream closes but users can go back and relive the memory through shared pictures, thoughts and emotions that were captured at the time.

Springboard Startups: In a sentence, MiniMonos is a ‘Green Moshi Monsters for boys.”

The longer story is that this is a 2D virtual world for kids to have fun in (it’s focused on entertainment with green/sustainability themes, not education). MiniMonos has been going for two years and is led by an experienced team led by of CEO Melissa Clark-Reynolds, but only came out of beta last month. It’s growing at 20% per month and now has about 300,000 registered members. Revenue comes through subscriptions and microtransactions. The target market is 8-12-year-old boys.

Buy a virtual good inside the game and you contribute to a clean water supply for kids in India (14,000+ days to date), as well as adopting orangutans, supporting wild tigers, and other feel-good rewards. There are also in-world rewards for real-world eco-actions.

What do you get if you cross an ex-Control Risks analyst with a technical co-founder? Remember, Control Risks is about entering and dealing with emerging new markets, where anything can happen. So Arachnys is about digging deep into the data about business information from emerging markets like India, China, and Russia. Think Google for emerging markets.

Tastebuds.fm has been making waves recently with an innovative approach to dating which is a lot less run of the mill. Today it launches to investors at the Springboard accelerator programme in Cambridge, with a bid for £500,000 of Seed investment.

Users import their music profiles from last.fm, facebook or just put in some of their favourite artists. They are then shown single people who share their musical preferences. A lot less tiresome than trawling though people who might look good but are not as keen on the Smashing Pumpkins as you – and a lot more emotionally connecting.

Tastebuds is also integrated with music events website Songkick. Thus, an event Matchmaker lets you declare your intention to go to a gig and ask if anyone wants to come – a perfect dating feature.

Springboard Startups: Web APIs are critical piece of cloud infrastructure —enabling businesses to monetise their data, provide services to 3rd parties, power mobile applications and migrate enterprise to cloud. The trouble is, building successful cloud APIs is not easy. It’s not just the API. You also need to create documentation and attract developers. That is a major pain in the ass.

So, Apiary.io is a developer friendly API blueprint, a way to describe your API. Clients get testing infrastructure, and the documentation is generated automatically from the blueprint and testing infrastructure. So the documentation is always up to date. Woot.

Consisting of all-woman team, Caroline Howes, Daniela Neumann and Jude Ower, PlayMob is creating a marketplace allowing charities to place virtual goods and characters into social games, while allowing developers to entice users to get used to the idea of pay for virtual goods by donating to charity. It’s actually an incredibly good idea, and while creating a win for both parties, could develop further into a powerhouse brokerage business.

Charities get to reduce the costs of fundraising while increasing engagement by getting in front of mass audiences online. This is smart, since spikes in charitiable giving are not sustainable. How many requests for JustGiving handouts have you had? Exactly people have philanthropy fatigue. ‘Little and often’ is better, and it maps perfectly to the purchase of virtual goods.

Big old creaking training companies like Outstart typically deliver programmes into corporates typically deliver “Learning Management Software (LMS)” via actual boxes and desktop application. This is a market ripe for disruption via the web and mobile.

Hubflow delivers training courses straight to mobile devices in a snackable form so remote workers can learn on the go.

It already has clients like TKMaxx and traction through direct sales efforts and licensed resellers, and is being evaluated by companies including GlaxoSmithKline, KPMG, Volvo, BT, Homebase/Argos and LloydsTSB. It has 4 licensed resellers and 5 paying clients. The business is cashflow positive and is in the process of employing its first staff members but plans to raise cash to go faster and take over the space.

Springboard Startups:There has been an explosion of browsers across first the web now smartphones and soon TVs. This is a problem. It’s going to get harder for companies to test applications across these platforms. Currently companies are dependent on customers complaining in order to identity problems with their site. With this reliance on user feedback, companies are losing revenue to competitors without even realising. Ideally they’d fix the issues before users complain. And while usually you can tell someone dropped off a site, but you can’t tell why.

So MaydayHQ is out to alert companies when users have problems with a site, and tell them why.

Springboard is a UK-based accelerator programme for startups. Today is their investor day, which we’re covering. 10 teams are pitching to investors, mentors and colleagues in Cambridge. The first is Adwings.

SpringBoard Startups: Adwings bills itself as a one stop advertising destination that lets advertisers plan, book and track advertising across various media channels, from print to digital media, from mobile to outdoor, and even video (TV to YouTube).

The startup is building a platform for campaign planning, cross media booking, creative and campaign tracking statistics. Quite a tall order, and unfortunately it’s not the only player looking to do similar things. But, the Lithuanian team has had success in their home country, aggregating media from 95% of the country’s 40 newspapers newspapers and bringing in 1,000 paying customers.

Online store GetJar has consolidated its position as the biggest marketplace for free apps by reaching its two billionth download. The company, which makes its money through advertising, was one of the earliest players in the app market. Admittedly it still trails paid-for offerings such as the Apple App store, the market leader, which as recently as May had a reported 59% of the app market worldwide.

GetJar, which along with Handango pretty much established the app store concept before every passer-by knew what an app actually was, believes its continuing viability is down to its open policy and commitment to the free model. Unlike the Apple, BlackBerry and Android equivalent marketplaces, it allows developers to upload their apps for any platform they wish. Android, Blackberry, Java, Symbian and Mobile Web customers will all find something that will work on their phone, with 150,000 apps available supporting (the company believes) 2,500 devices.

KiMA Ventures has made a small $150,000 investment in Tap2print, a global ‘In-App Printing Service’ for mobile applications that makes print product ordering possible from any mobile app worldwide. Clearly there are a lot of photos out there unprinted.

The idea is that developers download Tap2print’s ‘In-App Printing Service’ SDK and hit its developers portal. This allows access to integration, testing and income status tracking. Thus, developers get to concentrate on making their app a success while Tap2print takes care of all the technical, logistical and service aspects of a worldwide print and delivery service. A “significant share of the revenue” is generated by every order.

It goes without saying that there is a great deal of activity in the tech startup world these days, whether you think it’s a bubble or not. At the same time governments all over the world are realising that with economies in dire straits, anything which shows hypergrowth like technology is to be encouraged. Little wonder then that Chile is doing StartupChile, Berlin is white hot right now and the UK government is fanning the flames under an organic tech cluster in the East of London. So what’s the one thing you don’t need in a “TechCity“? How about no basic phone lines, maybe?

We’ve already documented the delays BT Openreach is capable of when being asked, in simple terms, to connect a central London building up to a fibre broadband connection. We even put a countdown clock on them to get it sorted out.

Now word reaches us that Shutl, a company with significant VC investment and which is threatening to become one of the hottest startups in the UK is simply trying to get… a phone line.

The trend in VC over the last couple of years has been towards smaller sized funds which do several, faster investments. Now, new fund Hummingbird Ventures has raised a €30 million ($42 million) venture capital fund for investments in early stage ecommerce and cloud computing companies in the EMEA region, with plenty of emphasis on the “MEA” part of that acronym. Welcome to the party guys.

The investment team behind Hummingbird controlled the funds previously invested by Big Bang Ventures, which invested in DCT (later sold to Symantec) and Qlayer (sold to Sun/Oracle), among a number of other investments. In 2009, Hummingbird was one of the first VC funds to focus on the burgeoning Turkish market, completing four investments in Turkey and the Middle-East and North Africa region.

Startup business Ticket Tailor has launched in the UK from its Shoreditch HQ, waving two fingers at the more established event ticket intermediaries who they claim are overpriced and run an out-dated business model. The company is currently seeking funding.

What’s the beef? Founder Jonny White says it’s time for everyone to stop paying a fee per ticket bought, which is the standard pattern for all of the major ticketing companies at the moment. “This is the standard model amongst the main ticketing companies including TicketMaster, EventBrite, TicketLeap, and Amiando,” he says. “We charge a monthly subscription which ranges from free to £75 a month, similar to other SaaS business applications, Our system is free until someone sells their first ticket.” He believes his system has saved customers over £20,000 since its January launch.

A new health startup encouraging patients to “self-manage” their health has been launched with the backing of the UK’s National Health Service. NHS Consultant Dawson King, the healthcare entrepreneur behind the portal, now intends to take the idea global. Think Yammer for patients.

NHS.Info is designed to allow patients, healthcare professionals and providers to exchange and use health information and encourage patient self-management. It’s the first product from new start-up company Cambridge Healthcare, which is working in partnership with the NHS and NHS IT body Connecting for Health.

wireWAX, a startup which lets users add clickable tags to faces and objects web videos (the tags also move with the object), has secured investment from Passion Capital, the early-stage investment fund managed by leafing european angel investors, Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero. No figure was released but our sources say it was in the $500,000 realm. ex-COO of Last.fm and CEO of ArtFinder Spencer Hyman joins as a strategic advisor and earlier investor.

wireWAX’s technology is a cross-platform SaaS tool but its not limited to Flash web sites. It’s also available in a native touchable video version for use on the iPad or other Flash-restricted devices. Developed by co-founders Steve Callanan and Dan Garraway based on the former’s 10 years of experience at his TV production company.

Socialbakers, a social media analytics website focused primarily on Facebook, launched their own Twitter statistics today. In essence, its a list of Twitter’s most popular users, including @ladygaga, @justinbieber, @barackobama and @britneyspears, sorted by their number of followers.

Socialbakers, previously known as Facebakers, is a product of the Czech company Candytech, and is well known in the social media space for providing data on the popularity of Facebook fan pages. The fan pages are sorted by country, a feature that Facebook doesn’t offer which lets companies compare their Facebook presences to competitors.

We’re planning an event in Vienna on October 6, 2011 – TechCrunch Vienna. This will be the climax of a full week full of investors, startups and interested individuals, organized by local entrepreneur group STARTEurope.

The Startup week features speakers and panelists that are both well known and have a tremendous background in technology. People that have significantly contributed to Europe’s startup and investment culture. Facebook will be doing a dedicated “Facebook Hack” side event, that will be overseen by Facebook’s Head of Business Development Christian Hernandez.

Early bird tickets are available until July 31, so be quick. Also if you are interested in partnering with us then please contact Lukas Zinnagl (NOT Mike Butcher) at lukas.zinnagl (at) gmail.com.