[Belgium] Earlier this week, 3D gesture recognition software developer Softkinetic and VUB university spin-off company Optrima, inventor of patented 3D sensing technology announced a joint venture offering what they say is the most complete 3D depth-sensing imaging and gesture recognition interface solution on the market. It’s available now, and is being offered to OEMs as an all-in-one product, capable of being embedded into a wide variety of consumer digital and electronic devices. One of the first to take up the technology is semiconductor giant, Texas Instruments.

As part of the deal, terms of which are undisclosed, Softkinetic-Optrima (the JV known as SKO to avoid confusion) will port its 3D gesture recognition middleware called iisu directly onto TI’s intelligent digital signal processors. It’ll also provide direct support for OptriCam, SKO’s 3D imagers product, to TI-based development boards.

So app developers get the tools and APIs they need to develop advanced gesture-based applications without having to muck about with the technicalities of the 3D depth sensing cameras.

Essentially, it’s an SDK offering a rich set of interfaces and predefined gesture-based patterns, letting TI’s customers focus their effort on the game play itself — or whatever 3D gesture-controlled app they’re building.

I recently spoke to Softkinetic’s CEO Michel Tombroff about the upcoming deal, and though he couldn’t at the time name the as-yet-unannounced partner, he was obviously brimming with enthusiasm for SKO’s goal of getting affordable gesture recognition apps into homes across Europe and the US by the end of 2010.

Which just happens to be when Microsoft’s much-anticipated Project Natal is due. Read More

FOWA’s known for being a launching platform for startups. The joy of being surrounded by 600-odd web people though is that there are bound to be a few other startups in the house apart from the ones that make it to the stage.

One that caught my eye yesterday is RunAlong.se, which as the domain suggests is a Swedish venture, founded by former user interaction designer Heidi Harman.

Currently in beta, it’s an online health community targeted at female runners who don’t necessarily want to run or walk on their own. Users can map a route using Google Maps, and then invite fellow runners to join them. The benefit to users is increased safety on runs, especially in the dark, and more motivation to actually put on those running shoes at the end of a long day.

The site launched in March 2009, and received some funding from the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, Vinnova. It’s a Ruby on Rails development which takes a “user-driven” innovation route in feature development, i.e. users define and prioritize the features they want most. Read More

Looking at the Twitter stream of Day 2 at FOWA 2009, it’s clear that Canonical’s Simon Wardley hit all the right buttons with his levelheaded and wryly humourous take on the ongoing evolution of cloud computing, and what it means for the future of innovation in the tech space. He gave a tip of the hat to Ubuntu’s Enterprise Cloud, which supports the emerging EC2 standard, and finished on the sombre reminder: “Either the cloud is based on open source or you’ll risk losing internet freedoms.”

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Today, 0870, a fantastic free iPhone app from freelance mobile developer Simon Maddox is at last available in the UK App Store, after a whopping 429 days in the approval process. And it appears that O2 was largely to blame for the hold up. Read More

Channel 4′s 4iP fund has acquired a minority equity stake in former Seedcamp winner, MyBuilder.com for £350,000. As part of the deal, MyBuilder.com’s services will be integrated into Channel 4′s 4Homes website, with the company getting a proportion of CPA revenue generated through the site.

The deal is significantly 4iP’s first investment into a later stage company with a fully formed product and a proven business model. 4iP’s Daniel Heaf says it’s representative of Channel 4′s strategic aims to diversify its own revenue streams, and as such, this could be the first of many similar investments which further the broadcaster’s remit in public service digital media. Read More

Listen up, music lovers. Mixcloud, the on-demand radio startup that’s re-thinking radio for the digital age, opens its doors to the public at noon on Monday. The site launched in private beta at SXSW earlier this year, and has had some positive reviews. Which is probably why it was shortlisted for a TechCrunch Europas award a few months back. After the jump, we’ve got 500 passes for TechCrunch readers to get a sneak preview of Mixcliud’s ‘cloudcasts’.

Online radio is very much a digital media orphan; languishing in a fragmented space while innovations in other aspects of streaming media have come thick and fast over the last few years. Mixcloud’s vision is to be the YouTube of radio with on-demand radio shows spanning music and talk and truing to make it make it more social, personalised and ‘democratic’.

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Okay, so I know events are not news, but this is one worth talking about. On 19-20 September, PayPal is hosting a Charity Hack Weekend, where the goal is for developers to build new ways to take donations across social media, mobile and web platforms.

The idea is to help charities that don’t have the resources or know-how to make better use of technology to promote their cause, with the intention that any apps born over the weekend can be used by any charity under an “open source style” licence. Read More

If we assume that the secret to successful tech startups is an elegant solution to a common problem, easily monetized and marketed to a receptive audience, then Young Rewired State probably saw the birth of five or more successful startups of the future, hacked together by a group of very motivated teenagers over 24 hours.

The hack day, organised by Rewired State, was held at Google’s London Victoria offices over the weekend. It brought together 50 young developers aged 15-18 (of which, only three were girls), giving them access to experienced mentors, non-personal government data and as is customary at events like this, an unlimited supply of sugar and caffeine.

A total of 16 hacks were presented. The winners were: Read More

Flirtomatic, the freemium mobile and online flirting service from UK startup Handmade Mobile Ltd, has launched in Australia through ninemsn, one of the most popular websites in that country.

The agreement will see Flirtomatic initially launched with major carriers using existing ninemsn content relationships. Ninemsn’s digital sales team, the largest in Australia, will handle all advertising sales, whilst its 5th Finger subsidiary will take care of SMS messaging. Read More

Forget Spotify – here comes another attempt to make money out of digital music borrowed directly from the shareware world.

Nokia’s Ovi Store has hooked up with mobile music discovery app Shazam to offer a try-before-you-buy version for its handsets running Symbian OS, S60 5.0 and Symbian OS S60 3.1 and 3.2.

These include the new N97, the 5800 XpressMusic, the E71 and the N95 range. A fully featured version of Shazam which integrates with the Nokia Music Store is available for free until 30th November. Read More

Vodafone UK is offering €150,000 to the top three mobile internet startups in its annual Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition to promote and accelerate innovation in the mobile internet sector. There are six finalists from the UK and the Netherlands in the running, all of which have of course been covered by TechCrunch Europe at various times in the past.

In the red corner, representing Routemaster buses, Beefeaters and chicken tikka half and half, we have: Read More

Every now and again, you come across a service that promises to disrupt and change the entrepreneurial landscape for good. Buildabrand (@buildabrand) could do just that. The service provides high quality “strategically correct” branding for your startup for about the same price as domain registration, effectively bypassing what is a traditionally expensive and time-consuming process.

Answer a few questions about your business and buildabrand will provide a selection of brand identities: logos, fonts and so on. You can then apply that branding (after customising it, if you choose) to downloadable graphics, stationery, website templates and even – eventually – merchandise like pens and beach towels. You just pay for the items you order or download. The service requires no creative skills from users. Read More

Tweetminster has raised £100k from angel investor John Arnold. The news comes just a few weeks after it launched its Livewire, a tracker that aggregates online political activity in the UK, in partnership with The Independent newspaper.

Arnold, MD of public affairs agency PoliticsDirect, will join Tweetminster as chairman. Alberto Nardelli, a co-founder of Tweetminster, says the company plans to use the investment to build on its capacity and develop premium analytics and data services around the Livewire. These will be released in the next couple of months.

One planned premium service will be a way to use social media tools to survey users around specific political issues – sort of like ‘YouGov 2.0′. Not bad going for something that started life as a side project for a bunch of politics geeks.

GQ.com will be joining the likes of The Guardian and NME in using we7‘s streaming service on its site as of next week. The service will be styled as a jukebox stocked with playlists compiled by GQ’s editorial team. As per we7′s model, GQ online readers will be able to listen for free and buy any tracks they like via the integrated download feature.

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6:16 PM: The hordes descend! Champagne is flowing, the live stream is streaming, anticipation is high.

6:35 PM: Our roving reporter Mike Butcher has been Twitpiccing:

6:47 PM: Starting in one minute….

6:50 PM: So, here we go! We’re starting with a pitch competition featuring six startups from across Europe. Pitch sponsored by UKTI.

First pitch: Bernhard Niesner from busuu.com – an extremely European company (they’re Austrian based in Spain!)

(Not unlike Babbel) Busuu is an online language learning community, with interactive tests and the chance to practise your new skillz with native language speakers around the world. Currently have +130k users around the world. Feb 2009 started monetising the freemium model, currently the largest language learning site in Spain.

6:57 PM: Next up: Heikke Haldre from Fits.Me – This is some crazy sh…. Robots + fashion = online clothes shopping without fear of buying things that don’t fit you. It’s a virtual fitting room which helps people see what clothes will look like on their body shape. Raised €1.3m, developed the prototype for which a patent has been filed.

7:01 PM: Philipp Mohr from Comufy. Taking communications to the next level. This looks like something we could all do with – going further than just aggregation – it lets you hook all your comms into the Comufy platform and then set levels of permission and filters to make sure you either a) receive exactly what you want in the right context. Target markets: corporates, SMEs, individuals – so, everyone then! Web app and mobile client already available, public launch in September.

7:04 PM: Mark Fletcher from Pitchero. Mike distracted me, but as far as I can tell, this is a social networking community for football, rugby union, rugby league and cricket clubs, 40k members, freemium model in a £10m market in the UK and £35m in the US. Want to find the next heros of the sports.

7:11 PM: James (who’s just 18!) from GigLocator. Focused on making live music more accessible to all by tying into the leading social networks.

7:14 PM: Ravi Sharma of emarket.com – online exchange for the FMCG industry – >€1 trillion marketplace, due to the nature of the goods. Making it quick and easy for companies to trade – i.e. manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers. (This sounds like what the eprocurement/SCM movement of the early-to-mid 90s was trying to do.) Close to reaching target of 300 of the top companies in this industry as member. 9 September public launch, started trading 4 weeks ago, done £2.5m of trade in that time.

7:18 PM: Mike has an announcement: as of today, TechCrunch Europe launches the TechCrunch Europe Top 100 – a constantly updating index of the top 100 companies in the European tech scene – mobile, web, clean tech, gadgets and hardware. Tracking provided by YouNoodle, the people that power Crunchbase.com. Scores are based on verified facts, ranking can be improved by improving your company. Positive reinforcement FTW.

And so, on to the judging! Panellists: Tariq Krim, Sarah Lacy, Brent Hoberman, Michael Birch and Stefan Glaenzer.

My bad, it’s not the judging at all. The question is, where are we (i.e. the European tech startup scene) headed?

Stefan: Will be devoting the next few years to built a European hub to act as a base for launching global startups. What’s needed is education, money to school European startups in the way of global domination.

Tariq: When you’re in Europe you don’t really believe that you’re taken as seriously as you would be in San Francisco. But there is a network of European entrepreneurs thinking big, super smart people who understand how to engineer startups to scale.

Sarah: Telling us about the book she’s authoring at the moment, looking at startup activity in the emerging markets around the world. Looking at trends that are transforming economies. Her advice to European startups – don’t look to the US as usual, look to China, India, Africa. Rwanda, in a year, is going to be better connected than the US. A lot of bridges being built between emerging economies excludes the US.

Brent: One of the main frustrations is that today, one of the big determining factors of success is how good a company is at spanning Google’s search algorithm.

Michael: Getting booed (goodnaturedly) for suggesting that SF is better than the UK/Europe. Announcement: Michael and Brent’s new investment fund – comprised of people who have themselves founded successful startups – has gone live this week. They will go earlier stage than VCs, viewing themselves as a fund central to the ecosystem, working with VCs. Though they haven’t officially launched they have seen 250+ pitches to date, a clear indication that this sort of fund is needed.

Questions/comments from the floor:
How can we work well together in Europe given how diverse the market is?
Stefan: Citing Last.fm, international rollout in 12 languages in 8 weeks – which saw a pretty significant improvement to the uptake of Last.fm at the time. Looking at Oxford, Cambridge and other great tech universities, we do have a good chance. But we need to look at Asia, not all innovation will come out of Silicon Valley.

Sarah: If London wants to be more successful as a tech scene, don’t even call it Silicon anything – play to the city’s strengths.

Tariq: Traditionally most companies try to be good in their country of origin first before expanding globally. But starting with international expansion as your goals in mind is an interesting way we’re seeing a lot of startups go.

** And now, a short intermission **