[Netherlands] InBox2 is a fledging product which attempts to bring together all your input streams (multiple mail accounts, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) into a single master inbox. The company has just launched a Facebook application which gives you access to that Inbox via Facebook.

Recipients

The release of Google Wave has prompted a lot of discussion on the future of email or the lack thereof. InBox2 was inspired by the insight that people use their inboxes for all kinds of purposes including content sharing – sending themselves or others links or files – and storage. According to InBox2 people have an average of 2.9 email accounts. They communicate with certain contacts mainly via Facebook or Twitter rather than email and they access mail from multiple devices. Ideally, users should be able to filter, label and organise messages, documents and files arriving from all sources on any device. Read More

[Netherlands] Hip hop pioneers Public Enemy will partner with fan-funding site Sellaband to finance their next album. Public Enemy is one of the first established acts to sign up to Sellaband’s new custom funding program and aims to raise $250,000 for the album in $25 increments. Public Enemy was incidentally also one of the first acts to release music on mp3.

Amsterdam-based Sellaband allows artists to request support from fans, or in Sellaband parlance “Believers”, who invest anything from 10$ up in an album. Funding music this way is not for everyone but it does add a novel and badly-needed niche to the music business ecosystem. Sellaband’s next challenge is to prove that fan-funding can work for artists at any stage of their career and that the model will transfer from Europe to the US. The Public Enemy announcement is an attempt to hit both of those birds with one stone.

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Finding a movie to watch on a rainy Friday night can be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.Jinni is a content discovery system, or as the makers prefer to call it a “taste engine”, for movies and TV shows which addresses this problem. The service has just gone into public beta.

Most of us choose movies based on rather amorphous criteria like mood or an association with another movie we like. Categorisations like genre are too wide; titles are too specific. Jinni approaches discovery in an intuitive way. You can search for movies and TV shows based on mood terms like “witty”, “stylized” or “disturbing” or plot elements like “unlikely couple” or “ambition”. The results are presented visually (we are seaching video after all) with more popular results getting bigger images. You can also tune results to request lesser known titles or faster paced content.

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This year’s Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition was a battle between Dutch and UK startups with 3 finalists from either side of the Channel. The prize money was ramped up to €150,000 this year so it was all to play for in the fight between the cloggies and the rosbifs. The prize was awarded based on a combination of votes from the public, Mobile Monday members and an expert jury. The jury gave the finalists a hard time on stage (in particular Rummble and MyNameisE) with most questions focusing on the money.

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Vodafone today launched Vodafone 360 (its replacement for Vodafone Live) which brings together mobile phone contacts,  social networking accounts, email, IM, etc.  so they can be accessed seamlessly on phone or PC. It currently covers Facebook, Live Messenger and Google Talk. Twitter will be added soon. Vodafone has also added a range of new apps, games, music and mapping services as part of the launch and a 360 shop where content and apps  can be purchased. 360 will be downloadable to 100 different mobile phones in Germany, Greece, Ireland,  Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK as well as being pre-installed on a some  new 360 handsets from Samsung to be launched by the end of the year. Finally, 360 will be available to non-Vodafone customers as long as they have a suitable phone.

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Layar, whose mobile augmented reality browser has been adding new content is spades lately, has just announced 3D support for the browser. Layar overlays digital information about the object you are viewing on to the camera view of your phone, e.g. information about apartments for sale in a building. Layar 3D makes use of OpenGL, the accelerometer, the GPS and the compass of the phone.  The 3D capabilities are now available to developers while 3D will be available to consumers in version  3.0 of the browser due to be released in November. Read More

With every major handset manufacturer planning an app store launch, the fragmented mobile application market gets ever harder to track. Distimo is a young startup (the fresh-faced founders only started the company in May) which provides free analytical reports covering trends in the main mobile application stores; currently the holy trinity of Apple, Android and Blackberry. It also creates paid customized reports aimed at operators and device manufacturers.  A free analytics tool called Distimo Monitor, still in closed beta, is available to mobile developers so they can monitor their applications, and those of their competitors, across all the app stores.

Distimo provided us with some UK-specific trend data for August. The overlap in popular apps between US and UK is much higher in the Android market than the Apple app store. Navigation and travel apps have the lowest overlap because of location dependencies.

Where is the money?

The release of Tom Tom’s iPhone navigation application single-handedly caused a big jump in the total price of the top 100 Apple applications. Read More

GyPSii, which bills itself as a “mobile digital lifestyle application” centered around geo-tagged content today launches an app for Android phones [get it here]. While there are plenty of other companies doing similar things, Amsterdam-based GyPSii is bit like a supermodel prior to her discovery by the talent spotter: the bone structure is there but not the surface gloss (witness the assault on the eye that is the corporate web site – apparently due to be upgraded). But like any supermodel worth her salt, GyPSii has the potential to generate solid revenue from multiple sources.

What does it do? GyPSii allows you to find places close to you, create places and add content to them, find friends who are closeby and share information with social networks like FaceBook. Currently the content is mainly user-generated but curated 3rd party data is being added. There isn’t a lot of content yet in Europe since the majority of users are Chinese. The Android application supports photo and text content only but applications for other phones also covers audio and video.

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Getting funding is one of the biggest dilemmas for a new business. When to take investment, from whom and how much? When is the investment (and investors) worth the price you will pay  in stock or loss of control? How do you deal with your investors after you have received the money? Here’s the advice of some of TechCrunch Europe’s readers:

Be clear about your zero cash day

Julian Ranger – Angel investor

This is the date on which,  assuming no sales or sales growth, the money will run out.   Why is this important?  Simply, it tells you what you must have achieved by that day, either an investment or real sales with real cash attached or both.   If  your zero cash day comes before you are ready for it you may end up in an unplanned round of investment. Your investors won’t be happy and they’ll request a greater pound of flesh for the unplanned second round (i.e. greater percentage of shares) or they won’t invest at all, in which case you’ll have to go cap in hand to new investors who, seeing the original investors not invest, will ask for a greater percentage.  So build in contingency when doing your planning; better to ask for slightly more than you need up-front than being under-funded.

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In Amsterdam today, the makers of mobile Augmented Reality (AR) browser Layar announced version 2.0 of the browser as well as a slew of new layars which have been produced since they opened up their API to developers. A ‘layar’ is information overlaid on the camera view of your mobile phone, e.g. the asking price of an apartment for sale in the building your camera is pointed at.  Layar will be pre-installed on the new Samsung Galaxy Android phone about to be released in the Netherlands and the Android version of the browser is available for download in the Android app store. The iPhone version will be available as soon as Apple updates its API to allow access to the iPhone camera.

Bruce Sterling on AR

The Layar event was opened by science fiction writer  Bruce Sterling who has been blogging recently about the augmented reality scene.  Read More

Wakoopa tracks application usage in order to recommend new software, games and web applications. It has two main groups of users: professionals and hedonists. The professionals are generally developers or designers who enable the usage tracker during working hours and account for around 60% of users. Hedonists use Wakoopa to track games and entertainment applications. These users are stereotypical early adopters; what they use today we may all be using tomorrow.

The company just released its latest State of the apps report showing trends in application usage in Q2 2009. The report is based on 110K users of which 88% are male, although female users account for half of the top users. 40% are in the US while 30% are from Europe. It’s easy to bowlderdize a report like this especially when looking at trends across all users, e.g. Linux users have an entirely different usage profile to Windows or Mac fans, but there are some interesting patterns here.

Most popular applications

Firefox has clearly won the browser war in this group with 55% of users. It is the most popular browser across all platforms. Facebook is the dominant web site with 17.9% of usage time followed by Gmail at 10.5%. Twitter usage is growing steadily but still only accounts for 4.32% of usage time even though 25% of Wakoopa users are on Twitter. Windows Live messager is the most popular IM tool, followed by Skype.

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This week TechCrunch Europe interrogated your hive mind on the subject of bootstrapping your startup. Most startups bootstrap for at least part of their lifetime and how it’s done can determine whether you make it as far as exogenous funding. We also asked founders what you should spend money on even when your resources are limited.

In the next two weeks we will look at getting funding and dealing with investors. Please send any tips on these subjects via email or Twitter.

• If the idea is time-sensitive, reconsider bootstrapping

Nathan Vingoe, KangaReview

When you are funded you can do more, do it faster and get to market more rapidly.  So clearly, if the idea is time-sensitive or easily copied, get funding. Funding also brings with it a network of people who have been there and done that. The greater the number people involved, the more likely it is that suitable opportunities will cross your path.

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Dutch startup Nimbuzz , which bills itself as the “mobile Skype” have just announced an IM application for Android phones which ties together multiple messaging tools (Skype, MSM, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, etc.) via a single interface. The app is now available for download.

The Nimbuzz trump card is Skype VOIP. Unfortunately the Android app doesn’t yet include this but it is available in the iPhone app. The Android application also supports many local social networks like Hyves (dominant in the Netherlands) and a nifty time-sensitive user interface which does things like detecting how long a user presses on a contact; a quick click opens the contact’s profile while a long click opens a chat window.
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Being an startup founder is like playing the piano. It’s something you can really only learn by doing, but some instruction goes a long way. TechCrunch Europe is therefore launching a series of articles offering advice on common issues faced by first-time entrepreneurs. Here’s the first.

TechCrunch Europe is planning a new series of articles on common issues faced by startups, especially European ones. For this we’re going to ask the people who know – you, our readers. We’ll be producing a series of articles, the first two articles of which will be:

• The TechCrunch Europe Guide to choosing your co-founders.
• The TechCrunch Europe Guide to bootstrapping your startup.

I’ll be putting these together, so please set in touch by email or Twitter with your hard-won wisdom on either of these areas. TechCrunch Europe will compile an article based on the best suggestions and we’ll also be name-checking the contributors (assuming they wish to be named – if you want to contribute thoughts anonymously that’s OK too).

SprxMobile, the company behind the mobile augmented reality browser Layar (which has been making waves across the technoverse) today announced that Layar will become an open platform. The first 50 developer keys for the API are available now and can be applied for here. Layar is currently only supported by Android phones and uses a combination of the camera, GPS and compass to calculate orientation and add a “layar” of digital information on top of that. For example, one of the first layars is from a dutch property website. When you point the camera at a house it can tell you whether it is for sale, the asking price and other relevant information. An iPhone edition is in development.

SprxMobile has an interesting philosophy. They do not themselves want to become a huge global company but rather be the spark (hence their name) that sets off a chain reaction of activity in other developers and businesses. This is one of the reasons that they decided to make Layar an open platform. The company has also been receiving an enormous number of inquiries from companies and other bodies who want their own layar and this was also one of the reasons behind the decision. The first Layar developer day will be held in Amsterdam on Aug 17.

Mobypicture may be one of the few startups in the world headquartered on an Amsterdam houseboat but it is one of many jostling for position in the crowded world of mobile image/video/audio sharing services.The company is one of several Dutch startups (eBuddy, My name is e, IRLconnect, Nimbuzz) on the Europas shortlist and is currently planning an aggressive expansion into the UK and German markets.

Unlike the current leader of the pack, Twitpic (over 1 million unique users), Mobypicture is not just about Twitter and not just about images. It supports audio, video and images which can be simultaneously  shared with 18 different blogging (WordPress, Blogger), microblogging (Twitter, Brightkite), media (Youtube, Flickr) and social networking (Facebook) sites. The service is also integrated into many 3^rdparty applications. In fact, Mobypicture is closer in terms of features to services like Tweetphoto or Pikchur than to Twitpic. Read More

Kimengi is a new Dutch startup providing ”related-content” to bloggers and publishers via a recommendation widget called “f>>dforward” (feed forward). Once installed, the widget automatically provides related articles from multiple sites based on a combination of tag matches and  collaborative filtering techniques (“Users similar to you liked…”). If that sounds a lot like Zemanta which then you’d be right. Kimengi faces direct competition from the Slovenian startup, which provides an impressively slick Firefox plugin and API recommending not only related articles, but also photographs and video. Zemanta also works with email.

However, Kimengi has some traction already. Two big names in the Dutch publishing world, Het Parool (an Amsterdam-based newspaper and ILSE Media (the biggest dutch blogging network), are about to announce the use of f>>dforward in their publishing properties. The widget is already being trialled by about 40 high-traffic Dutch blogs with a particular focus on technology blogs.

Martijn Wuite from Het Parool says this kind of content recommendation allows the paper to provide links not only related to the subject of the current article, e.g. other sports articles, but also to the interests of the user based on the preferences of similar readers. Publishers can designate particular sites as part of their network, e.g. Ajax football club fan sites for Het Parool, and recommendations from those sites will get higher priority. The thinking is a world away from some of the current “non-linking” theories spreading around the newspaper world at the moment.

But what of Kimengi’s positioning against Zemanta? There are a couple of notable differences between the two services. Kimengi has some catching up to do with Zemanta’s pleasing design while Zemanta’s roster of content sources seems somewhat less configurable than Kimengi’s. Zemanta is English-only for now while Kimengi already caters for multiple languages starting with Dutch and English. Finally, Zemanta charges for more than 50,000 calls per day. Kimengi expects to add premium services allowing companies to not only track how their brand is being written about online but also who is consuming that content.

Ultimately, Kimengi has bigger ambitions than the widget alone. In his canal-view office in Amsterdam (nice wallpaper too) CEO Lucien Burm told me that the widget is just the first step towards the highly-scalable, personalised and real-time recommendation engine on which the company is working. The launch horizon for the engine is sometime in 2010. One to watch.