This week’s TechCrunch Europe Job of the Week is for a Lead Architect with ChannelFlip Media.

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[Germany] Several federal and regional government officials in Germany are trying to put a ban on Google Analytics, the search giant’s free software product that allows website owners and publishers to get detailed statistics about the number, whereabouts and search behavior of their visitors (and much more).

According to an article in today’s Zeit Online (poor Google translation here), multiple federal and state government officials charged with guarding over national data protection are convinced that Google Analytics is against the law in Germany and are mulling imposing fines on companies who use the service to gather detailed stats based on their website visitors’ usage patterns without the explicit consent of those visitors.

Please help me everyone, I’m confused.

Today the WITsend blog on ComputerWeekly, a blog called ‘A place for women in IT’, asks “Will tech companies ever learn?” Apparently Microsoft, in making girl band The Sugababes the new face of Windows 7 (at least in the UK), has made a mistake. WiTsend says that The Sugababes are aimed at tweeny-bopper eight-year-old girls who are “not exactly the biggest consumers of computer operating systems”. Thus the campaign will not appeal to grown up women who do actually buy PCs.

Admittedly the blog admits that in using a pop band (it quite easily have been a boy band I guess) who are not known for their intellectual capacity so much as their ability to kick out a pop track while looking good, Microsoft is cleverly showing that just about anyone, wow even bubble-gum pop bands, can use Windows 7.

[UK] If you are a technology startup and want to network with Silicon Valley type then one way of doing it is to go to South By South West Interactive. Those who attend in the past have informally called it ‘Spring Break for Geeks’, but it is a little more significant that that suggests. Twitter took off in the US by launching there in 2007, Foursquare launched there last year and it’s generally a pretty interesting platform to test the waters of American geekdom.

Organised by Chinwag and the UKTI, the Digital Mission (a kind of punk trade mission) to SXSWi is back for it’s second year after a successful trip to Austin in 2009. There are 35 slots available on the 2010 mission (12-16th March, 2010) and applications are now open – but the dealine is Friday, 27th November so you better hurry. TechCrunch Europe is a media partner because to get on the mission all you have to have as a company is a UK headquarter, so in other words any European company with a UK HQ counts. Thus, this year, Zemanta, which is really built in Slovenia but has a UK HQ, came along. The rest of the selection criteria is below.

[Russia] Russian online game developer Nival Network has closed a $5 million round from an undisclosed investor but will use the funds to develop Prime World, its online strategy game with social networking features aimed at the Russia and former Soviet countries.

Nival Network is currently majority owned by founder and CEO Sergey Orlovskiy. Software vendor 1C Group owns a 30% stake in Nival Network, reports Quintura.

[Belgium] Brussels-based Attentio, a startup that markets a robust software suite for brand monitoring and analysis of conversations that are happening in social media, has raised €525,000 (or $786,000) in financing from the city’s regional investment firm SRIB/GIMB.

The financing consisted of an equity investment of €400,000 and a loan of €125,000.

This brings the total of capital raised by the company to about €3 million, according to co-founder and CCO Simon McDermott, although this is the startup’s first round of institutional funding since its inception in 2004.

[UK] Mobile music discovery service Shazam has joined the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, with a specially branded iPhone app – the first mobile app provider to have done so. The campaign raises funds and awareness in fighting AIDS in Africa.

Joining (PRODUCT) RED is an especially good fit for London-based Shazam’s music-oriented iPhone app, the (RED) brand will be familiar to many iPhone users since Apple is one of the high profile companies to already sell products that support the program – currently the iPod nano – along with other big names including American Express, Bugaboo, Converse, Dell, Emporio Armani, Gap, Hallmark and Starbucks.

[Spain] Nvivo.es has been around for 3 years now here in Spain. It’s a name most of the online scene is quite familiar with, especially those that frequent concerts. Nvivo, which sounds like “en vivo” or “live” in Spanish, is a social network for concert goers, the place to discover upcoming music venues, follow artists, manage your own concert agenda and, according to nvivo, never miss another concert again.

Sounds a lot like Songkick? Yup. Very much so, although nvivo launched first but with less noise. Nowadays, competition is abundant. While Songkick focuses on the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (the English speaking countries), nvivo.es has been busy rolling out local European versions, branding itself as 5gig internationally. It’s currently available in the US, UK, France, Italy, The Netherlands and Germany under the 5gig brand and is aggregating 35 different concert providers across all 7 countries.

LeWeb has published its schedule for the upcoming global conference for tech in Paris, and it’s looking pretty good. TechCrunch Europe is a media partner and is helping to organise the startup competition, so that’s our interest declared. That said Loic and Geraldine Le Meur have clearly finessed the event back towards tech companies and brought a new focus on Europe I think. Here are some highlights they’ve just published:

-Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will speak at noon on Dec 10th

-The Real Time Web theme will be present in the form of Jack Dorsey (inventor of Twitter) opening the event, followed by announcements from Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn and Ustream.

-Mobile applications will be quite high on the agenda with a panel including Shazam, Tapulous, SGN and others.

- Google’s Marissa Mayer returns to keynote again as is Skype founder and partner at Atomico Niklas Zennstrom and YouTube’s founder and visionary Chad Hurley

[France] Tablets are destined to be the next super trendy tech device. CrunchGear regularly reports on new devices that will be launched by PC or mobile manufacturers, and Apple will one day join the dance. Analysts have announced that the tablet war will take place in 2010 so we just have to be patient.

A French company called Unowhy, (which raised 2.9 million euros in April 09) is approaching the issue from another angle. They see the tablet not as a finality but as a way to offer new experiences. And that’s how QooQ was born: a cooking coach built into a tablet. It’s not about hardware, it’s not about software, it’s about content. Qooq will replace your cooking books, and bring you hundreds of recipes, tips and tools to help you become a master chef.

[UK] Cambridge, UK-based Taptu, the mobile optimised search engine that, in particular, targets touch screen devices, has released a dedicated Android app. The service already offers a generic browser-based version for mobile phones, along with a native app for the iPhone which disappointingly for Android users, appears to be at least one generation ahead.

After playing with the Android app for a short while, I’m also struggling to see Taptu’s appeal, although admittedly I’m probably not the target user.

The second annual TechCrunch Europe ChristmasCrunch combines our annual TechCrunch Europe meetup and Festive Christmas party, in one handy package. This year we’re basing it the hot theme of realtime streams and the event in London will also feature some of the hottest realtime startups in the world today.

The event will start with registration from 14.00 on December 15 for the seminar programme consisting of keynote presentation, panel discussions and startup pitches followed by TechCrunchPitch! Once the seminar programme has come to an end, it will turn into your very own startup Christmas party, with DJs and entertainment until late.

Do you want to pitch your realtime startup at ChristmasCrunch?

To be considered for the pitch competition you need to email TechCrunch Europe Editor Mike Butcher, with a one side of A4 text-only pitch, and also include the URL of your company/project/startup etc on CrunchBase (you can add your company onto it if it is not already there). Use the subject line “TechCrunchPitch”. Note: You MUST be on CrunchBase. In your A4 pitch include: The market “problem” you are solving with your startup, your solution, your business model, your competitors, your team and what you’re looking for (Seed funding, Angel funding, Series A round, etc). There is no fee for one person from the startup to pitch, as is our policy. Deadline for entry is this Friday.

Also: On 30th November 2009, TechCrunch Europe will be hosting another free Pitch! Workshop sponsorsed by UKTI. It is only open to qualified startups to attend and if you are interested in finding out more information, please email petra(at)twistedtree.co.uk.

[Ireland] Ray Nolan, co-founder of Irish company Web Reservations International (WRI) — parent company to booking site Hostelworld.com and reborn travel site Boo.com — says WRI’s initial plan was for an audacious 2008 IPO at a market cap almost double the company’s final selling price of about $340 million last week. Ironically, he made almost as much money out of the Boo.com holding company as Boo lost back in the dotcom bust.

WRI was picked up by private equity firm Hellman and Friedman, to the surprise of many who assumed a travel giant such as Expedia or Priceline would make the acquisition.

“We were trying to push it out to a $600-700 million market cap. That’s a big IPO. It was so big that the market only had to cough, and we knew the IPO was off.” Obviously, the market didn’t just cough; it tanked, and the IPO was abandoned.

A three-time serial entrepreneur — he set up his first company, Raven Computing, in Dublin at age 22 — Nolan stepped down as WRI chief executive in advance of the planned IPO and was a non-executive director by the time of last week’s sale. However, with 25% of the company’s shares, he did well out of the transaction.

[UK] Ad-supported music streaming service We7 and Spotify competitor has big plans to go mobile. That much was already known – an iPhone and Android app has been in the works for sometime. Earlier this month, however, CEO Steve Purdham surprised attendees at an event in Manchester by telling them that while the We7 iPhone app was ready, its release was purposely being held back. The reason, he explained, is that it could drive too many new users to the service before the advertising side of the business can afford to support them.

In other words, the economics of ad-supported music don’t yet make sense, forcing We7 to focus on ’sustainable growth’ or acquiring users at a rate somewhere inline with any increase in ad-revenue. Where this leaves competitor Spotify’s land grab approach to user numbers is clearly open to debate and Purdham is more than happy to chime in (hint: he thinks they’re heading for a crash).

On that note, TechCrunch Europe has learned that We7’s mobile offering will in fact be launched in Q1 2010 and, perhaps unsurprisingly, will be part of a new premium subscription offering. We’ve also managed to source some, admittedly, blurry photos of We7 running on the iPhone. The app that you can’t have – yet. But first, let’s dive into the thinking behind We7’s decision to postpone their mobile plans.

Congratulations to the Financial Times. It’s taken them 10 days and three reporters to confirm our previous story that Microsoft and News Corp, along with plenty of other newspaper publishers, are in actual, formal discussions to encourage them to de-index from Google and will incentivise them with premium positions on the Bing search engine, revenue share and, in all likelihood, cold hard cash.

The interesting thing about this story is that it is typical old media. It says talks are at “an early stage” but doesn’t even mention the fact that we had cast iron information that the actual meeting took place on November 10.

Also: The FT also doesn’t link to our story – plus ca change. Why? because it’s an “article” not a blog post. As is usual with traditional media, articles very rarely link, while their blog posts (increasingly, but it’s a taken a while) do.

Apparently “the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers”. Yes, we know. We listed them in our story: Associated Newspapers, Germany’s Axel Springer and publishers from Poland and Italy, among others. We even know the name of the man at Microsoft heading up the discussion: Microsoft’s Peter Bale, Executive Producer of MSN UK.

The FT has no other new information that hasn’t been previously reported.

I’m sure I’ll get accused of trying to score points, but that’s not my aim. And I have the utmost respect for my colleagues on the FT. But there is a serious point here.

[Sweden] The much – perhaps justifiably – hyped music streaming service Spotify has extended its mobile reach significantly today with the release of an app for phones powered by the Nokia-led Symbian operating system.

This follows earlier clients for both iPhone and Android and means that the service will now be accessible on millions more handsets from Nokia, obviously, along with Sony Ericsson and Samsung which also support the platform.

[UK] London-based Fingertips.net lets users create their own personalised online newspaper “from the publications they want”. Or at least that’s the claim.

The reality is that the RSS-driven service isn’t nearly as customisable as its many competitors, such as start page Netvibes or more similar aggregators like Meehive. Instead, Fingertips only enables users to pick from around 300 sources (50,000 articles) from publications such as The Times or Heat magazine, divided into traditional sections based on subject – news, sport, travel etc.

This is our third guest post written by a London-based VC. To allow them to speak plainly without jeopardising their fund or their career in the small village that is the London VC scene, I’m allowing them to post anonymously. FYI, LondonVC is a genuine VC and TechCrunch Europe has met them face to face.

One of the biggest challenges for any investor (regardless of the stage/type of investment they target) and founders alike is hiring great talent. In early stage investing the team may be the single criteria upon which an investment decision is based (considering how many times when that’s all there is to go by) and even in later/growth stages, while the founding team has been historically crucial, bringing someone new in to help “get the company to the next level” can be the difference between investing or not.

[Holland] This week we’ve got Rutger van Waveren, Founder of Spectives.com, doing an elevator pitch. Spectives.com allows people to use images to keep track of the latest news from their favorite sites. Think of Spectives as a visual RSS, Alltop, or as a kind of Netvibes for visual news.

Unlike RSS where you have to scan text headlines for information, you can scan images. Great for a lot of visual news like cars, fashion, design, photography, sports, funny pictures and gossip.

Thanks to Techfluff.tv’s Amsterdam correspondent Isabelle O’Kane for filming this.