HackFwd, the pan-European accelerator created by Lars Hinrichs, the founder of LinkedIn competitor XING, recently held its open PitchInBerlin session, where startups are invited to enter the programme. It’s a sign that HackFwd, one of the few accelerators in Europe to stress the need for technical co-founders, is opening up to new teams. I went to the event in Berlin and interviewed all the startups pitching on the day, as you’ll see in the below video.

Well, it’s that time of year again when families come together to stare moodily at each other over lunch and, in theory at least, we’re supposed to be thinking about others less fortunate than ourselves. To that end, stay you hand before you switch off the office PC and head off for some seasonal shopping. For those CPUs could be put to good work for charity, no less.

The Charity Engine is a non-profit volunteer computing grid. Based on Berkeley University’s BOINC software for grid computing – as used by dozens of famous ‘citizen science’ projects such as SETI@home. Charity Engine’s version of BOINC simply donates what it makes from research projects on its grid and donates the cash to charity, while incentivising users with randomly generated cash prizes. Profit from the commissions from science and industry is shared 50-50 between the charities and prize winners. You can use the invite code for the beta: CRUNCH.

Language learning is arguably still a hot topic in the realm of internet startups and with a market that is said to be reaching more than $90 billion it is even more interesting. But only few manage to attract users, such as Busuu, who is now seeing 10 million signed up users. Bratislava based Startup Lingibli, also wants to help you learn a new language, strictly speaking one of 18 languages that are currently offered through the site. The concept however is pretty new since it’s not tighed to online courses or subscriptions but rather on a mobile app (on Android and iOs) and print material (sic!). At first, that might sound awkard, but the startup claims that 50% of all conversations are made up of approx. 100 words and at first knowing these 100 words is essential for understanding a language. Starting to learn a language is surely a difficult barrier to cross.

If there’s been a theme for the year it’s that Berlin has emerged as a full-blown startup hub to rival London in terms of sheers number of companies. I know for a fact that all the major VCs, from Accel to Index to Balderton and others are in and out of the city on a regular basis. There’s also a rumour Wellington will open an office there.

It makes sense therefore that Earlybird Venture Capital, which currently manages €430 million in assets and already had a base in Berlin, is to close its Hamburg office and move the staff to the capital.

Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based incubator best known for German-language clones of US startups like Zappos and Groupon, now has big ambitions, especially in the online furniture space according to information passed to TechCrunch Europe.

In a confidential email sent by Oliver Samwer which we have confirmed is genuine, the head (with his brothers Marc and Alexander) of European Founders Fund and the driving force behind Rocket, says their strategy is to become “number one” in the ecommerce sector for furniture over the next year. But the language he uses – including the world “blitzkrieg” – indicates an aggressive and potentially insensitive management style which appears to be a ‘modus operandi’ of Rocket Internet culture. Samwer has since apologised for using the term.

A little over a year after its subsidiary PayPal bought a minority stake in German software company BilLSAFE, eBay this morning announced that it has acquired the provider of purchase-on-invoice technology in full.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

LeGuide.com Group, a pan-European publisher of online shopping guides, comparison websites and the like, has acquired online shopping portal Ciao from Microsoft.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but LeGuide.com says it paid for the Ciao assets in cash and didn’t need to take on debt to finance the transaction.

Paris-based VC Partech has announced the announces the €100M first close of its new venture fund, Partech International VI. The fund will be primarily dedicated to investments in internet / IT in Europe and Silicon Valley.

Partech had a eight exits in 2011, including one IPO (InvenSense), and seven trade sales (notably Brands4Friends to eBay, Dailymotion to Orange, Inquira to Oracle, Digitick to Vivendi and JobPartners to Taleo).

Allmyapps has grown a lot since we last covered them. They had 100,000 users back in April, but recently hit 2.5 million. But with the news that Miscrosoft will develop its own Windows Apps store, they will have to “pivot”, as they say. Thus they are repositioning as a “Personal App Manager” to go beyond the Windows world. What does that mean?

Amazon has acquired a minority stake in Ciceksepeti, which operates an online flower and gifts store in Turkey. Founded by CEO Emre Aydin in 2006, the company delivers flowers, jewelry, gourmet products, toys and other gifts to customers across the country, including same-day deliveries in most metropolitan areas.

Headquartered in Istanbul, CicekSepeti currently employs 160 people.