[UK] We’d been hearing whispers that Atlas-backed discount fashion buying club Koodos was looking at its ‘options’, but we’ve confirmed today that it was yesterday acquired by the e-trader group which specialises in the onwards sale of surplus stock. The price is undisclosed but it’s a cash and shares deal which we understand to be in the vicinity of less than £250,000. In other words, that is pretty cheap, especially for a VC-backed business. It had one undisclosed round from Atlas in June 2006 but has been looking for £3-6m follow-on funding since the beginning of the year.

While the Koodos operational team is staying on, CEO Miriam Lahage will be departing after a handover period.

E-Trader Group CEO Harvey Sinclair, a serial entrepreneur with exits, told me the sale came about because Atlas is “backing the E-Trader story. We’ve been talking to them at length and they buy into it heavily.”

However our sources say Koodos had run into severe trading difficulty recently, hence the sale. We put it to both Atlas and to E-trader Group that we understood Koodos had in fact had gone into administration. Atlas denied this. Sinclair told us Koodos had been “looking at a financing structure which allowed their business to work more efficiently.”

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Google Powermeter, the search giant’s home energy monitoring tool, has launched in the UK today. While the environment stands to benefit – research shows that when users have access to detailed information about their energy use, household energy bills are reduced by up to 10% – Cambridge, UK-based AlertMe should also do quite well out of this. The VC-backed company has become Google’s first device partner for the service.

AlertMe is backed by leading clean technology investors including Good Energies, Index Ventures, SET VP, and Vantage Point, and in June 2009 announced an £8 million Series B round of funding bringing the total amount raised to £13 million.

Users who want to take advantage of Google Powermeter can purchase a self-installable AlertMe Energy kit and accompanying subscription (£69.00 for the hardware and then £2.99 per month). They’ll then be able to access their energy consumption data on Powermeter, sort of like Google Analytics but for energy, visualised on their iGoogle home page. AlertMe also provides its own web-based ‘dashboard’ that can be accessed wherever there is an Internet connection, including through mobile phones. Read More

VC investment in Europe has recovered after a record low in the second quarter but we’re not out of the woods, says Dow Jones VentureSource. Investors put $998 million (€730 million) into 201 deals in Europe overall. This is a 23% increase from the previous quarter, which was the lowest on record since Dow Jones VentureSource began reporting on the region in 2000. The UK was the No. 2 destination for venture capital behind the U.S. in Q3 with $393 million (£240 million) spent on 67 deals.

France had its worst quarter of 2009 and dropped 58% from the same period last year (55 deals), while in Switzerland, investors put $80 million (€59 million) into seven deals, on par with the previous quarter but still down on a year ago. Capital investment in Germany plummeted. Sweden had its best quarter of 2009 though venture investment was down 22%. Spain saw a dramatic 86% drop from the same period last year. Investment in the Netherlands rose 41% from the same period last year. It seems Amsterdam has startup fever.

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[UK/Sweden] Streaming music startup Spotify has confirmed that its CTO has left, effective today. Andreas Ehn tweeted about his departure this morning, in a move which has taken observers by surprise. The company is currently prepping a big launch in the U.S., a watershed which would normally suggest that this is a moment to have all hands on deck. Losing your CTO right now is probably not the best timing, to put it mildly.

However, a Spotify spokesperson has told me that they’d “like to thank Andreas for all his brilliant work” and “everybody at Spotify wishes him well in the future as he seeks out new and, no doubt, extraordinarily complex challenges!” I’m sure this isn’t meant to sound back-handed but Ehn’s tweets paint a slightly less rosy picture.

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Streaming music startup Spotify usually makes a big deal out of the fact that its service is so awesome and delightful (hey, it is pretty good) that it’s never needed to do any advertising or marketing.

Well that changes today because its first ever commercial television advert premieres today on TV Network Kanal 5 in Sweden. And here it is:

[Italy] Facebook has opened a commercial office in Italy to capitalise on the social network’s growth there. The news was picked up by major italian publications, and it may have a significant impact on the ecosystem here in Milan, even if it’s only a sales and business development office.

Of course Milan, as a the commercial centre for Italy, is a no-brainer to start an ad-sales office. However, it does mean it won’t be plugging in much to the startup scene which is largely centred around Rome, where it’s cheaper to operate from.

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[UK] 4iP, quasi venture investment fund from TV broadcaster Channel 4, is putting even further, undisclosed, investment into Audioboo, the ‘Twitter for audio’ startup. As part of the deal, UBC Media, the content and software supplier to the radio industry, is also effectively injecting cash into the forthcoming Audioboo Pro version of the startup’s iPhone app by buying 8 licences, though how much those cost hasn’t been released.

Audioboo has already sold a Pro version to The Royal Opera House, although that one sale won’t get it very far. However, they say media brands like the The Guardian, Channel 4 News, the BBC, TechCrunch Europe (well, me now and a again), The Telegraph and PaidContent have all used “Audioboos” style interviews as part of their content. I can confidently say that Audioboo is a great reporting platform because you literally just record the audio and upload from inside the app. The professional version allows one to queue uploads as well.

However, I have had equal success with the iPadio app which, like Audioboo, also tweets out a link to the audio. The difference between the two is that iPadio is really going after the internal corporate communications market, while at the same time giving away the app to create adoption. Audioboo is going after consumers and media brands.

Daniel Heaf, Investor for 4iP, said: “Our first round of funding helped Audioboo to market to prove both a user and market need. Now is the time to help Mark and his team fully realise that opportunity.”

No doubt Audioboo will use this PR opportunity to boost it’s attempt to fund-raise in the US, which I gather it’s off to do shortly.