I caught up with Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of Playfish at an event in London today. I asked him about the latest moves at Playfish, what he thinks of Facebook’s recent move away from applications to Facebook Connect and where he thinks it’s good to do a startup in Europe.

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German streaming video startup make.tv has filed for insolvency. The platform for live video streaming and hosting of transmitted programs will be available until mid October and then switched off. Make.tv was just in the process of pitching for €2.5m in a third round of financing.

An email informs all partners that, well, the partnerships are over and make.tv will not be available any more for live transmissions from barcamps or trade shows. Live coverage from today’s eco Kongress 2009, a high ranking summit by the association of German Internet enterprises (eco), appears all to have been canceled. At least there is no video stream, either on the eco or the make.tv website.

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German Last.FM clone Simfy has won a new round of financing – to re-launch itself as a clone of Spotify. Music Networx, a German online distributor of live music and a portfolio company of VC firm Earlybird, has invested an undisclosed sum to finance Simfy’s upcoming relaunch as well as the introduction of a flatrate music pricing and a mobile version. Here’s how it’s played out so far:

The music streaming and sharing website gives the Last.FM model an interesting twist: Other than the original, or the recently deceased German Roccatune, you can’t just go to Simfy’s website and listen to as much music as you want.

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Boom! Orange will sell the iPhone 3G/3GS in the UK. Boom! Vodafone will sell the iPhone 3G/3GS in the UK. It’s a double whammy for Apple in a key European market, one which, under incumbent O2, has seen iPhone sales soar to a million handsets, while rivals have lost customers and revenue as people eat up all that data using iPhone apps and surfing the mobile web.

O2’s monopoly is now doubly broken, and it will also have the headache of having to compete not just on price but on coverage. Orange, which has had 65,000 reservations for the handset in just a couple of days, claims wider, faster 3G coverage than O2, with 93% of the population, compared with O2’s 80%. Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao told investors on the company’s latest earnings call that not having the iPhone has hindered the network.

Vodafone will sell the 3G and 3GS models from “early 2010” in the UK and Ireland (its twelfth and thirteenth iPhone country deals).
It will therefore miss out on the Christmas sales Orange will benefit from but, in all other respects, the iPhone is poised to hit mainstream in the UK.

iPhone app developers here will be rubbing their hands together at the thought of millions of new potential customers coming on stream.

No details yet on Vodafone’s or Orange’s pricing for the iPhone but analysts say price will be a big factor.

This is a guest post written by a London-based VC. For the purposes of them being able to speak plainly without jeopardising their fund or their career, I’ve allowed them to post anonymously. Why are we doing this? Well, while the startup eco-system is long in the tooth and highly developed in the US, the European scene is still a spotty, shy teenager, sometimes making a few mistakes. And as a result startups need educating. Make no mistake, LondonVC is a genuine VC and TechCrunch Europe has met them face to face. Over the next few weeks they are going to offer a unique insight into the VC and startup world in Europe. I hope it’s enlightening for European startups. Read and learn.

One reason I started this column is because I see a lot of “injustices” in the VC-start-up universe, and while I’m obviously aware that we don’t work in the charity sector and that business is business — and we’re here to maximise investment returns! — I do think we should let market forces determine what’s reasonable or not for business practices and deal terms. However, this works only if entrepreneurs actually have access to experience and insight into what really has been “standard” or acceptable in the past.

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Partigi almost sounds like a board game, and it maybe fitting, since they’re a new social network geared toward helping indecisive movie-holics chose their next flick or tv series, whether online or through their mobile phone (iPhone app coming).  According to Partigi, they’ll simplify your selection process by going through your tastes, taking into account your favorites, as well as suggestions made by your Partigi friends, making sure that you discover obscure titles as well as popular ones.

Partigi is also responsible for the well known Spanish blogging platform, La Coctelera, is beating with a Spanish heart, but they already have most of the site translated in English. We’ve arranged a sneak preview for 100 Techcrunch Europe readers into their private beta before they launch.

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Something has entered the water in the UK tech startup scene swins this week – distribution deals appear to be on a sudden uptick. The first today is Moo and Moonfruit.

Moonfruit and MOO are partnering up to co-promote eachother’s communities of small businesses and individuals. Moo’s SME market of business people who like their on-demand, flexible printing, and Moonfruit SME-oriented build-you-own site audience.

Some 10,000 Moonfruit customers will be able to order MOO’s 50 Business Card Free Pack, which is currently only available to selected partners. And MOO customers will get a 20% discount on all Moonfruit premium packages during the next 3 months.

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Livebookings, European-based restaurant reservation service, has secured $16 million in a new funding round from Germany/Pan-European VC firm Wellington Partners. Niklas Eklund, Livebookings’ CEO says Livebookings is “at a point” where it clearly sees itself scaling globally.

It’s also clearly benefiting from credit-crunched restaurants now switching to online reservations to fill their tables, something Livebookings says has risen by 91% this summer compared to last, but there is plenty of growth left in the market. Only 7% of restaurants currently use online reservations, according to the company.

The move follows a previous $12 million injected from Balderton Capital and other investors over 2008 and 2009. Livebookings will also build it’s network of affiliate partner websites.

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TechCrunch Europe threw a dedicated startup pitch event yesterday in London and – if we do say so ourself – it was a great success. We plan to do more of these kinds of events and, as I pointed out at the time, we will NEVER charge startups to pitch. They are selected by editorial, on merit only.

The winner of the pitch competition was FestBuzz (pictured). The other startups to pitch were Kyubid, Aware Monitoring, Social Safe, Yoomoot, Fiabee, Notion Learning, Audioboo, Kohive, En-twyn and mywidz.

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