Red Gate this morning announced that it has acquired Cerebrata, an India-based maker of tools that helps developers build applications that run on Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. In fact, Cerebrate is not only a Microsoft partner but also one of their BizSpark startups.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’re told Cerebrata will continue to operate its own website and services, and its development team will be kept in place for the ‘foreseeable future’.

Tradeshift, the social invoicing startup we broke in 2009, has secured $17 million in funding, a move which values it at $137 million in a round led by Moscow based funds ru-Net and Kite Ventures. Existing investor, Notion Capital, also participated.

CEO Christian Lanng says the fact the money was raised outside the Valley show’s the power balance is shifting towards Europe. We have a different view: this is a deal struck where the wheels were probably greased by existing investor Morten Lund and close associate Edwrad Shenderovich of Kite Ventures. It’s highly significant that Russian investors are starting to flesh their muscles outside Russia, and not just DST for a change.

From Russia with love: two Moscow-based investment firms have led a $17 million funding round for B2B social networking and e-invoicing company Tradeshift, valuing the company at $137 million according to a press statement distributed earlier this morning.

The investors are ru-Net and Kite Ventures, with earlier backer Notion Capital also participating.

One of the annoying things about the movie industry is that if you blink while the promotion for a new release is on – about 48 hours in marketing terms – you effectively miss the launch. It’s a bizarre scenario that much of this marketing dollars are spent in inly a few days before a new film hits the screens are are aimed at the ‘first weekender’ fans. But many people – myself included – follow actors and their IMDB profiles to see what is ‘to be released’. So there’s a behaviour there industry is just not capitalising one.

Stepforward today MoviePilot. This new recommendation and discovery platform brings upcoming films to fans based on their taste. That twists the old marketing model on its head and makes the whole process much more efficient.

Vistaprint this morning announced that it is buying European photobook software solutions provider Albumprinter for €60 million (~$83.3 million) in cash, with up to €5 million (~$9 million) in earn-out, if certain performance-based requirements are met in 2012.

Albumprinter, based in Amsterdam, with a manufacturing presence in the Hague, has generated roughly €37 million (~$51.5 million) in revenue in the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2011, according to a statement. Net income margin for the same period was about 8%, and EBITDA was approximately 16% (approximately €6 million).

TechCrunch recently featured post by TechCrunch TV featuring Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Third Industrial Revolution, who argues that Europe will be the next cradle of innovation. To that end, we’re increasingly finding VCs in Europe looking for the best hubs for those innovators. And we recently argued that the axis of power was swinging behind both London and Berlin. But EarlyBird Capital was the first VC to open an office in Berlin this year and others like Accel and Index have become regular visitors. Below, Roberto Bonanzinga, partner at Balderton Capital, argues why he thinks Berlin could produce the next Facebook.

Whilst we don’t know when or where the next Facebook will be created, we do know where to start looking: Berlin. It’s a city which defines ingenuity and creativity. Walking between Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte, you could easily believe you were in South of Market (SOMA) in San Francisco during the nineties. There’s the same energy, the same passion and the same creative atmosphere which is transforming Germany’s ‘capital of cool’ into Germany’s ‘capital of start ups’.

So far Twitter users have gotten by with Direct Messaging when they want to be more intimate with their friends. But what if they could do Facebook-chat style instant messaging? That’s the offering today from Bonfire.im, a brand new disruptive startup which promises to change the Twitter experience in quite a fundamental way, by adding IM-syle Presence. Suddenly you could now know if your friends were online or ont. However, they hope Twitter will like this new plugin since it keeps users stuck to the web site. That means ad dollars for Twitter.

In Accra, the capital of Ghana, it’s not about who you know, what you know, which member’s club you belong to or even which school you used to go to. It’s all about which church you belong to.

Ghana is nearly 70% Christian and on Sundays anybody who is anybody heads off to church, not only to worship their God, but also to be part of the country’s biggest networking event. This is where business is done… and business is booming.

The country also has a sizeable Muslim minority, but relations between Islam and Christianity, unlike surrounding countries such as Nigeria, are cordial and are often mixed in with tribal beliefs. The country is also home to diverse religions such as Shintoism, Jehovah’s Witnesses and even Rastafarianism.

Movie and TV streaming service Netflix is to launch in the UK and Ireland in early 2012, according to the company today. Pricing will be announced closer to launch but the company says it will launch on a range of consumer electronics devices capable of streaming from Netflix, as well as on PCs, Macs and mobile tablets and phones.

In the UK it will go head to head with Amazon-owned Lovefilm, the well established streaming service. Amazon acquired LoveFilm in January for £200m, having previously held a 42 per cent stake in LoveFilm from since 2008 when Lovefilm acquired its European DVD rental business.

Last night London’s technology startup community – entrepreneurs and startups were invited to Buckingham Palace, the official home of Queen Elizabeth The Second. To say this was an unusual event wold be a significant understatement. But it is better understood in the context of the incredible outreach the UK government has made to technology entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the last 18 months. There is more context to this in terms of Europe: at EG8 recently, I happen to know that the French Government had to scramble to find French startups to attend. They simply didn’t know who they were – despite a thriving scene covered by my colleagues at TechCrunch France. By contrast, Her Majesty’s government managed to come up with a guest list which pretty much mapped to the startup ecosystem in London. No small achievement.