We’re all familiar with the bill shock associated with roaming abroad with our cellphones. There are plenty of players that allow you to swap out your SIM card and use cheaper traffic, including Cubic Telecom. However, that process is tedious. So Cubic has secured new funding to enable a range of tablets and notebooks to have their technology built into partner devices. To do this they’ve raised a further $5.2 million in funding from Enterprise Ireland, Qualcomm Incorporated, ACT Venture Capital and TPS Investments.

The money will be used to expand globally, and invest in the technology which essentially allows Cubic to operate like its own global mobile phone carrier, not an MVNO. As a licensed mobile network operator (MNO), Cubic Telecom partners with Tier 1 mobile operators to provide coverage in 230 countries. Its Software Defined Network (SDN) works across multiple technologies (3G, 4G-LTE, CDMA and WiFi).

The Dublin based company has also secured contracts with a number of leading Fortune 100 tablet and notebook manufacturers to be in-built into their devices, though these partners have yet to be announced.

The embedded nature of the service means any changes to the internal SIM can be Over The Air (OTA).

Barry Napier, CEO of Cubic Telecom, says they will “enable the latest devices and applications to be always connected anytime anywhere.”

In plain English, that means Cubic Telecom devices can integrate with content and apps. Thus, imagine a world where an app provider asked Cubic to allow its use to be free on Cubic dvices. All it would require would be a simple OTA update from Cubic to its customers. That could be a very powerful place to be.

The company also announced that it will create a total of more than 70 new jobs over the next 3 years, as part of an investment supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Enterprise Ireland.

A new report commissioned from research giant GfK claims that the growth of the high density cluster of technology companies in East London (dubbed Tech City by the UK government) is being “stunted” by a talent shortage and lack of access to capital. The ‘Tech Futures Report’ – commissioned by publishing company TechCityInsider and sponsored by accountant Grant Thornton, recruitment firm Vitamin T, City University London and the Digital Shoreditch conference is based on 141 interviews of ‘tech’ company senior management. In fact, less than half of these admitted to developing technology products and platforms. It’s simply the latest in a long line of reports that conflate consultants and digital advertising agencies (who charge on the basis of billable clients) with genuine technology companies (that have a Saas or consumer product and often raise venture funding), leading to yet more confusion about the state of the cluster.

When quizzed by TechCrunch, the reports authors admitted that only 41% of those surveyed made “apps” (this was not defined), while 21% did social networking, 17% retailing/ecommerce, 12% publishing, 12% IT consulting and services, 8% data processing/management and 7% were in gaming – though it’s not clear whether than meant games or gambling. And of those 141, only 77% of respondents were the CEO or Founder of the business they represented.

As a result of this over-sight, an important opportunity has been missed to find out more about the needs of genuine high-growth technology companies in the cluster, rather than normal growth advertising agencies that rely on face to face client growth.

But for what it’s worth we present the rest of the reports findings below. Make of them what you will.

Among the report’s key findings:

• Nearly a half of those surveyed (44%) find a shortage of skilled workers is the biggest challenge they face.
• Over three quarters (77%) say a lack of skilled workers is restricting their growth.
• A third (33%) believe a lack of access to capital is hindering their business.
• In terms of the businesses represented, 30% had an annual turnover of <£200k, 34% £200,000-£999,000, 17% £1-£5m, 7% £5-£10m and 12% over £10m. 24% said their main location of business was London, 44% UK, 17% Europe 14% North America and 1% ROW.

The report says the 141 executives surveyed had "mixed feelings" about the the effectiveness of government support, with some liking it, others not. So not exactly ground breaking news then. Tech City has a government-backed PR outfit called the Tech City Investment Organisation which is aimed externally and abroad, and is not designed to represent the local community, even though everyone seems confused by this.

Clearly, despite the 'glass half empty' tone, the situtation is in flux. Ryan Garner, Research Director for GfK said: "Our research shows Tech City is at a tipping point, and hopefully this report will help it find its way in spearheading that economic growth." Indeed, the reports authors could equally have spun the situation as a 'tech hiring boom'.

Unfortunately, the report struggles with some of the common terms of the technology world. The top skills most in demand are said to be "coders and developers" and something called "research and development" leading one to wonder if the report’s authors could possibly be more vague. The others skills said to be in short supply (again, not news) are marketing and PR, business development, web design and user experience specialists. Someone is hiring. Hold the front page…

The report claims that staff retention remains a challenge, though is not clear on whether that is because it's a booming startup market generating more spin-out startups, or if people are leaving for big corporate jobs. It’s just a “challenge”, ok?

As for accessing capital, a third of those surveyed said their businesses are hindered by a lack of capital, whether sourced from investors or banks. Once again, because the report conflates technology businesses that might be fundraising with digital agencies that might just want a bank loan, the picture here is vague. Of course, it's common knowledge that most startups fail to raise external funding anyway.

If there is a gem of new information here it's in the finding – which has been largely anecdotal till now – that there is a growing gap for businesses requiring investment of £500,000 to £2 million. The "Series A gap".

However, the report mistakenly thinks that all startups which can't raise a Series A in London will skip of to bag "the Silicon Valley dollar" when doing so is far from simply buying a plane ticket to SF.

As a result of yet another inept attempt to garner meaningless PR around which is – in fact – a genuinely interesting cluster, TechCrunch is hereby placing a ban on all reports about London's Tech City from now on unless they actually talk to 100% tech companies with an actual product or platform. Not guys coming up with a new hip flash site for Coca Cola or selling ‘switch it on, switch it off again’ tech support to banks.

While the world goes gaga for Google Glass, a small startup has come up with an intriguing new take on a device which can display information before your eyes. Instabeat is head-up display unit which attaches to swimming goggles and monitors your heart rate, calories, laps and turns during your swim. It’s been live on crowd funding platform Indiegogo for a few days and is already poised to reach its modest funding target ($29,326 raised, with $35,000 being the goal), meaning the product will almost certainly ship.

While runners have Runkeeper and many other similar apps to track their goals, swimmers have until now been left out of the tracking game. Instabeat scratches that itch with a streamlined device which reads your heart rate via a (patent-pending) optical sensor that can accurately read the heart rate from the temporal artery on the side of your head, without the need for the annoying chest belt. The device has gone through several prototypes and the finished product can be backed for $139, and slated for shipping (to people who backed) it in October.

The sensor automatically turns on when the device is placed on your head and projects a color onto your lenses in real-time to know how close you are from your target zone. Each color has three levels to indicate whether you are in the beginning, middle or upper limit of the zone. It also measures your calories, number of laps and flip turns and syncs with a personal online dashboard to track progress over time. Right now that’s via USB port, but later models are planned which will sync wirelessly.

Competing products include Aqua Pulse from FINIS, which reads your heart rate out loud to you – but this does not store data and has no other features. Then there is PoolmateHR from Swimovate, a watch that reads the heart rate with a chest belt and counts laps – but again you have to wear the chest belt which many swimmers don’t enjoy doing.

Ironically Instabeat has been developed out of the Middle East – a region not normally known for its watersports. The sports technology startup is based in Lebanon, and was founded in 2011 by Hind Hobeika out of her personal need for a heart rate monitoring device for her swimming practice.

And as far as we can tell, this is the first crowd-funding campaign out of the Arab world for a physical product.

ShapeUp Club is a startup out of Stockholm which has been making waves recently with a lot of under-the-radar growth. Originally built back in 2008 as a side project, it’s morphed into an interactive calorie counter on iPhone, Android, and web. You get a personal weight loss plan, can track nutrition, exercise and weight. Ok, so it might not sound original set against the likes of bigger players like MyFitnessPal… but… the app has registered 4 million downloads, with 450,000 monthly active users and a growth rate of more than 10,000 new installs per day (they claim). So not bad with very little active promotion, and for a startup that is entirely bootstrapped.

While developers Tove Westlund and Martin Wählby founded the company in 2008, now two seasoned executives have joined up to take the company to the next level.

Henrik Torstensson, formerly a senior exec with global music service Spotify, and Marcus Gners, from at teen girl gaming giant Stardoll, are now joining the company in the roles of CEO and Deputy CEO. Both have a history as advisors to the company, with Gners having been involved for over 3 years.

The startup claims the average users loses about 9 lbs after using the app regularly.

Their claimed ‘secret sauce’ is that after taking weight, height, age and daily activity level, ShapeUp Club calculates a personal weight loss plan for each user. The user then tracks what they eat and how much they exercise, using a calorie bar to view how many more or fewer calories they should eat each day to reach their target weight.

ShapeUp Club is also connected to the Runkeeper Health Graph API and allows users to import their RunKeeper and Withings data into ShapeUp Club, as well as upload their nutrition information from ShapeUp Club into the Health Graph.

One of Stockholm’s more buzzy startups, ShapeUp Club in the same new wave of companies such as Tictail and others.

Last week we reported that Facebook is in advanced talks to buy Israel-born social traffic and mapping app Waze for up to $1 billion, but that there were still some questions over whether Waze’s R&D efforts would remain in their home country, or move to Facebook’s HQ in California. Haaretz has now advanced the story, saying that the current deal has it that Waze’s R&D will stay in Israel, where it will also continue to be a registered, tax-paying company, while Waze’s Palo Alto office will move over to Facebook and Menlo Park. While reports are now swirling that Apple could still come into the negotiating room again (if you believe Apple was ever there in the first place), the deal raises some interesting details and debate about what is happening in the Israeli startup scene currently.

Consumer apps

In a country more renowned for its B2B and technical exits — Cisco’s $5 billion NDS deal being one example from last year, but so are Facebook’s two previous Israeli acquisitions, feature phone interface designer Snaptu and facial recognition company Face.com — this is one of the first big consumer tech exits in Israel. Yaron Samid, founder of the Israeli tech startup network TechAviv and himself a serial entrepreneur, notes that this is in fact the first $1 billion exit for such a company. Waze’s rapid rise over the last couple of years, he notes, has already been having an impact on the community, with the exit being the final flourish.

“The inspiration has already taken hold like wildfire among the countless Israeli founders who’ve been told that they can’t produce a billion-dollar consumer Internet/Mobile company – and now know that they all can,” he writes. (He also takes the opportunity for a little self promotion, claiming that he’d been one of those suggesting current CEO Noam Bardin after he couldn’t take the job himself.)

There are numerous Israeli Startups that could get a lift from the ‘new order’ where consumer startups, not just B2B and enterprise, can emerge from the country. These could include Wix, GetTaxi, Fiverr, Bizzabo, MyHeritage, Wishi and Mobli, among others.

Facebook Israel foothold

The other interesting development here is that this could give Facebook a foothold into the Israeli tech world. Unlike Google, Facebook does not have an operation in Israel, which could well create useful ‘boots on the ground’ in a nation renowned for its engineering talent. This would make it the second Facebook development arm outside the U.S., after London.

But the suggestion so far is that Waze will remain an independent company operating in Israel, with R&D staying in Israel, while the business side, including CEO Noam Bardin, is expected to move over to Facebook U.S. HQ.

But, there is a cultural clash on the horizon here.

Some local players are already coming out against this idea. Local VC and TechCrunch contributor Roi Carthy says he would like to see Facebook shutter Waze’s local presence, and relocate the tech personnel to Palo Alto.

Why?

Because, he says, although the Waze R&D center could be a beach-head for a full-blown Facebook R&D shop, and thus good for Facebook, “it could have catastrophic effects upon local early stage startups’ ability to compete on salaries and benefits.”

His argument is that if a big company like Facebook stays away, then the Israeli tech ecosystem is more likely to be able to “push more innovation” towards Silicon Valley, which would be in the “best interest of both the local startup industry and Facebook.”

Certainly, such a large acquisition inside such a relatively small country could well change the successful dynamics of the Israeli eco-system. If it became a mere engineering centre for Facebook, Apple and Google, the implication is that we might not see quite the same levels of startup activity as we’ve seen emerge in the past from Israel.

That is almost certainly overstating the ‘problem’. It’s more likely that the experience of being inside these big tech companies in Israel is more likely to create a virtuous circle of new entrepreneurs, spin-outs and new projects. Plus, more eyes and ears on the ground for potential acquisitions.

Haaretz is also reporting some details about the financial terms of the deal. Anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent of the $1 billion price (the current offer) will be in Facebook shares, with the rest in cash. Israeli investors woud prefer more cash; others prefer Facebook shares. Specific investors like Li Ka-Shing will land $116 million from the deal after investing $30 million via the Horizon Ventures Fund along with Kleiner Perkins less than two years ago. Microsoft will pull in $102 million after investing of $25 million in December 2010.

Today in interesting moves comes the news that serial entrepreneur-turned-investor Russell Buckley – who was first employee at AdMob (which sold to Google) is joining the UK government to accelerate its policies around startups, mainly funding. Specifically, he’s joining the UK Government’s Venture Capital Unit. The Unit, launched last year, is designed to help UK companies attract funding from abroad and thus help resolve the funding gap which often exists at early and mid-stages. The Unit is headed by veteran entrepreneur Chris Wade and embraces Clean Tech, Life Sciences and Hardware. Here’s Russell’s blog post on the matter:

My New Job

Exciting times!

There’s something about soccer (and as a Brit, by that I mean football, puh-lease…) that seems to have captured investors’ imaginations of late. Case in point: FTBpro, a large fan-generated content platform, has now secured $5.8 million from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures to fund global expansion.

The site currently has 20 million monthly page views, over 1,000 contributing fan writers, covers all major leagues worldwide and publishes content and tools in a variety of languages.

FTBpro is not the only one. Its funding comes just after The Football App raised its first institutional funding — a €10 million Series A from a syndicate led by Earlybird Venture Capital in Berlin. The Football App has become a pretty dominant mobile football app amongst European fans.

On FTBpro, fans can publish and interact with each other and FTBpro’s editors. The site features match predictions, videos, imagery slideshows, team line-ups and player rankings amongst other features.

Based in London, with R&D in Tel Aviv, FTBpro’s business model is advertising and brand sponsorships. It works on Android or iOS, and the competition includes sports UGC players Bleacher Report (US), which was acquired by Time Warner Sports.

For its part, The Football App, which has 3.5 million monthly users and is up to 1.5 million daily active users, says it is adding 100,000 users a day across 155 markets and has high retention rates. They will use the funds to grow internationally.

More to come in this space, I dare say, as ‘second screen’ apps take off.

This October we’re looking forward to bringing you a full-blown, all-hands-on-deck, TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in Berlin, the only Disrupt conference outside North America. This will feature the biggest stars of Silicon Valley meeting with the biggest stars of the European and emerging markets tech scenes. Meanwhile, we’ve begun working with local partners to bring you country-based events. These include TechCrunch Italy in September and TechCrunch Moscow in December. Here’s the low-down on TechCrunch Italy in Rome, 26th and 27th September (tickets here).

Co-organized with Populis, one of Europe’s leading digital media groups, TechCrunch Italy, in its second year, will gather some of the most recognised leaders and innovators of the technology and media industries in Italy, Europe and the US to give a unique insight into the big changes and trends happening in the world right now. Themes for this year include those close to the heart of Italy, such as design, fashion, tourism, automotive and will also cover Italy can re-design the way it does business to benefit startups.

This year confirmed speakers include Renaud Visage, co-founder of eventbrite, Damien Patton, founder of banjo and John Underkoffler, founder of oblong technologies and creator of the interface behind the film Minority Report.

It will be held at the Maxxi Museum, Rome. Last year featured 1,400 participants and 55 of Italy’s hottest startups, alongside 55 international speakers including Mitchell Baker (founder, Mozilla), Alec Ross (senior advisor for innovation to Hilary Clinton), ZarynDentzel (founder, tuenti), Riccardo Zacconi (founder, king.com),Corrado Passera (Italian Economic Minister), Michel Martone (Vicewelfare minister, italy), Fadi Bashira, (founder, Blackbox) and many more.

All the information you need is here.

Facebook’s social graph went missing from yesterday’s update to Path‘s smartphone app, and Facebook now confirms it has restricted Path’s API access. Path can no longer look up your Facebook friends, which prevents it from sending them invitations or suggesting you follow them. The move may be in response to Path spamming user’s contacts with invites last week.

Facebook tells me Path can still use Facebook as a login option and share posts to Facebook. However, its “Find Friends” access has been shut off similar to how Facebook disabled the option in March for MessageMe, right after shutting off Voxer’s access to the social graph, even though Voxer connected to Facebook for well over a year.

However, those apps were formally cited as competitors. Facebook didn’t say exactly why Path lost access, leading me to believe the spam controversy may have been responsible. It was caught sending out text message invitations to users contacts at 6am last week, leading to significant backlash. Facebook hates being associated with spam, and its platform policies say it can remove API access from apps it thinks are being too aggressive. We’ve reached out to Path for its side of the story.

Until now, Path has let users invite their Facebook friends to download the app, and easily follow friends who already use it. But while you can still invite people from your Contact Book or Gmail contacts in the new 3.0.4 version of Path, the options for Facebook vanished. Oddly, Path’s own customer portal still bears the image of the old app, with Facebook plain to see.

Suffice it to say that losing the ability to invite Facebook friends could hinder the growth of Path, which hit 10 million registered users last week. The more networks the merrier, right? But people can invite their closest friends via text message or email. The bigger issue may be that it’s now harder to develop a micro-social graph on Path because you can’t just choose a subset of your Facebook friends. If you don’t follow or get followed by the right people, Path isn’t nearly as fun, and you won’t use it as much.

Possibly in an attempt to fill the void, Path has added Twitter, which could be quite fruitful for bringing in new users. Currently, Twitter users have no ability to create a more private network for close friends – unless they choose to lock their account – which is hardly the point of Twitter, a network which thrives on the oxygen of the public sphere. Twitter’s userbase skews more toward early adopters who might be interested in Path than Facebook users.

Despite the replacement, Facebook dropping the hammer is a serious blow to Path. Considering many believe it has a high churn rate and it refuses to provide active user counts, Path probably needs to be pulling in users however it can.

Update: A different perspective on this situation is that Facebook felt threatened by Path’s growth and recent move into private messaging. By cutting off Path’s access to its social graph, Facebook could hamper its growth and prevent it from gaining more momentum. Some believe Facebook’s on-boarding flow can also lead people to accidentally send invites too. We’ll be looking closer at this issue.

[Image Credit: RGBstock / Mzacha Aginnt]

Last October, Datahug, a ‘business networking automation’ startup, which is also being used by VCs, secured a €2.5 million Series A financing led by European VC DFJ Esprit. But it’s now adding to that pot. We’ve confirmed Salesforce has decided to join that round in an “expansion” of its Series A, which includes original investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson (in the US), DFJ Esprit (UK), Oyster Capital and leading Valley investor Ron Conway. The full A-round is now $4m and brings the total raised to $5.5M over two rounds.

Datahug was founded in 2010 in Ireland and is expanding sales aggressively into the US market. Current customers include European VCs Balderton Capital and DFJ Esprit as well as Grant Thornton, Plantronics, BDO and CPL. Commenting, T Paul Thomas, CEO and cofounder with Connor Murphy of Datahug, says he’s been “impressed with the extremely positive response from US investors and customers.”

The startup estimates that it finds around 400 contacts per person that aren’t captured in any existing CRM system or database. The solution works by indexing existing communication logs – such as emails, contacts and calendar data – to create an enterprise-wide picture of “who knows who”. The platform then attributes a ‘HugRank’ score to show how well they know them. It requires no data entry to capture the relationships and connections that exist, making it pretty easy to use.

Last month Skimlinks, the platform that allows publishers full control over affiliate links and content monetization, completed a growth financing round led by Greycroft Partners and others, while expanding into Asia. This month it has new products to roll out, launching two major initiatives. The question is, how does it stand up to the competition?

The first new product is called Showcases, which is a visual alternative to the in-line-text offering its had for some time.

Showcases are ad units that sit alongside content and populate automatically based on the products mentioned in an article, geo-targeted to the user. It means publishers don’t have to manually add an image to illustrate an article, like this.

Secondly, Fashion Engine, instead of identifying products that include model numbers or brand names, finds product references that use entirely normal English words, e.g. “Kim Kardashian was seen wearing a black leather dress.” This vertical-optimized semantic engine is thus aimed at fashion publishers, such as here and here.

Alicia Navarro, co-founder and CEO, says competitors don’t offer these kinds of products: “Both VigLink and RewardStyle don’t offer an accurate automated in-text/near-text solution geared towards fashion publishers. It is really hard to do well in non-techy verticals, and we have built the means to do it, at scale, in real-time.”

They also plan to expose the API behind this new service. It sounds bold but Navarro says they want to become the “Twilio of e-commerce with our path towards open APIs for all our products.”

But competitors have a few words to say about these moves.

When asked, Oliver Deighton, VP of marketing of Viglink, takes slight issue with this. He says VigLink Insert has been optimized since 2012 for over a dozen categories and the VigLink catalog API already enables publishers to “create custom and highly visual shopping experiences.”

Oliver Krohne, Founder & CEO of Yieldkit says “Alicia is right that verticals beside tech are different as you don’t have proper names like “iphone” or “galaxy tab”… However, approaching the standard ad spaces means also facing harder competition in terms of CPM rates, which you receive from all ad networks or Adsense. So it will be a challenge to exceed those.”

Navarro, however, has words for these guys. “VigLink Insert was launched a while after our SkimWords product, but their solution has never been real-time… and it is a simple word match solution, rather than ours which is a trained natural language processing engine… we don’t know of a single fashion site running VigLink Insert.”

“YieldKit’s comments are true, some publishers do place us in standard ad unit places, but we encourage publishers to create new real estate for Showcases alongside content, rather than placing them in peripheral ‘ad’ spots. As we evolve Showcases we will weave in behavioural optimization and even richer content so we achieve comparable earnings to traditional ‘ads.’”

Whatever the case, the race is on to capture this market, and Skimlinks seems to be making most of the running right now.

Five years after being started as a back-bedroom project by Michael Acton Smith, Mind Candy, the company that came up with the hugely successful Moshi Monsters kids game, has achieved a lot. Unusually for most UK consumer startups, it’s reached across the globe to become a global brand attracting 80 million registered users, up from 50 million in 2011.

Clearly this has been good for growth given that Mind Candy’s 2011 declared sales were £29m. But though tonight it celebrates its success with a lavish party for staff and guests, the company itself stands on a precipice, and the precipice is called mobile. That said, the company knows this, and plans to launch three brand new gaming worlds in the next few months.

In the company’s favour is a self-aware CEO. Acton Smith knows Moshi’s mobile and tablet, and its mobile offering is pretty weak, given that its target audience of young kids has switched almost overnight in the past two years to tablet-based games like Angry Birds, Plants And Zombies, Heyday and the rest. Moshi has done very well in licensing its characters for merchandise, generating half of its revenues from licensing and royalties deals this way – but that can’t last for long if the games themselves don’t satisfy its young audience.

Mind Candy CEO Michael Acton Smith admits that web site traffic has slowed as tablets have taken off, but he says the company is well positioned for the mobile future. Mind Candy has had a total of $10 million in funding from Index Ventures, Accel Partners and Spark Ventures.

While Moshi Monsters has 80 million registered users, it declines to release monthly active users, a metric used by most gaming companies today. It sounds like its getting ready for that shift of position.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Acton Smith said the company was making a big shift to a mobile strategy and that it was “vital that we crack this.”

Indeed, it’s looking like a seismic change at Mind Candy. Acton Smith says three entirely new worlds are being created which will build “entirely new IP.”

Moshi Monsters, however, will be kept “evergreen,” develop further onto mobile, and a full-length movie is slated for launch later this year.

“We are hiring aggressively for this” says Acton Smith.

The new games will be more broadly aimed at families, so parents playing alongside kids. “We’re big fans of Pixar and how it created movies aimed at the whole family,” says Smith, who has gained a reputation as a quirky and creative character, and is sometimes described as the Willy Wonka of London’s tech scene. The moniker works after a fashion – the Mindy Candy office boasts a tree house and a slide.

Moshi Monsters started out as an online world of adoptable pet monsters for boys and girls aged 6-12 back in 2008. It slowly crept to 1 million users before taking off in the summer of 2009 and growing by 1 new registered user per second. Moshi is biggest in the UK but has a global fan base. The top five territories are English speaking (UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand).

Mindy Candy has been on a roller coaster ride – almost closing in late 2008 when the business ran out of cash after blowing its initial funding on an Alternative Reality Game called Perplex City before Acton Smith sketched out the first Moshi Monster in a London cafe.

Photo and video apps have rocketed up the app store charts driven by apps like Instagram and Vine, becoming the third largest category in iOS downloads. Most contain casual photo filters and simple editing tools. In contrast with this trend, others are feeding the desire for photo editing with more sophisticated apps. The latest entrant to this market is MasterFX which launches today for iPad and iPhone, offering the kinds of tools professional designers might recognise, without the user needing to learn complicated techniques. It also incorporates a gallery of a few million royalty free photos. Handy.

MasterFX is made by the Dropico Mobile studio in Israel which has attracted $2.3 million in angel funding.

It comes with over 1,500 photo elements, effects, characters, backgrounds, brushes, and an advanced text editor, and an automatic light balancing function. It also comes with 32 in-app paid-for packages and a gallery of a few million royalty free photos for $0.05 per photo. It includes heavy duty editing features you might find in Photoshop such as: distort, layers manager, opacity control, mask and brushes as “easy single step tools” they claim.

Sagi Hirsh, Co-founder says they plan to extend the app as they go.

Dropico has also produced other photo apps including FilterMania, WowFX and InstaFonts, among others and claim over 10 million downloads.

If, say, a company uses both Sharepoint and Salesforce inside a mobile app, to get that data into one app they need multiple levels of API integration. Because of the enormous boom in mobile and tablet apps, so-called ‘back-end as a service’ (BaaS) platforms like FeedHenry – which solve these problems – are hugely expanding. Thus, today FeedHenry has secured $9M (€7M) in a funding round led by Intel Capital, alongside a “seven figure” investment from existing investor Kernel Capital.

Other existing investors VMware Inc., Enterprise Ireland and private investors also participated and were joined by new investment from ACT Venture Capital. The funds will be used on an international roll out.

FeedHenry’s mobile application platform – built between Ireland and the U.S. – helps businesses build mobile apps that integrate securely to their business through the cloud. This is a competitive market that includes StackMob, Usergrid, Appcelerator, Sencha.io, Applicasa ,Parse, CloudMine , CloudyRec , iKnode, yorAPI, Buddy and ScottyApp.

Startups in the UK are upbeat about the future and usually more profitable (comparatively) than their US counterparts (which tend to focus on growth over revenues). But they find raising Series A money difficult, with 90% of entrepreneurs saying the UK fundraising environment is “challenging”. Those are the findings of a survey commissioned by Silicon Valley Bank (its first such) which has set up operations in the UK. Admittedly the 125 startup executives surveyed is not vast, but it’s likely to be highly targeted given SVB’s historically close relationships with the tech startup ecosystem.

Top line findings of the survey revealed some 83% anticipated positive business conditions in 2013, 39% are looking to raise capital from VCs and Angel investors, but there remains a funding gap between Seed and Series A funding. This latter point chimes with our own anecdotal evidence from TechCrunch sources. It appears Seed funding sources are widespread – it’s now what happens afterwards that’s the issue.

Some 90% of entrepreneurs in the study say the UK fundraising environment is challenging, with over a third blaming a “risk adverse” UK VC ecosystem. Most entrepreneurs surveyed are looking to Angel investors or VCs for their next source of funding (39% for each). Some 14% blamed ‘inexperienced investors’. Companies with fewer than 10 employees are more likely than those with 10 or more employees to look to: Angel investors (49% vs. 12%); the SEIS government tax relief scheme for investors (24% vs. 6%) and the EIS scheme (20% vs. 6%).

Frankly, this feels like an opportunity for US investors to pick up some very competitive deals.

One in five businesses is beating their revenue targets for 2012, and another strong year is predicted for 2013. Some 60% of the respondents say business conditions had improved in 2012 compared to 2011 and 73% met or exceeded revenue targets last year. Of the UK startups questioned nearly half expect their company to be profitable this year. The survey claims “just 26%” of their US counterparts report the same, though sources for that figure were not cited.

More than half (56%) want greater access to government grants and funds designed specifically for startups, while 52% would like to see tax reforms. This latter figure sounds pretty favourable, given recent government changes on tax and funding, such as the SEIS initiative.

Hiring is a key priority for UK based startups. Eighty-seven percent of survey respondents plan to hire in 2013 and 77% say that finding workers with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) skills is “absolutely critical”.

Commenting, Bindi Karia, Vice President at Silicon Valley Bank says while the outlook appears pretty good, “the flipside is that many executives have concerns around how they should fuel the next level of growth, since access to funding and talent are cited as challenges for many startups.”

Joshua March, Co-Founder and CEO of startup business Conversocial (based in Shoreditch at the centre of the so-called TechCity tech cluster) says: “The tech scene in London has evolved dramatically since we started working on Conversocial in 2009. One of the most exciting changes is how much easier it is to hire great developers than just a few years ago. Undertakings like Silicon Milkroundabout and the Tech City initiative, backed by so much government and press support, have turned ‘startups’ into a viable career path.”

Market research firm Koski Research conducted the survey for Silicon Valley Bank in December 2012. For the purposes of the study, UK startups were defined as companies in the innovation sector with less than £25 million in annual revenue and fewer than 100 employees.

Here’s a Summary of the statistics:

A big year:

• 83% anticipate positive business conditions in 2013.
• 18% of respondents say their company exceeded revenue targets in 2012.
• 55% or respondents say revenue met projected targets.
• 66% of respondents say conditions in 2012 were better than in 2011.
• 66% of companies are generating revenue.
• 30% of companies are profitable.
• Of UK start-ups earning revenue, nearly half expect their company to be profitable this year, while just 26% of their US counterparts report the same.

Start-ups are Hiring

• 87% of startups plan to hire new employees in 2013
• 38% of start-up executives say workers with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) skills are critical , and 23% say management, marketing, and other non-STEM skills are most critical.
• Engineering (69%) followed by Marketing-Sales (41%) are the hardest skills to find.

Fundraising environment

• 90% of entrepreneurs in this study say the UK fundraising environment is challenging.
• Over 1/3 of the comments received from respondents think that this is due to a UK VC ecosystem that is not as mature at the US one (risk adverse).
• Most entrepreneurs are looking to Angel investors or VCs for their next source of funding (39% for each).
• 28% cite a risk adverse culture as a barrier to funding; 22% claim that access to capital is in issue; 14% blame ‘inexperienced investors’.
• Companies with fewer than 10 employees are more likely than those with 10 or more employees to look to:
Angel investors (49% vs. 12%)
SEIS (24% vs. 6%)
EIS (20% vs. 6%)

Attitudes to Government support

• Over half of startup executives think that the Government has a role to play in helping the startup sector. • 56% mention that they would like greater access to government grants and funds, designed specifically for startups
• 52% want tax reforms.

Recently we’ve seen a lot of news articles about the potential for chat apps to take over the role of SMS. Analysts Informa recently published research suggesting that 2012 was the tipping point, with nearly 19 billion messages sent globally over chat apps daily, versus 17.6 billion SMS messages.

In 2014 some 21 billion SMS messages are predicted compared with 50 billion app-based messages. And while the user numbers of chat apps are significantly lower right now when set against chat apps (3.5 billion SMS users in 2012, against 586.3 million users of WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, Viber, Nimbuzz, Apple’s iMessage and KakaoTalk), those ratios are changing. Given that SMS is 20 years old and chat apps have been going for only five years, the trend is on the minds of mobile operators. That is, if they don’t start thinking about the apps and maybe partnering.

Clearly a few apps are trying to be simply disruptive to operators, especially WhatsApp and Viber. Others are taking a different tack. Today Pakistan telecom giant Mobilink announced it is partnering with Nimbuzz, a big messaging player in emerging markets run out of India. Mobilink will now give its 35 million subscribers access to the platform at a minimum flat cost irrespective of the data consumed. The deal mirrors one that India’s Aircel has done with Nimbuzz.

The move means that it will be technically cheaper to use Nimbuzz than other apps. It remains to be seen whether this proves much of an advantage to Nimbuzz or not, but it does provide a significant, though difficult-to-monetize, distribution platform.

The growing user base of these chat applications is affecting SMS revenue for telecom operators in markets like India, Singapore, Indonesia and Pakistan. They need new ideas.

Nimbuzz, whose investors include Mangrove and Naspers, has 150 million users and plans to roll out this model of partnering with telecoms operators.

Vikas Saxena, CEO of Nimbuzz thinks operator partnerships “help them to drive data usage among subscribers but also allow us access to users which we may not have had previously.”

Where this convergence of operators and app startups leads its hard to say. The disruptors are holding a gun to the heads of the operators. Others are offering a way out. But in emerging markets where access to mobile data is still emerging and SMS remains a big staple, this dualistic approach might be the right one to take.

In March last year Yahoo’s SVP of the Europe, the Middle East and Africa region abruptly quit his role in the rejuvenation of Yahoo, supposedly to be closer to family in Sunnyvale. However, after an orderly departure he’s now joined Shazam, the mobile music discovery app as CEO. Longtime CEO Andrew Fisher (since 2005) will become executive chairman. The London-based Shazam says it now has 300 million users in 200 countries, with 90 million of them in the U.S. and calls itself a “media engagement company.”

Add to this the recent hire of the BBC’s Daniel Danker as Chief Product Officer, and Shazam now says it’s on a path towards an IPO. The company has raised $32 million since starting out in 2002 from investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Institutional Venture Partners, Acacia Capital and DN Capital. The London tech market has become a better potential platform for IPOs following recent legislative changes.

Fisher said in a statement “Whilst Rich will run our business I will now spend more time focusing on our corporate development and future strategy, including our ambitions to deliver a successful IPO for our shareholders as we look to become an increasingly important part of people’s everyday lives.”

Shazam says it has over 60 million monthly active users who can hold the smartphone app up close to a nearby source of music and get a notification about what music is being played based on its database of 27 million tracks. The effect is a little like magic and has further potential applications in a number of media scenarios. Because you can directly buy the tune, this means Shazam will have the ability to drive $300 million in sales via affiliate partnerships with Apple iTunes and Amazon.

It’s also recently launched a TV service that provides info on the music being broadcast and other show information enabling users to rent or buy further content and “clickable” ad links.

John Pearson, who has been chairman of the board since 2006, will become a non-executive director and remain on the board.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has said he finds having to talk to Google Glass out loud to control the interface “the weirdest thing” and that there are going to be “places where Google Glass are inappropriate.” My own experience of trying out the device, even briefly, confirmed to me that this product simply will not become a mass-market device any time soon. Indeed, if it has any future at all it will be either in disappearing inside normal glasses, or solely used by industry. I can’t see it becoming as ubiquitous as the smartphone in any way, and here’s why.

At a conference in Europe this week I briefly tried on a pair lent to me by an individual — who will remain nameless since Google has threatened to take back the Glass if they are used by someone other than the owner.

Suffice to say the experience was quite odd. For starters you are staring straight into clear space, despite feeling like you are wearing glasses. But then there is this small screen hovering slightly above your line of sight and slightly to the right. So you can’t flick your eye up directly, but up and slightly to the right. It’s not a natural movement, which implies Google Glass may need to be personally adjusted to the individual.

A friend – who wears contact lenses – who tried out the Glass for a full 10 minutes complained of an hour-long headache afterwards from having to look up at the screen.

Next up is using your voice to do various commands like “Take a picture.” If you have someone standing in front of you, this is extremely odd. Suddenly they are cut out of the conversation and you’re talking to the Glass. This is very unlike being able to check something on your smartphone while you are chatting casually to someone. The latter feels quite normal, but performing similar operations while wearing Google Glass would seem downright rude in front of someone.

Ultimately this suggests to me that Google Glass will be incapable of being used socially. Okay, people in the tech world may use it socially and wander around with them on at conferences Googling each other. But it’s my belief that ‘normal’ people will not.

In part this was suggested by Andrew Keen onstage at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam. His point is that there is “no permission” given when the person in front of you is brandishing Google Glass. He’s right, and I can see most people asking the person to remove their Glass before conducting a civil conversation. You just don’t see that happening when two people with smartphones start talking.

Where I can see Google Glass working is in activities where you require both hands to be free. Skiing down a mountain filming, using the Glass like you would a GoPro camera, for instance. And in industrial applications – building and manufacturing, yes, I can see this would work very well: “Show House Plans” for instance, would be a great command for a building app. And you can see the police suddenly thinking of a few useful applications.

But not in everyday interactions just walking around.

But the technology itself? Well, if it does disappear inside normal glasses perhaps it has a chance. But once again, interrupting a conversation with someone to interrogate it? We’ll have to rethink thousands of years of human interaction, and that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.

So Google Glass for me will be this era’s Segway: hyped as a game changer but ultimately used by warehouse workers and mall cops.

Last June, BancBox, a payment services platform similar to Stripe, debuted its platform allowing developers to build a lot of different payment services. As cofounder Sanj Goyle claimed at the time: “PayPal could be built on top of our platform.” Now it has launched BancBox Crowd, what is — as far as we can tell — the first independent escrow service aimed at crowdfunding portals that operate on equity, debt or revenue share models.

The company is also announcing partnerships with crowd investing services 99Funding, SoMoLend and Localstake.

BancBox Crowd claims to be the only solution on the market that provides online investment portals with an automated escrow solution that can replace the manual paper escrow process. They also say it is compliant with FINCEN, FINRA and SEC requirements.

In essence it means being able to create independent escrow accounts for each crowd-backed project, collect funds from those many investors, and either safely return funds if the project doesn’t work out, or disburse those funds when the project, whatever it is, reaches its funding goal.

Goyle says: “We want to have the payment part of the experience of an investor to be a sticky experience so we make it as easy as possible to pay and go through the process.” He says the business model is based on a set transaction fee to the platform partner.

You could say they know about payments. BancBox manages $100 million in consumer deposits daily in nearly 200,000 individual accounts. Its transaction volume has increased 100 percent to nearly $2 billion annually.

BancBox was created in 2011 but previously, co-founders Goyle, Praveer Kumar, and Bill Wilson launched the now well-known National Payment Network (NPN), which had investors like Foundation, Floodgate, Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal, and Founder Collective.

You’re familiar with the scenario of not being able to keeping up with some of your best contacts because there are probably now plenty of them? Small businesses have that same problem, and they aren’t about to employ heavy lifting CRM to solve that simple problem. Contactually, which has previously raised money from Point Nine Capital (Berlin), Boston Seed and 500 Startups, is going to try to address this with a major new iteration of the platform it launched in 2011.

Co-founder and CEO Zvi Band says although Contactually automatically prompts people to follow up with their most important contacts and leads the new version “puts that process on steroids” across web and mobile.

Cofounder Tony Cappaert tells me the platform is more nimble than a CRM like Salesforce and more actionable than something like Rapportive which is about summaries.

New features include better introductions, better social sharing, more templates, contact management, and the an app to manage this on your smartphone.

Check it out below.