I'm totally late to the crowd here but a friends startup, smava, recently launched and I'm totally psyched! I met Alexander way back in 2005 when we were both in p2p lending and borrowing space and flew out to Germany in early 2006 to do some work him and the team. They've been slaving away for some time now jumping through all the regulatory hurdles and finally made it through!! Congrats guys! The smava team is just about the sharpest group of guys i have ever met -- i look forward to seeing some exciting things from them!

I suppose I'm old fashion in thinking that when a company launches they would at least do it with some class. Legalforce ip, which lets people trade patents online, did a press release on VentureBeat when they went live with a site that is, literally, a copy and paste of prosper.com's design. 

LegalForce
Prosper.com

Apparently this is old news, but news nonetheless to me. According to this blog entry on FloHomebase [en], Digg has gone German too! No tie between the two ventures, but it's interesting to note that Yigg.de was formally known as Digg.de.

Facebook for Germany? I really wish I could pick the German language up faster. The country has a great group of entrepreneurs there... One day

I saw cork'd a while back and never paid much attention, but the company has caught my eye again. Cork'd leverages user generated content (UGC), like Yelp.com does for restaurant reviews, to help people select that next great bottle of wine. Personally, I love wine so it's only naturally that I would think this is a great idea. And, once mobile technology makes it easy for people like you and me to access reviews on the go (say, in the wine shop where there are too many undifferentiated labels) it seems like something that could gain exceptional traction among wine heavy enthusiasts. I can't help but wonder: if yelp.com, ....

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Match.com acquired a company called Chemistry - an eHarmoney play. Problem is, both of these sites do a poor job of taking physical attraction into account. Yesnomayb.com, on the other hand, seems to only account for physical attraction, leaving out the behavioral analysis to create a more compatible fit... so, if dating were all and only about sex, this site would be a winner.