A friend of mine at Nokia tipped me off to this wonderful wake up software. HappyWakeUp, a smart alarm clock for your mobile phone, promises to wake you up feeling refreshed every morning. Not a small thing to promise in any measure.

I am particularly keen on getting my good night’s sleep and am already using pzizz for my napping and Phillips Wake-Up Light for my mornings. Pzizz works like magic, but I’ve found the Phillips Wake-Up Light useful only for reading at the evenings. Thus my excitement when I heard about the HappyWakeUp.

HappyWakeUp goes beyond the mere gently sound or light and instead offers us statistical analysis of our sleep pattern for the price of:  One week - 2€. Two months - 8.95€. Full license - 49.95€. This is how it works:

HappyWakeUp detects the optimal moment to wake up by monitoring the quality of your sleep using the microphone of the mobile phone. Actually it listens to your movements during the night time. Therefore the phone has to be near to you, preferably on your bed. Detection of the arousals is based on statistical analysis of the microphone signals.

To read more about how the service works go here.

The company does not say where they are based, but since there is the Finnish language option available and the English copy writing has quite a few typos I’m guessing they are from Finland.

It’s a compelling story and I’m eager to try it out. Before trying tho, I need to get a Nokia phone which is a bit of a let down. No happy wake-ups for iphone owners. According to the company behind the service, Smart Valley Software Ltd., the service works only with Symbian 60 3rd edition platform and can be installed in Nokia mobile phones.

I was personally about to get a Nokia phone to go along with my iphone anyway, just to have the video recording capabilities with me at all times. But I can see this nifty service bypassing potentially significant tech savvy market if they are not hard at work with the HappyWakeUp iphone app. A nice opportunity for an iphone app developer perhaps.

As hinted earlier ,we’re organizing a trip to MindTrek Conference with Culminatum, Sombiz, Floobs and the guys at MindTrek.

The idea is to rent a bus and take off to Tampere together from Helsinki with a bus full of start-ups. Spend the Oct. 8th and 9th at the Conference and give the start-ups a possibility to pitch at Startup Launchpad competition.

The competition will have a worthwhile set of prizes, which without going into too much detail yet include face-time with some big names in the industry and tickets to one of the most notable Internet Conferences in Europe. We will announce the jury line-up as well as the prizes as soon as they get confirmed.

To enter the Launchpad competition you need to:

• Fill in the online form that you will find on the website (here)
  

• In the form you will be required to provide basic information about the company and founders, a description of your service/product and why your company should win.

• In addition to this, an optional maximum 2 minutes video uploaded to YouTube (or other server accessible for us) describing the company and the product would be highly appreciated. You can put the link on the form.

• Proposals must be submitted in English.There is no fee for registering your company in the MindTrek Startup Launchpad. If your company is selected, to confirm your participation, you will have to register to the conference. So those who are presenting the startup company must register and pay the registration fee.

• A maximum of 7 start-ups will be carefully selected from the submitted applications, and will demonstrate in front of a panel of expert judges in a room where any conference participant will have access to, on Thursday, October 9th.

The jury as well as the audience may ask questions during the Q&A session which will follow each presentation. The jury will also give feedback after the presentation.

If you’re a start-up and you’d like to come along and reserve a place in the bus, first you need to register and then just let me know you want to come along by dropping me a quick mail at ville [at] arcticstartup [dot] com.

There is no fee for registering your company in the MindTrek Startup Launchpad itself. If your company is selected, to confirm your participation, you will have to register to the conference. So those who are presenting the start-up company must register and pay the registration fee, but you do get a 10% off by using STARTMIND-08 code when registering. Naturally, if you do register the bus ride to Tampere and back is free of charge thanks to Tommi at Culminatum.

Seedcamp applications are now closed for 2008. We received all together five notifications from start-ups that are applying after we posted our own offer. The start-ups come from Finland and Sweden, namely These Are My Brands (Finland), Scred (Finland), BiznesPort (Finland), BuzzPal (Sweden/US) and Wonderswap.com (Sweden).

Seedcamp received most of the applications on the last minute (for more see here) just as we received the information on start-ups that applied. On the other hand we did not post our offer that much earlier either. Regardless, the main thing is that many companies got their application in. Congrats and good luck for everybody who submitted their application in time.

Even though the applications are now closed do let us know in comments if we missed you, but you still applied in time. The interview offer is valid even though we did not hear about you before the application window closed.

Edit 11.08.2008: That’s six start-ups now: MahShelf (Finland) applied also in time. Congrats!

Wonderswap.com, a Swedish based start-up, has applied to Seedcamp along with These Are My Brands, BuzzPal and just recently Scred.

Wonderswap aims to create a marketplace and a community that will support the need to re-cycle amongst a new generation of people who are tired of the “buy-and-throw-away-mentality”.

There’s not that much to see on Wonderswap’s website at the moment, but their CEO, Monika Björn, told us that they´re planning to have a Beta out by this autumn/winter. The secrecy is understandable to some extend, since Seedcamp rules suggest that your service should not have launched yet.

For those of our readers who still don’t know what Seedcamp is here’s a short description from Seedcamp website.

Seedcamp is an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA.

We’ve set it up to provide seed funding and world-class connections for startups. September 2007 marked our first Seedcamp Week and group of funded startups. September 2008 will mark our second.

We will be holding an open application available online. Based on this, we will select up to 20 companies to participate in the event.

Seedcamp application deadline is tomorrow(!), so if you’re planning on applying, apply now. If you want to apply, go here.

Good luck to Wonderswap.com(!) and as promised an interview comes as a part of package later on.

Risto Siilasmaa (of F-Secure fame) has invested in Whatamap.com, a mobile map service, (more on Whatamap.com here) and is thus also bringing much needed experience to the company on how to build and scale a startup into a successful global player.

The parties did not disclose the specific sum invested but according to Whatamap.com the investment was ‘markable’.