Source: http://www.cmit.csiro.au/

EURO-CASE (a EU body) is organizing a yearly event to award innovative companies in Europe:

"The European IST Prize is the most distinguished Prize for innovative products and services in the field of Information Society Technologies. The Prize is open to companies or organisations that present an innovative IT product with a promising market potential. "

Please see the rest of the entry for an individual review. Also please feel to compare these TOP 10 of Europe with these companies - you'll be enlightened...!

• Babboo.com, UK - that offers a cloning tool for databases. The web page is kind of horrible and hasn't anybody heard for SQL-Dump yet?
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• Cypak, Sweden seems to be an RFID developer, but they do not make it easy to discover that. "Our core technologies are disposable microelectronics and sensors, a new contact-less data transfer technology and new security solutions to guarantee authenticity and integrity."
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• Digisens, France provides "... a solution that improves teaching using observation and tactile sense. The Haptik solution consists in a virtual reality classroom associated with a software package for the student (three stations minimum).
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• Do Labs, France is providing tools from image enhancement
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• Elva, France is smart-card developer number 9999 - I really wonder how these guys got the prize (maybe lush parties in a Luxembourg suburb where only people with the right smart cards where allowed to enter...)
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• F-Secure, Finland is a established player for Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam solutions, I wonder why they need the 700k seed money??
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• FilmLight, UK does something I can at least partially understand - "FilmLight designs, develops and manufactures integrated solutions for the digital intermediate process and digital post production � producing products and services that fit the real needs of the motion picture profession.
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• FogScreen, Finland - has this cool screen made out of a thin layer of fog. We had them portrayed here earlier.
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• Haptica, Ireland does surgical simulation - that is a product you can't say bad things about
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• Illuminate Labs, Sweden does "Illuminate Labs develops and markets rendering technology for CGI, design visualization and digital content creation. Turtle� is the first product from Illuminate Labs - a radically faster rendering software for the Maya� animation software. - I'm actually not thrilled
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• Let It Wave, France - "Let It Wave commercializes products and services for image compression and quality enhancement." Ok next one please.
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• New Index, Norway - has just been indexed (haha) but apparently does not need a website
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• Optenet, Spain is a Internet access filtering company and has apparently filtered itself out of the web (site down)
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• Praxim Medivision, France provides the right tools for surgeons
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• Scytl Online World Security, Spain makes something simple and valueable - Security for Electronic Voting btw does anybody use electronic voting machines in Europe yet?
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• Skinkers, UK offers "...targeted messages, including multimedia, interactive content and questionnaires, on your users� PC desktops" wow this is really innovative indeed...
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• Systran, France makes translation technologies - what's the trick here?
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• Teleprotect International, Netherlands has a vehicle tracking system to offer...
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• Total Immersion, France says it's "... a leading software and services company specialized in real time video and 3D images integration."
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• VirTouch, Ireland I couldn't find them on the web

So honestly if this is the creme de la creme of European start-ups there is something wrong isn't it? I wonder if these are the winners what are the companies they have filtered out?

I guess Jeff's anecdote should be still in my mind: ""12 European high tech stars. Here's the basic problem with the European technology industry... my friend Frans is a VC based in Geneva and he told me an interesting anecdote about how one of his partners had shown him a list of the top 50 tech companies in Europe. Frans said "I didn't know if I should feel good about looking at this list of 50 companies and realizing that we had seen almost every deal... or to feel shitty about the fact that here was this list of the top 50 companies and we had seen almost every deal."

If you have a smart idea, check out next years contest.