Ciara Byrne is based in Amsterdam, and her interests include clean tech, mhealth, emerging markets, European startups and cycling in high heels. She has worked as a product strategist, software team lead and engineering manager. Follow her on Twitter at @deciara.

To reach all VB writers send tips to news@venturebeat.com

Disclosures: Sadly, the entire world seems to have already read VentureBeat’s ethics statement since nobody ever offers to sponsor my working wardrobe or send me free stuff.

I occasionally accept travel expenses in order to speak at or attend tech events and meet startups in the far corners of Europe. In such cases, no coverage is ever guaranteed and we always disclose who paid for travel in any related coverage.

stories by Ciara Byrne

Tech Hub Envy, or why you should stop trying to be Silicon Valley

Is Silicon Valley still the one tech hub to rule them all? And will it remain so in the future?

Techcrunch just posted some  new research from the Startup Compass on the world’s top tech hubs and their defining characteristics. …

Pipe dreams: ABB invests in water monitoring startup TaKaDu

What would happen to your city if all the taps ran dry? We can’t survive without water, but water shortages will effect many of us in the future due to population growth, climate change and crumbling water networks.

Electricity infrastructure …

Data-driven, green building design nets Sefaira $10.8 million

Sefaira just landed a $10.8 investment to harness cloud computing to crunch large amounts of building design data, allowing it to perform in minutes building design analyses which previously took days or weeks.

Designing zero-energy buildings, or retrofitting old ones, …

Pretty in Pinterest: Beauty giant Sephora integrates pin-boards

Beauty retailer Sephora has just become one of the first retailers to fully integrate with digital pin-board Pinterest by adding a “Pin It” button to every one of its 14,000 products.

Sephora staffers will also highlight their favorite products on …

Women’s rights group Ultraviolet targets Facebook’s all-male board

Ultraviolet, a new women’s rights group, today launched a campaign demanding that Facebook appoint at least one woman to its board before the company goes public.

While Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg is one of the most prominent “faces” of the …

Movie backed by Irish tech investors is nominated for an Oscar

Are you an early-stage, technology investor? Is there a certain lack of glamour and red carpets in your life? Then follow in the footsteps of early-stage tech investors Lough Shore Investments who partly funded a short film called “The Shore”, …

Peecho’s “License to Print” nets it $750,000 in funding

For a writer, nothing beats the romance of seeing your work in high-quality print. No screen can compete with the silky feel of the paper, an excess of glossy photographs and that special smell of a new page.

Peecho, which …

Ashton Kutcher invests in another Berlin startup, “Etsy for experiences” Gidsy

Gidsy, a new company from Germany, could be a way for you to make a few bucks from your more unusual talents.

Gidsy is a “marketplace for authentic experiences,” and it just landed a $1.2 million investment from a combination …

Netflix launches in the UK — LoveFilm undercuts it

Netflix announced yesterday that its streaming service is now available in the UK.

TV programs and movies, including local favorites such as The Only Way is Essex, can be streamed via Netflix to smart TVs, game consoles, computers, tablets and …

Worst press release titles of 2011

Nobody sets out to write a bad press release or pitch email, or at least we hope not, and yet we still receive quite a few at VentureBeat. Actually, I would be quite sad if we stopped getting them entirely. …

Ge.tt gets $455,000 to transfer your files faster

Ge.tt is a browser-based, file transfer service that today announced an investment of €350,000 ($455,000) from Atomico, the venture capital firm of Skype founder Niklas Zennström. The Copenhagen-based startup will use the cash to hire new staff.

“The space is …

Want to spend 3 months in Amsterdam? Sign up here

Think Amsterdam, and “startup hub” isn’t the first thing that springs to mind, but that may be about to change. Not one, but two startup accelerators just opened for business in the Dutch capital.

Throw in the burgeoning Appsterdam movement, …

Prezi lands $14 million to save us from death by Powerpoint

Zooming presentation tool Prezi just landed an investment of $14 million from Accel Partners and previous Danish investors Sunstone Capital. Prezi is one of those rare startups which actually has revenue. The company has been cash flow positive since 2010.…

Dude, you’re not a lady! Luluvise launches, but only for women

Luluvise, which launches today, aims for “girl time all the time” by recreating online the experience of private chats with your girlfriends. The all-female service has, however, attracted a lot of interest from a surprising source: men.

“We had a …

Kaggle launches competition to help Microsoft Kinect learn new gestures

What if it was as easy to add a new gesture to Microsoft Kinect as it is to create a keyboard shortcut?

Big data startup Kaggle just launched a machine learning competition to develop an algorithm that Kinect can use …

Tobii keeps an eye on distracted drivers

The most dangerous part of any motor vehicle is the driver. Swedish eye-tracking pioneer Tobii just announced a platform to detect drowsiness and distraction in drivers.

There are 41,000 road traffic fatalities a year in the U.S. according to the …

Quid makes million-dollar maps of technology’s past, present… and future

Iraqi insurgency groups and Silicon Valley startups may not appear to have a lot in common, but according to Quid‘s Chief Technical Officer Sean Gourley, the mathematics underlying innovation and conflict are not that different.

“The dynamics of an insurgency …

Do you need a data scientist?

Some of the world’s biggest tech companies from Google to Facebook are data-driven, but few startup founders have any idea what a data scientist does, never mind whether they should hire one. Here is VentureBeat’s guide to data science for …

BalconyTV turns apartment balconies into music venues

Irish band The Script have opened for U2 and appeared on CNN, but they made their TV debut on Stephen O’ Regan’s balcony in Dublin.

O’ Regan runs BalconyTV, a home-made TV show in which new bands perform on apartment …

TrialBee could save lives by bringing drugs to market faster

Big pharma still uses manual methods to recruit participants for drug trials, and that costs the industry money. Lots of money. The pharma industry loses $4.2 billion per year due to drug trial delays and $250K in lost sales per …