The news broke this week-end on TechCrunch and Mashable. We’re very happy to have been selected as one of the 24 finalists for this year’s edition of the The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally! In total 200 startups submitted applications. After a long screening process, 19 of the most promising startups were selected. The additional 5 spots are given to startups chosen by popular vote on TheNextWeb Blog.

This year’s conference is set to repeat the success of last year, with top keynotes and an impressive crowd of over 900 movers and shakers coming from all corners of Europe and the US. We’re looking forward to pitching alongside some great startups, including Mendeley, Plista and CoTweet. The competition will be steep!

Silentale will be onstage for 5min either on Thursday April 16 or Friday April 17. So if you are in Amsterdam, come and see us!

UPDATE 08/04: The exact schedule has been released. We’ll be presenting on Friday April 17 between 14h15 and 15h20.

It is this time of a year again, the week where a large number of Internet companies converge to San Francisco from everywhere to attend the web 2.0 expo conference. Once again, it takes place at the Moscone Center from Tuesday March 31st to April 3rd and this year’s very appropriate theme is “the Power of Less“.

Laurence and I be there with everyone else, so don’t hesitate to track us down, on site or in the evening events. You can also reach out using twitter @silentale or @lfp.

DON’T MISS: THURSDAY 2nd, 7 PM @ VESSEL

We’re also co-hosting a French 2.0 SF event @Vessel on Thursday night starting at 7pm. So walk over from Moscone after the conference to join us, Seesmic, Netvibes, BlueKiwi, Yoono, AsAnAngel, Qipit, DreamFace, ividence, /community, PupInk and Hip Hip Hip.

The second edition of RailsCamp in the city of lights is happening next Saturday, March 7th. We’ll be meeting at the Sun Customer Briefing Center, 42 avenue d’Iéna, Paris 16th. As we develop mainly in Ruby/RoR, we’re glad to be contributing to this year’s event by providing a great new logo. Let us know what you think of it!

Also, remember that we have a few positions available, so if you’re looking for a challenge, track down Florent or myself at the event. We hope to see you there.

We are pleased to announce that Silentale has been selected to present in front of a great panel of judges at LeWeb08. The conference will be taking place in Paris on December 9 and 10. 30 contestants will be presenting and the top 3 startups will then have the chance to present on the main stage. This will be a great opportunity for the winners to get some real time feedback from 1,500 people, including potential users, partners and investors.

If you’re planning on attending the event, then mark your calendar to come and listen in, as it will be Silentale’s first public presentation.

If you’re unable to attend, please feel free to contact me during or after the conference. And as usual, use twitter, SMS (+33672014787), Skype or email as me as a last resort.

Lastly, if you want to be one of the first to use Silentale, visit www.silentale.com to get an invitation, or reach out to us during the conference; Nicolas Fouché and myself will be there.

•••

The 30 companies that have been selected for the 2008 Start-up Competition are:

1. 2Win-Solutions – FRANCE
2. 3scale networks S. L. – SPAIN
3. Apture – USA
4. Box.net, Inc. – USA
5. Brozengo SA – FRANCE
6. Charge Ventures – Malta
7. Cmune – CHINA
8. ConTrust – ISRAEL
9. DoctorSIM – SPAIN
10. Edicy – ESTONIA
11. Haploid – FRANCE
12. IZI-collecte – FRANCE
13. Kaltura – USA
14. MyID.is Certified – FRANCE
15. Nimbuzz – NETHERLANDS
16. Popego Inc. – USA
17. Producteev Inc. – USA
18. Publing – FRANCE
19. Radionomy – BELGIUM
20. Samedi GmbH – GERMANY
21. ShoutEm Ltd. – CROATIA
22. Silentale – FRANCE
23. SquareClock – FRANCE
24. Tellmewhere – FRANCE
25. Trendiction – LUXEMBURG
26. Viewdle, Inc – UKRAIN
27. Webnode.com – CZECH REPUBLIC
28. Zavedenia.com – BULGARIA
29. Zipipop Ltd (Zipiko) – FINLAND
30. Zoover Holiday Reviews – NETHERLANDS

The judges will be:

• Ola Ahlvahrsson – Result
• Roberto Bonanzinga – Balderton Capital
• Mike Butcher – TechCrunchUK
• Laurent Chiozotto – Sun Microsystems
• Julien Codorniou – Microsoft
• Don Dodge – Microsoft
• David Hornik –August Capital
• Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet – Price Minister
• Simon Levene – Accel Partners
• Om Malik – GigaOM
• Dave McClure – 500Hats
• Freddy Mini – Netvibes
• Marc Samwer – European Founders Fund
• Axel Schmiegelow – Sevenload
• Gary Shainberg – British Telecom
• Megan Smith – Google
• Pascal Thomas – Orange
• Martin Varsavsky – FON