Great Innovation is Global

I'm excited - really excited - to have made the move to the Citrix Startup Accelerator from Citrix Labs. So much so that I've moved my family from Sydney to Silicon Valley to make this happen. (We're settling in nicely, thanks.)

Under the circumstance, it shouldn't be a surprise that I think great innovation needs a global focus, which is why the Citrix Global Challenge is critically important for the Startup Accelerator. To kick this off I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the types of technologies and directions that are most interesting for the Startup Accelerator.

The list on the site talks about trends like 'mobile', 'cloud' and 'consumerization'. These are somewhat broad and the flavor of the moment, indeed, most of the breakout companies for the last few years could be described using these terms. To improve clarity I'd like to give an indication of one investment sweet-spot, what I call 'Alternative futures of the desktop.' Citrix has long pioneered alternative desktop visions, and is the leader in Virtual Computing - so new ways to solve the desktop problem are particularly interesting.

Primadesk is our first Startup Accelerator investment. Their vision is to let you "Search, manage and backup your personal cloud data with one simple interface no matter what device you use."

The challenge is that we have too many options for personal data in the cloud.I use Gmail for personal email, but also have old accounts on Hotmail and Yahoo. I have documents in many services ranging from files on the Mac, Google docs, Simplenote, Evernote, and half a dozen others. My backups are a mixed combination of Mozy, S3 (Jungledisk), and my home NAS. The founder of Primadesk recognized that these all act as silos, solving many individual problems well, but leaving severe compatibility gaps.

Primadesk simplifies access to your distributed personal digital assets. Their software gives you a single view of all those silos, allowing you to; search across all your documents and mail; backup from one service to another; drag and drop photos from one site to another. This plays into on of the themes where Citrix has long led: new desktop possibilities, new ways to provide the desktop experience.

If your startup has new approaches to desktop computing, to the use of mobile, or emerging use cases, we'd love to hear from you as we call for Citrix Global Challenge applications in Silicon Valley, Boston, Cambridge, Bangalore, and Sydney.

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Behavioral Economics and Banking - (Tech Review)

"There was a designer somewhere in the process who has thought about every single touch point, every single aspect, and has just made every single moment as valid, as graceful, as appropriate, as possible," he says. BankSimple is due to launch this year.

To design the experience, they looked for insights from behavioral economics, which relies on psychology to understand economic decisions. For instance, it's easier to get people to try something if they have to opt out of it rather than opt in. The team applied this insight to a feature of the bank that allows people to set aside funds toward a particular goal; it's not a separate account, just a line highlighted on the screen with a label like "Hawaii trip" or "new laptop." To encourage customers to try the feature, BankSimple starts them with the goal of saving $1,000 in an emergency fund.

via technologyreview.com

There is something magical about taking a different tack on an existing problem. This sounds very appealing, but I wonder what happens to the user enthusiasm the first time all that hidden complexity surfaces in a SNAFU.

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The disposable Android - Securing All Androids Proves Tricky - Technology Review

Fixing phones properly requires hardware makers to create their own updates incorporating Google's fix; they test those updates and pass them on to carriers, who also test the fixes before pushing them out to customers. Apps for Android devices, including ones developed by Google, could be updated through the Android Market, but system software has to be updated through the carrier's channel.

via technologyreview.com

Android is a great model for adoption, but less so as these complex software artifacts become broadly spread, and poorly maintained.

On the other hand ... for the handset manufacturers, this is a not a completely bad thing -- they'd likely prefer that you throw it away and get a new one.

Indeed, for many people, it will be easier to discard the current phone, and purchase a new one without the limitation. Today this is relatively expensive -- tomorrow much less so. A cheap, disposable access point. Interesting times.

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Mashing the table and the surface to get chatty coasters - Tech Review article

Coaster to coaster: Jack Weedon demonstrates his communicative beer coasters with Sara Smith, another student from Newcastle University’s Culture Lab.
Credit: Newcastle University

Communications

Let Your Coaster Do the Talking

An interactive surface encourages conversation by letting coasters communicate.

• Tuesday, December 7, 2010
• By Duncan Graham-Rowe

Once the hallmark of lonely barflies, playing with your beer coaster could actually help you socialize, thanks to a smart bar surface that brings ordinary coasters to life.

The coasters communicate by sending messages across the surface. The messages are meant to act as icebreakers between bar patrons, says Tom Bartindale, who invented the coasters with fellow postgraduate student Jack Weeden at Newcastle University's Culture Lab. "It's a starting point for an actual conversation," Bartindale says.

via technologyreview.com

Great thinking in this prototype around embedding smarts into specific context. Check out the full article at http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/26833/?nlid=3855&a=f

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Phones that Know Their Users by How They Walk - interesting

Smart Phones that Know Their Users by How They Walk

Biometric security is obtrusive--unless it's on all the time, analyzing your gait.

Your smart phone is a hideous liability that renders you increasingly vulnerable to a host of fraudulent activities...

The problem is that unlike your bank's website, you use your phone throughout the day, which makes tapping in a password over and over again so impractical that few users bother to lock their phones in this way. ...

For passive biometrics to work, the more measures of the "youness" of you they can gather, the better. ...

Gait analysis is a tried-and-true method of passive biometrics, your gait being a very individual and hard-to-imitate trait.

via technologyreview.com

I love this alternative 'context' based security for mobile devices.

It raises some interesting practical questions ... What happens on those rare occasions when one is actually doing some work, at a desk, for a couple of hours? Would you need to get up and walk to answer a call?

Would your doctor (or health insurance) insist that you use this?

Check out the original for more details. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25767/?nlid=3518

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Cybernetic body upgrades - iArm (via @nambor)

via iarm.de

Our shiny cybernetic future?
Does it run Windows?

Great piece by http://iarm.de

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Nice insight on telcos driving Andriod success (TechRepublic.com)

Google Android began with the greatest of intentions — freedom, openness, and quality software for all. However, freedom always comes with price, and often results in unintended consequences. With Android, one of the most important of those unintended consequences is now becoming clear as Google gets increasingly pragmatic about the smartphone market and less and less tied to its original ideals.

Here’s the dirty little secret about Android: After all the work Apple did to get AT&T to relinquish device control for the iPhone and all the great efforts Google made to get the FCC and the U.S. telecoms to agree to open access rules as part of the 700 MHz auction, Android is taking all of those gains and handing the power back to the telecoms.

via blogs.techrepublic.com.com

Good article from Jason Hiner, on Android is becoming a way for telcos to regain/retain carrier lock-in. Lovely illustration of market dynamics.

Worth a read: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=5855#

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