July 2011 Archives

Simplexo claims to have invented a tool that allows you to use your mobile to search your desktop computer. So if you're crawling up the west coast main line and suddenly remember a document you need, you can scan the office computer for it with your mobile.

Is that right? You'll have to ask Simplexo. All they've told me is that their 'SearchYourDesktop' web app for smartphones is a handy tool for businessmen and woman on the move.

If so, then it is the first mobile search application that enables you to remotely search and access files on your desktop. It can search for information on social media services and email accounts, from a mobile device.

The application can be used on a wide range of devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry 6, with further device support planned in the future.

Once installed on your home or work PC, 'SearchYourDesktop' allows users to find files such as documents, presentations, photos and media files.

You can create playlists for remote playing of music. It also concurrently searches the web, leading social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In, and securely connects to Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers. Results are presented in a single 'unified search' interface.

Check out their site for more information on 'SearchYourDesktop'.

We're going to have to review this and see if it lives up to its billing!

Photo courtesy: Hemera Technologies/ThinkStock

GetTaxi, a mobile app that helps you arrange a cab, could live up to its name...

If it works successfully, its developers claim it could save Londoners a collective £100m on their taxi bills. Which is great for the customers, but it sounds like bad news for the taxi industry.

Actually, it's not that bad, as it will only affect the traditional taxi account services. From my experience (as a one time cab operator) these taxi accounts are the most abused corporate expenses ever; one of the great unreported scandals of the NHS is the way its staff used taxi accounts unchecked.

GetTaxi launched its GPS based taxi ordering and dispatch service earlier this week, so that businesses can order black cabs online.

The personalised company web portal and mobile app will help them replace their accounts and get the same service at a fraction of the cost.

So the maker says, anyway.

Businesses spent £100 million last year with the major account services, most of which was wasted on admin fees and handling charges to pay for expensive over-resourced operations centres, argues Neal Fullman, CEO of GetTaxi.

"Our GPS technology avoids having a large staff base and call centres, so we are able to pass massive savings onto our business clients," says Fullman.

GetTaxi allows Smartphone users (iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia) to order a taxi at the tap of a button on their mobile device or via a web interface.

The GetTaxi mobile app geographically locates the passenger via GPS and issues their request to the closest available taxis via GetTaxi's special driver units.

Once the booking has been accepted by the driver, a confirmation notification is sent to the passenger containing the driver's photo, personal and vehicle details, estimated time of arrival and a Google Map showing their real-time progress to the pickup address.

Sheffield-based Wandisco has launched an app store for cloud applications. Sadly, they eschewed any Yorkshire themed names - Appen-It-Does was my suggestion - for a more corporate sound name befitting an enterprise IT supplier.

So uberApps it is, then. As an application life cycle management  (ALM) company, WANdisco wants to offer developers a portal to integrate best-of-breed ALM technologies into their software projects.

Wandisco's CEO David Richards says its like iTunes, only for corporate applications. Like an itune purchase, it can be bought and installed seamlessly. Unlike any other impulse purchase, such as an iTune, a PC or a local area network, you can't buy it and bypass the jobsworths in the IT department.

"They way people buy software has changed massively," says Richards. "They expect to buy it and install it without any trouble. This is how software should have been 10 years ago."

WANdisco will provide a software development kit (SDK) for firms writing third-party applications themselves, and applications in uberApps can be reviewed and rated by other uberApps users.

Long product evaluations, never ending projects and impossible learning curves could be consigned to history, says Richards.

UberSVN, Wandisco's source code management system, is based on its enterprise Subversion package, which was built using Apache Foundation's Subversion open-source software.

O2 Media has launched a scannable smartphone discount voucher campaign for the sandwich chain Subway, using O2 More's location-based texting service 'You Are Here'.

Data breaching. They try to make it sound vaguely erotic don't they?

The phrase conjures up images of Colin Firth, striding purposefully through a crowd of swooning bonnets, his muscular thighs throbbing through his data breaches. Phwooar...

And yet, and yet. For some reason, it's still terribly hard to get people interested in security.

Everyone, from Sony to Citigroup, has been compromised recently. Sources say nine in 10 companies will have been penetrated and had their assets sniffed by some intruding agent. It shouldn't be allowed!

But what can the IT security expert do?

How do you make users aware of the types of breach?

How do you quantify the types of damage (loss of customers, loss of reputation, litigation over the breach, the inability to gain new customers, loss of shareholder value - I'm sure you can think of more) to exemplify to the user the seriousness of a breach?

What are the precautions that should be taken? And who needs to be reminded that each precaution is their responsibility? How does a CIO/security chief get the message home, without boring the pants off the users?

How do you make sure you can authenticate, without suffocating?

How does the risk vary as you go upscale, from mum and pop's shop to the multinational?

How, then, can stronger forms of authentication help make organizations more secure, in sectors from banking to national identity?

What innovative solutions are companies deploying to combat cyber attacks?

And how can they keep up with the pace of change as hackers develop ever more sophisticated methods?

Come on security experts. How do we get the users engaged? If we don't, none of your security measures will work. No matter how clever they are!

Answers in a reply box (see below) please!

Photo courtesy: ThinkStock

There are some times when it's OK for a man to cry. One of them is when he wakes up and suddenly realises he's married to Janet Street-Porter.

It's also OK to cry, I found out the other day, when you discover that your new MacBook Pro isn't as cool as you thought it would be.

What they don't tell you when you buy any PC or a Mac is that no matter how many USB they've managed to cram onto it, it won't be enough. You can never get enough USBs. And they're too blimming slow too.

I'm starting to hate my Macbook Pro. OK, it looks cool but it doesn't connect very well.

There's never room to plug more than one USB key in at a time. Even if you have a stick thin USK key, it's impossible to fit two into your machine alongside each other. These days, all memory sticks have to be creatively designed, so they're the shape of a guitar or a Swiss army knife; one of my most frequently used USB keys is the Flip cam, where the USB comes attached to a video camera.

So, the Trulink 4 Superspeed hub sounds incredibly promising. It's a Ronseal sort of a product; doing exactly what it says on the tin. It gives you four more ports, all nicely spaced apart, that run at super high speeds.

The USB 3.0 promises higher transfer rates (up to a theoretical 4.8Gbps), new power management features and more bus power. So more power-hungry devices can be bus powered. Meanwhile, battery powered devices that previously used bus power to get charged can get zapped a lot quicker.

Even if you don't use multiple USB 3.0 hard disks, having four ports on your desk is far better than having one or two tucked away on the rear panel of your PC. If you don't have a USB 3.0 kit don't panic; the standard is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, so you can still hook up your old peripherals.

Sorted! You'll never have to clamber under a desk again!

Resellers can source these through CablesToGo.

Integration specialist dhc has been nominated for the Reseller of the Year category of the Software Satisfaction Awards.

The Surrey based service provider uses Access Dimensions for finance management, Microsoft Dynamics for CRM and the collaboration tool Microsoft SharePoint.

The Royal Army Medical Corps in nearby Camberley in Surrey nominated the reseller after a successful accounting and finace management project at its regimental HQ.

"dhc's consultation was exceptional, the dhc project team understood our requirements quickly and the outline of the project was delivered in less than 24 hours," said the Army's financial director, Abby DuBaree.

Perhaps now the Ministry of Defence will spend our tax pounds ever more wisely than they do now.

We keep coming across companies that are short of staff and too busy to go recruiting.

Mind Candy, for example, is arguably one of the best companies to work for in Britain. This is the games developer that created Moshi Monsters, a kids social networking site with 50 million users. Venture capitalists love them, especially since they moved from south London to Shoreditch. The company has been valued at £200 million and its conquering everything in its path. It is always exciting to work for companies in their ascendancy.

Or so I'm told...

(I hope they don't go all corporate, like Woolwich Arsenal did when they crossed the river. Next thing you know, they'll have celebrity fans like Piers Morgan and Jon Bernstein.)

Anyway, Mind Candy can't get enough programmers and sales people and story boarders to help them satisfy demand so their first priority is a human resources boss.

Two days after meeting Moshi Monsters, we interviewed another furiously growing start up. (Oh, what's their blimming name? It'll come to me in a minute). Like Mind Candy, they need more sales people and developers to help them tap in all the open goals that are being constantly presented to them. Again, the game they're playing is far too frantic for them to stop and allow fresh legs onto the field.

It was a mobile start up based in Oxford Street, with US offices. No hang on, wasn't that the booming cloud computing outfit that was looking for a CTO? Keep coming back to this column, as I'm sure I'll remember in a minute. They're both recruiting, anyway.

But the best opportunity, surely, has to be this one.

Certero, which has been described as Britain's power and software asset management company is embarking on a channel recruitment drive.

Certero's Software Metering automates complex processes and creates a real time Effective Licence Position (ELP). Tidying up your company's software licensing can be every bit as satisfying as wiping out an invasion of alien or passing a Moshi Monster test.

Certero doesn't stop there.

There's also the Windows Self Service Password Manager, which saves you a fortune on support calls. ("Hello support? The post-it note fell off my computer and now I don't know my password.")

Then there's the new PC Power Management system that's selling like Moshi Monsters. It saves companies a fortune by powering down their PCs. So it has the twin benefits of saving on the power bill and keeping global warming at bay. Every time you switch off your PC, the sea goes down another inch.

John Lunt, Certero's MD, promises that new recruits will benefit from fresh thinking and lavish attention as the company helps them exploit the opportunities. "There is significant opportunity in the UK for resellers to grow their business through offering its leading new-age PC Power Management and SAM solutions," he says.

Back of the net!

Ditlev Bredahl CEO from OnApp has confessed to this column that cloud computing could actually cost you more money that managing your hosted system. That's a hell of an admission from a company that helps hosting companies compete with Amazon's cloud service offering. Is he serious?

Sure, if you're dealing with a host, you might spend £800 on servers and load balancers, while the cloud service will only cost £100.

Granted, a cloud service will save you from having to duplicate your hardware and software.  And yes, cloud services will cope with any spikes in demand without breaking the bank.

And yet, and yet. It could actually be cheaper if you plan things carefully.

Why? Because when you  buy a cloud service from say, Amazon, the actual cost per gigabyte is far more expensive than you'd pay if you own your own machines.

"If you weigh up the cost per gigabyte of every unit of RAM, storage, CPU and bandwidth, it's actually more expensive, using a cloud service," says Bredahl. An astonishing admission for a man whose company helps other companies with their hosting arrangements.

All you have to do to save money, he says, is sit down with a spreadsheet and calculate, with absolutely faultless predictions, exactly how much of any of these resources you are going to need. If you estimate any of these variables wrongly, however, all your savings are lost.

You have two chances of getting these predictions right. Slim Chance and No Chance. And, in the words of Don King, Slim's not in town right now.

Amazingly, this spreadsheet prediction system is used by Amazon when you initially buy a cloud service from it. It's a bit like filling out one of those complicated football betting slips in the bookies' on Saturday morning. Nobody ever wins, because it's impossible to predict so many games correctly.

OnApp's mission is to make it easier for clients, by taking out the long term bets and taking the fiddly complicated processes out of the arrangement.

"We're helping the hosting companies that are losing business to Amazon," says Bredahl.  

'Mobile app 'EthOS' launched that allows brand owners to get inside consumers' pockets' says a headline in a press release this morning.

We don't know about you, but the idea of invasive, pushing marketeers colonising our privacy, to sell their brands, horrifies this column.

Do you agree? Should mobile marketers take a more subtle approach?

Answers on a brick, through the window, in a box of Milk Tray left by our bedside after you've broken into my house, or the comments section below, please.

Britain's mobile users think mobile ads are intrusive and tend to ignore them, says a new study by YouGov.

Let's put that another way. Somebody actually spent money paying YouGov to conduct a study of the bleeding obvious.

Of course we hate mobile marketers. They're like charity muggers, Jehovah's Witnesses and British Gas phone canvassers, all compressed and integrated into your handset.

Here, for what it's worth, are the details of the study.

We're not even going to bother reading it, so excuse us if there's any typos. Here we go, Control A, control X, control V....

The majority of smartphone users questioned (79%) believe that ads are intrusive. In addition to this only 5% think mobile ads are a good idea and welcome them. But most worryingly for advertisers is the general apathy smartphone users have toward ads, with the vast majority completely ignoring any kind of placement - 88% ignore ads on applications and 86% have ignored placements on the mobile internet.

Awareness of advertising on smartphones in the last three months, however, is high. Apple iPhone users and O2 and 3 customers are most likely to have seen ads - 46% of Apple users, 42% of O2 customers and 40% of 3 customers have received ad messages of some sort.

Preferred mobile ad formats

For smartphone users in particular, basic banners remain the most recognised formats -87% see them while browsing the mobile internet, and 80% while using apps. When browsing, recommended links to search (63%), rollover banners (51%), and special offers (47%), attract the most attention. While using apps it is sponsored apps and games (45%), recommendations linked to apps (44%) and a full screen ad before an app is activated (38%) that are the next most recognised by smartphone users.

Embedding ads into applications is the most effective way to get messages to smartphone users - with 33% of respondents recognising placements every time they use an app, and 19% recalling ads on apps they use daily. Not surprisingly, Apple and HTC users are most likely to have been reached given their high use of apps.

Text speak

Unsolicited text messaging, along with advertising on apps, is one of the main types of advertising or marketing smartphone owners have remembered receiving in the past three months, however they are not acted on by respondents.  It is evenly high across operators - 64% of Orange, 57% of O2, and 56% of T-Mobile and the same proportion of Vodafone users have all received unsolicited texts from advertisers in the last three months. Only 33% of 3 customers have received unwelcome text messages. Despite the proportions of respondents who remember receiving unsolicited texts, 79% say that they generally receive these less often than once a month. When asked how they deal with these messages, 53% state that they ignore the message and delete it.

Active responses by smartphone users to ads remain very low. Few respondents click on a link in an ad - 6% from a text, 6% from an email, 4% from the mobile internet, 3% from an app, and 2% via an instant message. Even fewer users have bought a product or service as a result of advertising - 3% from a trusted text and 1% from advertising on an app. However some 27% of respondents agree that they would welcome more advertising if it offered money off deals or special offers. 21% agree that they do not mind ads as long as they are relevant to them.

"On the face of it, it looks very bleak indeed for mobile advertising with high consumer awareness, but equally high resentment, apathy and inaction," says Adele Gritten, Head of Media Consulting at YouGov. "But the research shows that mobile ads really can provide brands with an effective vehicle to engage directly with audiences and drive actions.

"Marketers need to harness the higher level of personal engagement that mobile users have with their handsets to provide them with something truly unique, relevant and interesting. In particular money off deals and special offers will appeal to consumers. Ad treatments must be more relevant and personal, and advertisers have to stop hoping that spam volume alone will drive response rates."

For a global company selling product and services across multiple currency zones, it is only to be expected to see pricing differences advertised as a result of currency fluctuations, according to IrishDev.com. 

Despite this, says IrishDev, European customers of salesforce.com might be a little surprised to learn that they are being charged anywhere between 37% and 51% more than their peers in the US and UK.

Now come on, let's not be judgemental. I'm sure they have a good reason; perhaps they feel sorry for us...

Blimey, we just don't like innovators any more, do we?

You can read the whole article, and see some of the actual price comparisons here.

I'm livid!

Nearly a decade ago, I devised an idea that would make recycling fun. The scheme would boost recycling rates, save money for the councils (possibly even the taxpayer!) and give people the chance to win prizes.

It would turn rubbish from a cost into a form of revenue.

I wrote to every council in the country, so see if they were initially interested in the idea. Not a single council replied to my letters. Well one did, a man from Birmingham City Council wrote to say thanks but no thanks.

I wrote to my MP, Ed Davey. He wrote a polite letter saying it was interesting, but he was not interested. I tried phoning politicians on the radio and even pitched the idea, on air, to the leader of the Greens on LBC.

No interest whatsoever.

Now, I've discovered that green advocacy outfit Recyclebank is getting massive interest in its new idea to 'Gamify' recycling.

Hang on, that's my idea? How come everyone ignored me, but when an American company comes along and gives it a silly name, the councils all roll over?

Their press release doesn't really explain how they do it, but apparently their gamification techniques are massively raising awareness of recycling.

"We've already started implementing some of the lessons we've learned to create the best possible experience for our members and ensure that our future initiatives make the biggest impact on the environment," gloated Javier Flaim, SVP of global marketing at Recyclebank.

Oh well. Good luck with that, mate. I'm not jealous at all.

Photo courtesy Jupiterimages

As any readers of CityAm know, the FSA says all fixed line AND mobile calls have to be recorded.

If all Freddie Goodwin's mobile phone conversations are not available for inspection by the auditors, then HBoS's may be forced to hand its banking license back! In theory anyway.

The regulations became enforceable for all mobile communications in November.

As a result CIOs across the City are having kittens. Good.They get paid enough money, they should start earning it for a change.

Still you have to feel sorry for them because the explosion of iPhones, Blackberries and Androids has made this job a nightmare.

And let's not forget tablets. We all know how much fund managers and options traders love their tablets! Ahem.

Mobile operator Tru is hosting an event in The Square Mile on July 13th, that should help CIOs cope with this logistical nightmare.

It has teamed up with Obsidian Wireless, which specialises in mobile voice and data recording, to offer an app-less solution for the banks and the brokers for the City.

We'll be there. Mind you, if anyone's left it until July 13th to start thinking about their mobile recording, then they'll need a miracle. Let's hope Tru and Obsidian can provide it.