Months after Webex's PCNow, Citrix is about to launch a Mac and iPhone version of its remote access PC service
GoToMyPC is finally catching up to remote desktop service rival PCNow by Cisco/Webex.
Last week I met with Citrix Online’s general manager Bernardo de Albergaria at the Synergy conference in Las Vegas, where he showed the beta version of the GoToMyPC service for Mac.
And no, it will not be called GoToMyMac!
“I don’t think Mac users will mind our original name,” jokes De Albergaria.
The Santa Barbara, Calif.-independent division of Citrix also confirmed it is working on an iPhone version, as well as other platforms (perhaps Google’s Android).
“We’re working on an iPhone and other platforms. We have to make sure we do it with a great user experience in mind, and not because everybody is doing it. A lot of people are doing it just to say I have an iPhone app and put a “smack” on their homepage and it becomes the main value proposition versus what the product is. So we’ll have an iPhone application of our products whenever we are able to develop a great user experience,” added Albergaria.
Expect to see both the Mac and iPhone apps coming up this year, still 2-years after PCNow!
MotherApp creates native mobile phone applications from Web sites
Looking for a recession proof business? Try mobile applications, and more specifically for the Apple iPhone.
In just a little more than 9 months, Apple will serve the one-billionth iPhone application from its App Store.
A gold rush that left many companies on the starting blocks, incapable of building their own application, either because of a lack of expertise in Objective-C – the computer language used to develop iPhone applications – or of available iPhone developers.
The Hong-Kong base 7-people startup offers a an automated service that will take any Web application and turn it into a native app for the iPhone, Google Android and/or Windows Mobile devices.
Support for the Blackberry is coming in July and in September for Symbian/Nokia.
All you need is a web site to build a iPhone app!
“MotherApp is a kind of compiler and it’s a 2 step process. First you develop a Web site using our HTML standard that includes some proprietary extensions to access the mobile phones special hardware, like the GPS radio or the camera. Then send us a link to the Web site and a day or two later, we send back the native application for any or all of the supported mobile platforms,” explains Ken Law, one of the three co-founders and an ex-Googler (pre-IPO) that I first met earlier this month at the Web 2.0 Expo conference.
A MotherApp application costs $1,000 per mobile platform.
The biggest stumbling block in MotherApp service is that customers have not access to the native mobile application source code. “But they can modify it as much as they want for 6-months for free and we are thinking of a business model where companies would pay a $99 a month subscription for example which will let them change their applications as much a they want,” responds Ken.
The other limitation of MotherApp’s technology is the kind of applications that MotherApp can actually “compile.”
“We are focused on client-server applications, like the Facebook, Youtube or LinkedIn apps. And they can be pretty complex like OpenRice, the Yelp of Hong-Kong. But we can not handle “fancy” applications like video games,” confides Law.
Although MotherApp raised an Angel round from Googlers, the startup is mostly self-funded by the 4 wealthy ex-Googlers co-founders and is already profitable.
The company is looking to expand in Silicon Valley, seeking to partner with Web developers with expertise in developing Web sites and gadgets/widgets and looking to offer mobile apps as well, and Web 2.0 companies wanting to turn their web site into native mobile applications.
For Law, MotherApp’s main competitor is open source development tool PhoneGap.
“The PhoneGap is embedding a browser inside the native application. So instead of learning Objective-C, you can use Web standards like AJAX and CSS. But it’s not a true iPhone app and you can not use the camera or access the device’s file-system for example,” warns Law.
Here’s a video excerpt of my conversation with Law in a Mountain View, Calif.-cafe:
H-P is testing Google's Android as a future system for its computers, netbooks and smartphones, confirms H-P's marketing executive, Satjuv Chahil.
This evening, H-P confirmed to TechPulse360 that it is looking at Google’s Android to power its future PCs and smartphones.
Currently, the world’s largest PC maker offers Windows and Linux
on its PCs, laptops and netbooks and runs Windows Mobile on its line of handhelds and smartphones.
“As the world’s leading computer company, we want to understand all the OS choices in the marketplace that may be used by its competitors or potentially even deployed by us to meet customer needs,” confirms Satjiv Chahil, the senior vice president of global marketing for HP’s Personal Systems Group.
Google’s Android operating system could first appear in H-P’s smartphones, instead of Windows Mobile; a product line that so far has gain little traction in the marketplace.
“So we’re studying Android’s capabilities for potential use in the computer and communications industries,” adds Chahil.
Openmoko is not a cell phone, it's a development platform
The maker of the world’s first totally open mobile phone has a long way to go before it can compete with Apple, RIM or Nokia.
At a special session during the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) today in San Jose, Calif., Openmoko CEO Sean Moss-Pultz discussed how developers could use its FreeRunner to create mobile products.
The device is targeted at developers – not consumers – who then can totally change everything, from its physical aspect and hardware components to the operating system, installing Google Android or Debian Linux, for example.
The ultimate open source smartphone: Openmoko+Google Android
“If you want to write applications, buy an iPhone. But if you want to transform the way the physical product looks, then buy a FreeRunner,” said Moss-Pultz. “I don’t think Apple will let you resell their products with a different operator, with a different market, with a different software stack. But we can.”
Moss-Pultz also argued that at $299 (the show’s special for 30 days), the FreeRunner is unbelievably cheap. “It has all the things you will find on a $3,000 development board [...] You have all the major RF components you want to do real development.”
Openmoko doesn’t do 3G because of “monstrous patents issues”
“The moment we try to do a design with 3G, the cost of this device goes up by $200. And then you have serious issues with documentation, etc.
So we decided that for the first version – to get this concept out there – the free networks like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth were more important for development early on than 3G.
Our stand on 3G is that it is something that at some point we will make. But really, we use this device first to see what markets are interesting out there. And then based on those markets, someone will come back to us and say “I want to place an order for 50,000 of these things with 3G.” And we’ll make it.
That would be for a specific project that they would not care about the openness of the mobile part.”
Here’s a video excerpt of Moss-Pultz presentation at ESC’09:
Google launches its own private venture capital fund
It’s a great time to start a… venture fund!
And Google’s new venture capital fund could fill the void left by some of the VCs that went under during this downturn.
Announced last night, Google Ventures will focus it’s first $100 million on early stage startups across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care, etc.
“If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the “next big thing,” and we’ll be working hard to find them,” said Google Ventures managing partners, Rich Miner (co-founder of Android) and Bill Maris.
Google’s own VC arm will be able to invest amounts ranging from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars.
Last piece of advice before you email your business plan or presentation: limit it to no more than 20 slides or three type-written pages!
Mobile applications are all the rage, but one unanswered question is whether apps creators will go for the write-once, run anywhere platforms now being developed.
The argument for a single platform sounds good on paper. Let the platform, not the app writer, adapt the application to the differing operating systems (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Research In Motion, Symbian) that run today’s mobile phones.
A new version of Rhomobile's platform now supports Google's Android
But some developers – particularly larger ones with more resources – say they have no intention of using them. In house developers know how to separate the core logic of the app from the interface that needs to change phone to phone.
The industry may come closer to answering the question with the release on Tuesday the latest version of Rhomobile’s open-sourced Rhodes 1.0 framework. The new version adds support for Google’s Android software.
“As a web and mobile app developer, I was attracted to the idea of leveraging our web development skills to build natively running applications,” Michael Morris, CEO of Carry The Day, said in a press release. Carry The Day developed two Rhodes-based mobile apps.
Apple’s iPhone App Store is a relatively orderly place, like the rest of iTunes.
But with handset makers, mobile carriers and operating software providers, such as Google and Microsoft, all building app stores of their own – mobile applications elsewhere are heading toward a cornucopia of confusion.
Too many app stores on the way
In other words, get ready for app-store chaos.
The problem comes down to this: too much choice. Where will the buyer of a phone running the Android software from Google turn to find applications? Should she look on Google, on the Web site of her service provider or on the Internet page of her handset maker - say Samsung or Motorola?
All have stores. All will have apps. All will want the dribble of revenue apps can bring.
“It’s clear everybody wants to provide an app store,” says Max Mancini, senior director of platform and mobile at eBay. As to the chaos? “It’s probably just ready to begin.”
Eventually, the parties will get together and settle on umbrella app stores for each operating system or handset design, suggests Mancini. “They will have to combine into one store,” he said during an interview at the 2009 Wireless Innovations conference in Silicon Valley.
But until then, Apple’s App Store is going to look singularly calm – all 25,000 applications.
The thought that Apple’s venerable position in the smartphone market could erode in as little as three years is hard to fathom.
But consider this. In a relatively short period of time there will scores of phones on the market running Google’s Android software. They will feature a variety of price points and features – and they will come from a broad mix of carriers.
The soon to be released G2 phone running Android software
At the same time, there will be one, or maybe two, iPhones. And in the U.S., only one wireless operator sells the device today.
“Google wins hands down,” says Daniel Odio, co-founder of the mobile applications development company PointAbout. “There’s going to be hundreds of manufacturers making phones.”
That degree of use will help improve the Android software. It could be an uphill fight.
Odio estimates it will take only two to three years for Android’s volumes to pass the iPhone’s. Already companies such as Samsung, Motorola and HTC are working on or have developed models.
Obviously, Apple isn’t resting on its success. The company has sold 17 million iPhones since the product was launched in June 2007, 13.7 million last year alone. And it announced on Tuesday that the iPhone now sells in 80 countries, expanding its worldwide presence.
The company at the same time said its App Store has 25,000 third-party applications and so far has distributed more than 800 million downloads. Android has a long way to go to catch up.
Still, Android appears ready to benefit from a market strategy more akin to that of Microsoft’s Windows than Apple’s Macintosh. Microsoft sold Windows to a variety of manufacturers, who went out and built PCs with it at their core. Volumes went through the roof.
Apple is the only Macintosh maker today and though its computers are gaining share, they badly trail Windows machines in market share.
The Amazon Kindle comes to the iPhone... for free!
Amazon released today a free ebook reader application for the iPhone and iPod touch.
The Kindle for iPhone can download and read any books released for the Kindle.
The free app includes Amazon’s Whispersync technology which allows to seamlessly switch back and forth between an actual Kindle and the iPhone while keeping your bookmarks and the reading location where you stopped at.
The Kindle App can not access the Kindle Store!
However, there is currently no way to buy and browse new ebooks from within the application. Instead, you’ll have to go to the Amazon Kindle Store with the iPhone web browser, buy a book, which then shows up on the iPhone.
Amazon confirmed that it will support other devices in the future, probably Google’s Android phones, as well as most of the large screen smartphones.
Although the Kindle app cannibalizes the sale of the $359 Kindle 2 ebook reader, Amazon hopes it will help boost the sale of ebooks to compensate the loss.
The Kindle app release may also signal the beginning of the end for the many publishers that have developed an ebook reader application for the iPhone like eReader or Stanza.
The rumors are flying fast and furiously. Asus is said to be working on an inexpensive netbook running Google’s Android software for smart phones.
Android, apparently coming to a netbook near you
Other manufacturers are believed to be dipping their toes in the same water.
Well, Google came as close as possible to verifying the computing industry’s nascent love affair with Android on Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.
It will drive netbooks, said Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research. In fact, Hewlett-Packard is one such computer maker working with Android now, he said.
The company wants to build netbooks are very low prices, Eustace told investors during a late afternoon presentation.
Fueling the interest is the growing number of Android devices presently under development. “We have a healthy ecosystem in the sense that lots of devices are coming out,” he said, referring to the numerous smart phones expected this year.
Can anyone @IBM fix the WiFi network at #IOD11 ? It's been terrible for the past 2 days and everybody I talked just can't stand it anymore 6 months ago
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