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A global initiative is offering investment of up to US$400,000 to entrepreneurs.
Running since December, the Citrix Startup Accelerator programme has just launched its first Global Challenge.

The IT multinational is seeking innovative business solutions using cloud computing from around the world. It is particularly interested in solutions combining cloud and mobile platforms.
John McIntyre, senior director, Citrix Startup Accelerator, told Prosperity: “We want people who are creating things you wouldn’t necessarily think of.
“Today’s start-up has to be somewhat enlightened. Not only should it create a good user experience, but it should also have some insights into human behaviour, and if it combines things together how will they change people’s behaviour. That’s how you end up with breakthroughs.”
The programme is targeting a dozen investments this year, with applications accepted until the end of May.
The seed money is invested as convertible debt. Winners will get space at Citrix’s centre in Silicon Valley for up to 18 months, access to its products and technologists, mentoring, networking opportunities and support for the next round of funding.

New research shows that more than three out of four (78 per cent) Irish workers are now working outside the office.
Forty six per cent of workers report using three or more of devices such as smartphones, laptops and iPads every day.

This is perhaps not surprising considering 97 per cent use these for everyday tasks such as banking and restaurant reservations.
According to the survey results from Citrix Systems Ireland, it seems Ireland has taken to mobile working with gusto. Almost four out of 10 say they are “much more” productive working outside the office. Six out of 10 say they are “just as” productive.
And we’re becoming a tech savvy bunch too. Four out of five of those who use personal devices for work purposes describe themselves as “do it yourself-ers”. This means they take care of their own IT needs rather than relying on the IT department to manage the device or install new apps.

3D4Medical is an Irish company who have been quietly and modestly attaining global dominance in a lucrative niche - that of digital images for the medical sector. Over the years they have been quietly ticking off some major achievements, including front covers for such heavyweight titles as Time, Newsweek and New Scientist. Examples can be viewed here - http://www.3d4medical.com/testimonials.html

According to John Moore of 3D4 Medical, ‘Our ethos has always been ‘make it the best!’. That, and always staying a little ahead of the curve. To that effect, we were early adapters to the emerging possibilities for smart phones, and our app division is now accounting for the majority of our global revenues.’
As a major endorsement for this ethos of quality, one of 3D4 Medical’s iPad apps has been chosen to feature on a new Worldwide Apple TV Advertisement. This is the Heartpro app - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/heart-pro/id393231526?mt=8

Moore says. ‘Considering this was chosen from over 400,000 apps, we are, to say the least, quietly satisfied!’ As a casual aside, Moore added: ‘Actually, the President of Apple’s iPad publicly stated that 3D4Medical develops the “best ever apps”.’ This was news to us at Prosperity – an Irish app getting this kind of endorsement? We checked . . http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/36084/best-ipad-apps-ipad-boss
3D4Medical was founded in Ireland in 2005, and in 2009 they set up offices in Silicon Valley. They employ 22 people world wide and now have outsourcing facilities in the USA, Ukraine, Thailand, Poland and Bulgaria.
John Moore has recently returned from overseeing the founding of the US office, and he is now expanding their Dublin base.
Recalling the early days, he says: ‘They were tough days back in 2005, but we kept at it. I just had to make it work – considering I had mortgaged the house my wife would have killed me otherwise!’

Rural areas are set to benefit from increased broadband speeds by 2012 after the National Broadband Scheme was successfully completed and we are now at 99% coverage including every district in the country

The €223 million Scheme, provided by 3, has successfully brought a broadband service to over 1,000 areas across the country that were previously without any service and we have thus met the EU target for broadband availability.

According to Communications Minister, Eamon Ryan: “This is truly ‘access all areas for broadband’. Now that we have this base, there is no limit to the possibility.”

Broadband provider 3 has indicated that speeds of 40 Mbps are achievable by end 2011.

You can see Robert Finnegan, head of 3 mobile, talking about the successful completion of this scheme below.

An iPhone app developed in Ireland has been awarded a WSA World Summit Mobile Content Award this week in Abu Dhabi.
Lisa Domican, a mother of two children with autism, travelled halfway across the world to collect the award for the Grace App for Autism which was recognised alongside apps like he Guardian, Marks & Spencer and Angry Birds.

Organised by the International Center for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg, the World Summit Award Mobile is a global initiative within the framework of, and in cooperation with, the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in collaboration with UNESCO, UNIDO and UN GAID. The WSA-mobile is the only ICT event worldwide, which reaches the mobile community in over 160 countries and is able to promote the best mobile content and innovative applications out of this huge selection.
Developed by well-known app developer Steve Troughton-Smith, with input from Domican its creator, the app was inspired by the needs of Domican’s daughter Grace.
The Grace App for Autism helps autistic and other special needs children to communicate effectively, by building semantic sequences from relevant images to form sentences.

The WSA World Summit jury found: “Grace serves as a superb example of real-life benefits that only mobile technologies can bring to enhance the learning process.” It also said that “the application’s grounding in real-life experience, its usability, and simplicity and, at the same time, customization/personalization features are what make Grace an excellent example of mobile technologies’ contribution to the learning process, one for others to emulate.”
Domican explains that before the Grace App for Autism was developed she had pictures Grace used to communicate loaded onto the photo album of her first iPhone. “Gracie was using it but the correct way to use Picture Exchange is to put the pictures in a row because you’ve got three or four pictures on the screen. Because no one had an iPhone three years ago no one really knew how I could do that.”

The making of an internationally-recognised iPhone app

So how does one find someone to do that? At the time, explains Domican, she was doing social media for Irish Autism Action and regularly read Damien Mulley’s Fluffy Links blog which mentioned Steve Troughton-Smith, a very successful – and young – iPhone app developer. Domican contacted him via Facebook. “I described the project and he said ‘this is a good thing, I want to do it.

’”He was able to develop the app the way Domican wanted it to be developed. When they met, Domican had Grace’s big plastic A4 folders of pictures, what she had tried to do as regards a portable book and had also drawn what she had thought of in diagrams. “I was kind of embarrassed I didn’t have a big enough piece of paper so I went into Boots and got a Boots shopping bag and ripped it open so it covered the whole table. He said ‘this is perfect because I have to have everything joined together so I understand what you want.’ He went home that afternoon and created the prototype.”

They had a long way to go from there – for example they had to source original artwork – but it was a quick start. The graphics had to be tested on children with autism through trial and error to ensure each image portrayed to them what it was supposed to.

Organic growth of an app
Then the app managed to grow organically through Grace’s use of it. “When we set up the prototype and Gracie was able to put her pictures in a row, I realised I could use the iPhone camera to add pictures on the spot. I would go out of the app to use the camera, take the picture and then be able to move it across.
“Gracie got hold of the phone one day – she’d been watching me do this – and she had found an old toy on eBay that I had donated to charity about three years before, it was a Teletubbies toy. She was holding the phone I could see that she was trying to take a picture. I realised if the picture was inside the phone she knew that I knew she wanted it. She could have just pointed to it on the screen but she was putting it in the app.”

Another little girl did something similar in her trial of the app so Troughton-Smith incorporated the feature to take photos from inside the app.
This facility teaches children with autism trust that they can express themselves and that a parent understands what they are expressing.
The Grace App is available on iTunes and a fund has been set up to help bring iPhones and iPod Touches to children with autism whose family cannot afford to buy them. To learn more about how you can help see:
http://graceappforautismoniphone.blogspot.com/
http://www.mycharity.ie/event/i_want_my_iphone_for_autism/