Office 2.0 Reviews

Getting Things Done... Blueprint found!

2012-01-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

Came across an article that Karol K. (@carlosinho) published with a diagram that goes deeper then most into GTD - I think it's pretty solid.. People are not computers however, so following this process takes a lot of discipline and work, but this could also be food for thoughts to the product vendors that should integrate this into their workflows (hint..).

See HERE for the complete article..

MangoApps might be the Closest thing to Facebook for Business

2012-01-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

I had a pleasure of walking through MangoApps the other day and I must say I was pretty impressed!
With a lot of press going to Yammer and Jive for their office collaboration solutions, I think MangoApps could give them a run for their money (at least to Yammer)..

I like the solutions that have been well thought out and go deep and MangoApps certainly fits the bill there. Here some things that have stuck with me about it:

Both SaaS and On-premise
Integrated with Sharepoint, S3, and Box.net
Can invite guests to projects, groups, networks, events
Task workflows! Can assign a workflow to any task
Tasks are divided into Queued, Working, Pending
Running tape of tasks on the Dashboard page

The company is solid but not flashy, and more importantly they seem to be in it for the long haul! I talked to them about their development practices - it's not easy to combine SaaS and ship product for on-premise at the same time, but they seem to have it worked out, with small incremental releases hitting the SaaS first, then rolling it into larger releases for the on-premise installs.

The depth of the solution is very well there, which is visible from things like task workflows, guest management, and integrations with document hosting systems and directories.

Pricing seems right (both for SaaS and on-premise installs), with quite a bit flexibility for cost-cutting if needed:

There are a few things missing from my perspective, namely ability to provide your own storage for documents (they are using Amazon S3 for storage, but same bucket for everyone), and support for more rigid organizations with limited visibility, but Orange assured me they are working on it..

Overall, a Very Strong Little-Known Contender in the Enterprise Collaboration Space!

Salesforce uses kids and puppies to get new customers

2012-01-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

It has been about 10 months since Salesforce acquried Manymoon - a simple task management platform very popular on Google Apps Marketplace.

What have they done with it since? Well, for one, they just launched arguably the cutest ad campaign in tech, telling a story of a the 3rd graders running for class president.

What does Do.com mean for Salesforce? Most probably a way to get the new online teams onto Salesforce platform while they are young..

Do.com has a nice simple HTML5 client that runs in a web browser as shows well on tablets. They also have a native client for the iPhone. No native client for Android however.

Do.com adds to many choices for the collaborative task management. I definitely wouldn't say it's the best one, but it will certainly work for the 3rd grade politics :)

Details matter.. A LOT! And so do Use Cases..

2012-01-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

Yes, we all know that details matter.. But how much?? Few technology businesses take details super-seriously.. Apples does..

I was looking for a way to post a document onto the blog today, started with the Slideshare - it let me do everything I wanted to - upload the document and embed it, except the embedded document didn't have the download function. Would seem like a small detail, but I can see the reader wanting to download the document, save it somewhere, etc.. so fairly important feature..
I then tried Scribd - same thing, let me upload the document and embed it and yes, they DID have the download function.

Download.. would seem like a small detail.. but a deal-breaker for me.. Also Slideshare should review their use cases - I get a feeling that they are serving 100% of the available market with a 90% solution - which means they are getting little to none of it.. If they want to concentrate on presentations, fine, then cut out the document feature, and make it the best mechanism to run a presentation anywhere - phone, tablet, TV, etc - right now they fall short..

Biz Soft Landscape

Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations

2011-12-31T11:37:00.000-08:00

I ask you where would we be without the knowledge and thought sharing like this?! I also wonder where we are headed with knowledge and thought sharing like this? A perfect but boring society where everyone knows everything? :) Happy 2012!!!

Thinking in Barriers

2011-12-28T19:23:00.001-08:00

The single most important KEY to ensuring success of a product or a successful switch to implement a new technology that will benefit your business is USER-LEVEL ADOPTION.

Whether you're a vendor to the industry or a customer (someone who's looking to deploy the product for their organization) it often helps to think in terms of BARRIERS. For example:

Systems Pull (how many other internal systems rely on files being in that format or integrate with the old system)
Re-training Required (this might be drastically infuenced by the demographic make up of the organizations that you're targeting or deploying for - younger people are much more interested in embracing new technology)
Satisfaction (or Lack of) with the existing systems. How much are current systems broken.. Obviously the more dissatisfaction, the easier it will be to instigate a switch.
Grass Roots possibility. Does the new system require IT or an executive committee to sign of on it or can it be started grass roots and they catch on fire?
Level of Noise. How much noise is there in the marketplace that pertains to this set of functionality? Are there tons of competitors pitching this and incumbents assuring the customer that this will be delivered in the "next release"
New Solution Fatique. Have a bunch of other solutions been tried recently to address this set of functionality? If true, there will be a lot of resistance and distrust from the user base.

If you map out these barriers, it will help you figure out how to address them or serve as a filter for taking a solution to market or deploying it in your organization.

AgileWords shows how to do one thing well

2011-12-10T22:58:00.001-08:00

In the world of SaaS, PaaS and software in general there are 3 main types of solutions:

Platform (covers lots of functionality and is very extensible)
Industry-specific (provides a comprehensive solution for particular industry)
Point (solves one problem, integrates well with existing systems)

(more on this later..)

While GoogleDocs and Zoho have done a good job with platform-type SaaS offerings, there are far from becoming ubiquidous. There are many reasons for that - some have to do with letting the data outside of the company walls, some with lack of support for "diconnected" use model, some with not wanting or not being able to undertake the re-training effort.

Be it as it may, what is one to do if they want to use the collaborative, single source nature of the SaaS applications for document review and approval for example, but not ready to convert everyone to GoogleDocs?

AgileWords take a stab at solving the document reviews problem the "point solution" way.

Today document reviews involve a lot of back-and-forth via email with redline and side notes or comments. All these edits are hard to reconcile and the intent or context is quickly lost, not to mention the version hell.

AgileWords came up with a clean solution for merging the benefit of the SaaS ability to collaborate on something real-time and keep track of the changes in one place with the format that most documents that need to be reviewed (contracts, product documentation, marketing literature) exist today - MS Word.

They import the MS Word document keeping the formatting (very important as the document needs to stay 100% consistent with the original). To keep the formatting, they actually do a clever combination of converting what they can to text and what they can't - to images.

They then allow comment insertion and discussions around a particular session. Once a revision has been made, the new document is uploaded replacing the original one optionally showing the changes made.

A very nicely designed and thought-through point-solution product that doesn't disturb existing systems, but adds the much-needed element.

Plaxo and Staying Relevant (or not)..

2011-12-08T01:04:00.001-08:00

Remember when Plaxo was relevant?.. Keeping the contacts up to date was a real problem.. Still is to some degree, but much less so now with LinkedIn and Facebook where the contact info is attached to real people and doesn't need to be maintained separately anymore.

The problem of relevancy faces any successful project or business as the problems shift, but the organizations and the thinking has already been built to solve a specific issue and the more successful the product was at solving that problem, the harder it is to detach from it going forward. However, detaching from the yesterday's problem is exactly what needs to be done in the modern world as the ground shifts all the time..

So what's my solution? If I was Plaxo, I would look at what other problems/opportunities exist around the address book.. It doesn't take long to notice that contact info (business card) exchange is one of the hot issues.. If I was Plaxo, I would look at acquiring Bump App or building equivalent functionality..

In Today's world it's Stay Relevant or Die..

SuccessFactors acquired by SAP for $3.4B

2011-12-04T10:16:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to Success Factors! Again, hate to see a successful SaaS company get gobbled up by a large incumbent, but happy to see them making room for new nimble and innovative entrants in this space!

The company had 3,500 customers and 15 million users in 168 countries and was publicly traded. Clients include Comcast and Siemens.

Interoperate or Die - BlueJeans Videoconference Exchange

2011-11-21T22:44:00.001-08:00

I met this new company at the Enterprise 2.0 show last week and was immediately intrigued by what they do - which is solving the interoperability problem for the video conference market. The problem is real - everyone has something different in terms of video conference technology and unless you do all the video conference inside of the enterprise and none with clients or partners (although even that stands to be challenged), they are facing a problem of having spent a pretty penny only to learn that you can not use it 90% of the time because of interoperability issues.

BlueJeans Network provides interoperability among the following systems (which is quite respectable):

Conference Room Endpoints	Cisco / Tandberg Lifesize Polycom Sony H.323 Systems Conference Phones (Audio-only)
Desktop / Mobile Endpoints	Cisco / Tandberg Google Talk Mirial Polycom Skype for PC/Mac Desk Phones (Audio-only)
Desktop / Mobile Devices	Android Smartphones Android Tablets Skype for iPhone Skype for iPad Mobile Phones (Audio-only)

Pricing ranges between $69 and $199 per month, with $199 being "all-you-can-eat" plan, and if you're any serious about videoconference that's probably the one you'll use. Considering that they do both protocol translation and in most cases transcoding on the fly, the pricing is very reasonable..

Products vs. Platforms

2011-11-16T02:17:00.001-08:00

I stopped by Enterprise 2.0 Conference this afternoon - a solid event with good exhibitors and speakers (highly recommend to visit if you haven't done so already)

One session that I sat in on that was of particular interest to me was Products vs. Platforms. Here are some interesting thoughts that came up there:

"Usability Matters"!!! (as in it's often the reason a product succeeds or fails)

"Discretionary efforts is the key to productivity" (as opposed to mandated activities)

"Start with a product, finish with a platform"

"Profiles are the basis for collaboration"

"Pushing all information into one system doesn't work" (making a case for connecting information that resides in different systems)

"Sharepoint: most used or most licensed?"

I will be covering some vendors I met at the conference in the next couple of days.

If you happened to be in the area and have some time, definitely check out the event!

Dealing with Darwin

2011-11-13T09:31:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite companies in the Office 2.0 space, the Outsystems, gave a talk at the Cloud Expo last week about "Avoiding a Zero-value Cloud" (presentation below). One of the things that I really appreciate about what they are doing is that they are not disconnected from the customer's real problems - which is "how do I manage this web of skunk projects, legacy systems, and new releases" - this is precisely what their platform is addressing and what they tried to illustrate with the talk they gave.

Avoiding the Zero Value Cloud

View more presentations from OutSystems

But what about Michael Scott??

2011-11-07T16:36:00.001-08:00

Forbes ran an article on Social Power And The Coming Corporate Revolution couple of days ago.

It paints a picture of the inevitable "open" enterprise where everything is out in the open - from employee peer performance ranking, to the manager effectiveness, to the customer feedback, making the system very efficient and fair.. So the days of "The Office" as we know it today might be numbered, and we're entering the brave new world of Transparency..

The article is full of good insights and quotes:

I don’t think it’s crazy to ask if your CEO is the next Mubarak,” says Gary Hamel, one of business’ most eminent theoreticians of management. “The elites—or managers in companies—no longer control the conversation. This is how insurrections start.” Says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, Inc.

“‘Information is power’ used to mean that hoarding information gave you power. Now we’re seeing that sharing information is power. The more you can share, the more you can help other people—and the more it becomes apparent you’re an expert and a valuable employee.” - David Sacks, CEO of Yammer:

Definitely a good and empowering read..

Some of the companies/products featured in the article:
Rypple - employee performance management
Yammer - enterprise social network
Jive - enterprise social network

Watch out, Oracle is coming!

2011-10-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Oracle is playing a game of Risk or Monopoly or whatever buying up more and more properties. This time it was RightNow. I'm sorry to see another one sell out - they really didn't have to.. They had liquidity and were profitable. It was pure shortsighted greed. Kind of sad.. But that's ok, make room for the new kids on the block.

Redefining Project Management with Trello

2011-10-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

It's not often that you see a completely fresh approach to an old problem, so it's always very exciting to see something like this pop up! This time it's Trello from FogCreek Software (for those of you who have been in the world of software development, it's Joel Spolsky's company)

Project Management is an area that concern everyone, whether you're managing clients or building a rocket, you're facing the need to keep track of tasks, dole out responsibilities, monitor the progress, remove obstacles, look for ways to leverage the resources effectively, estimate the completion, etc, etc..

Traditional tools like MS Project put you in a very rigid framework of having to plan everything ahead of time and god forbid something should go not according to the plan (that never happens, right?? ), managing the change becomes a nightmare.. And this is where the task completion is predictable and dependencies are few.. What if you have dependencies that are very hard to predict or manage or the tasks that are hard to estimate, or you loose a resource, or ..

In the world of high productivity and "Agile", it's clear that a better approach is needed - an approach where monitoring and re-prioritization are woven into the fabric of the solution.

Trello hits the nail on the head with it's Project Board approach. It allows a bird's eye view of the projects and instant re-prioritization of the tasks. It makes it easy to delegate the tasks and publish the projects for others to see (reporting anyone?), but it also passes a very important test for a tool that is essential - it makes you WANT to use it!!

With time I expect to see more status indicators like if the task is in danger, addition of dependencies perhaps.. Another component that can light the adoption on fire is to integrate it with large touch screens that can be hung in the halls or conferences rooms!

P.S. One other very attractive thing about Trello's approach is that the "stacks" don't have to be projects - they can be stages in the process for example, creating a great workflow app. Very flexible indeed!

Box.net raises $81M from Salesforce, SAP Ventures, others

2011-10-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

Box.net has raised a total of $162 million.

Aaron Levie, who helped start Box.net in 2005, is its CEO. The company makes online file sharing software.

While I like Box.net, the amount of capital raised is staggering!!! And this is not capital-intensive business (at least it shouldn't be - after all they don't build factories or buy a ton on material).. I understand they want to attract the best minds, but still.. throwing money at it and hiring people just because is never a good thing.

My problem with this level of capitalization is that it pipes the companies full of steroids and should something go wrong in the market or with their execution, the company will crumble..

Just saying..

Visual Basic for the 21st Century

2011-10-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

Like it or not, but Microsoft's Visual Basic did a TON for PC industry back in the 90's.. It opened up programming to non-professionally trained and non-hacker types, it cut the application development time from years to months, and expanded the pool of programmers exponentially.. Yes, maybe it created a slew of bad code, but who's to argue what bad code is anyways - at the end of the day good code is a code that works and can be maintained.

Over time Visual Basic transitioned into a Visual Studio where novices are NOT welcome.. Not only that, but it didn't keep up with the other technology transformations, specifically moving the client to the web browser.

So what is a modern-day equivalent or Visual Basic? There are a few options out there.. If you're on Salesforce.com - you can use their tools to create custom screens, workflows, etc.. Then there are a few PaaS platforms that address the data-driven, web-based applications, however very few of them go deep enough to really provide a viable platform for the type of applications that people had built with Visual Basic and MS Access. The other pitfall many of them share is by going the publicly hosted route.. This chops off the predominant use case of wanting to connect with internal data sources.

I spent some time learning about OutSystems over the past couple of months and it really impresses me with the both depth and breadth of the implementation. It's easy to get started, yet packs a ton of power. It's web based, but is hosted by the customer and ties into customer's data. Speaking of tying into customer data, it has the right adapters and import tools to either develop an application on top of an existing data source, or to import the data from that spreadsheet that's no longer cutting it. At the heart of the system though is a visual logic designer making programming easier for non-programmers (and probably programmers as well)! I have seen visual logic designers before, but not since Macromedia's Authorware have I met one that was actually usable - this is a huge feat in itself..

Another point worth making is that most of the PaaS (platform-as-a-service) vendors stop at implementing web forms and workflows. OutSystems however is showing its understanding of the market by providing things like visualization widgets and newsletter templates.

OutSystems Server runs as either .NET or Java and can be run on Amazon EC2 if you so desire.

From the deployment standpoint (again illustrating the depth of the offering and the marketplace connectedness), OutSystems provides very robust and streamlined mechanism to deploy changes to staging, production, or roll the changes back.

Reading through the community board and some consultant pieces, it's pretty clear that the platform gets some good REAL use, which is a good indicator that it's not just smoke, but that it's bringing real value to folks.

OutSystems gets my unofficial VB replacement award and a big thumbs up!

From the few things I think are missing, notable are 1) a Mac client for their IDE, and 2) a version of a UI designer that's targeted to non-data-driven apps (such as Point-Of-Sale systems).. But I'm sure these guys are looking at both ;)

Microsoft Office 365 - Game Changer or a Flop?

2011-07-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Office 365 was finally officially released last week. This was supposed to be a BIG DEAL!! After all Microsoft was talking it up for years.. So how good is it you ask? I went through it over the last couple of days and my conclusion is that it's mostly a lipstick on a pig.

Here's what I expected:

An improvement to Web version of the Outlook that would make handling attachments much better by using the online version of Office
Automatic syncing of the documents to the cloud ala Box.net or Dropbox
Full-featured (Google Docs or better) in-place editing with build-in versioning
Lotus Notes style database integration
Good CRM integration

Instead here's what we got

A sub-par Office document editor suite (it lags Google Docs big time). Simple things like typing in a document are subject to some buffering artifacts..
No attachment editing integration
No document synchronization to get the documents in
No CRM integration
No DB as part of the Office Suite

Yes, you can do basic email, pretend like you're editing documents, create shared pages, and chat with others inside the app, but the bar is higher these days.. Much higher! And usability-wise, the apps have got to feel more dynamic, like I should be able to create an appointment by clicking on the calendar itself instead of the "+" button on top.

C'mon Microsoft! Aren't you supposed to get things on the 3rd try?? This is at least try #3 for you with online office... So you're either not serious about it and this is a stalling tactic, or you don't have the right people in charge! Office productivity category is yours to loose and you're doing a marvelous job of it allowing others to sneak in..

Box.net and Google Docs - I don't get it :(

2011-06-24T22:38:00.000-07:00

So this announcement was all over the tech news the other day, but I must say I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding the rationale behind this big integration effort..
I mean while Google Docs may have provided an API that allowed Box.net to "hijack" their app, is this really the model they will support going forward? Isn't their business to get people over to their Google Apps platform? And havent' they been actively building out their own document management solution?
While I really like what Box.net has done - they've found a lot of value to add around online document backup - this is great, kudos, but this move just seems amateurish to me. If this was about providing online document editing, they could have licensed or developed their own technology (afterall didn't they just raise $48 million?). If this was about fending off the threat from Microsoft's Office 360 and buy them time to develop their own, there might be some merit to that, but seems like confusing a customer is a high price to pay for a questionable benefit.
I would like to see Box.net keep developing value around document management (workflows, approvals, etc.) and develop their own online editor.. That would make things clean and understandable to the customer.. What do you think??

Google Calendar adds Appointment Slots

2011-06-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

If you run a time slot based business (coaching, counseling, dental office, photography, beauty salon, spa, medical office) scheduling and rescheduling is a full-time job, and one that is prone to errors and misunderstandings.. An office manager or provider themselves will usually spend time with each client when scheduling the appointment, then come rescheduling and cancellations and last minute trying to fill the slot.

Google Calendar's new Appointment Slot feature is a FANTASTIC attempt to deal with this exact problem and could very well be the biggest PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCER of the year!

The fact that it's combined with your personal calendar means that you can design the appointment slots around your schedule and your clients will be able to book/rebook the appointments online without the disruptive phone calls. Just mark those available for appointment slots on your calendar and embed some code on your web site and off you go! And if you needed a reason to switch to an online calendar, this feature should go a long way to convince you to do that.. :)

Email Marketing and Auto-Responders - What's New and Who's Best?

2011-03-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

Email Marketing is an established category that has been around for a long time (over a decade). Having been around for that long, a fairly stable set of features has emerged over time and deliverability which used to be all over the place, has stabilized. The pricing has come down to affordable levels and market leadership has been established (arguably) with Constant Contact going public.

Some of the new directions, however, that email marketing has been evolving includes segmentation, surveying, multi-step auto-responders, and A/B split testing. Of these segmentation in general (and conditional or auto-segmentation in particular) is probably the feature that has the most potential to change the email marketing landscape. Sending the right email piece at the right time based on what a prospect clicked on or opened in the past is a powerful concept and can easily mean a difference between another email that I don't open and something that triggers my attention.

Below is a brief summary of the email marketing players and their strength and weaknesses. Please let me know if you disagree on any of it, and feel free to use it to help you make your decisions!

	Constant Contact	iContact	Aweber	GetResponse
Email Limits	excellent	excellent	excellent	excellent
Deliverability	excellent	excellent	excellent	excellent
Segmentation	weak	fair	good	excellent
Follow-up Sophistication	weak	fair	good	fair
Signup form flexibility	fair	good	good	fair
Surveys	good	good	none	good
Split Testing	weak	none	good	excellent
Templates	fair	fair	fair	good
WYSIWIG editor	weak	excellent	fair	good
Pricing	fair	good	fair	excellent
Special Features				email-2-speech

Real Group Collaboration is Finally Here

2011-03-20T22:59:00.000-07:00

After taking a look at newly launched Podio.com, I declare 2011 the year of group collaboration.

While group collaboration is not new and products like Yahoo Groups (yet another squandered opportunity) and Google Groups (what's taking these guys so long to realize the potential there) have existed for almost a decade now, the marketplace is ready for the 2nd wave of the group collaboration that is going to draw on many other advances that have been made in the internet technologies world. Advances like Activity Streams, App Stores, clean and dynamic designs, etc..

There are many startups and incumbents vying for this lucrative market - Salesforce, Jive, and Yammer are the ones that come to mind. I'm going to rule out Salesforce due to the amount of other weight they have to carry around - they are not going to be the first ones to get this right..(I'm also obviously ruling out Microsoft and Google for similar reasons - they've got too much legacy and too many other projects clamoring for attention to be able to come up with a dominant design for group collaboration). Yammer has something big in the hopper having raised $25M a few months ago however!

Podio is a brand new player that's coming out onto the marketplace swinging for the fences. I've briefly reviewed the product and it seems very solid and very formidable. You've got all your basics - work is organized into workspaces, each workspace has got an activity stream, a task list, and a calendar. This is far from IT however.. The user then starts adding Marketplace apps to the workspace, which there are plenty of - deliverables, documents, designs, product input, processes, presentations - the list goes on and on.. In addition to read-made modules, Podiohas an app builder out of the gate.

Podio is not naive to think that they can get a market overnight by doing a slightly better job at implementation and packaging of the features. No sir! They are making a very gutsy move by opening a retail (yes, you heard me right, retail! presence right on their opening day). Not even Salesforce had the foresight (I'm assuming money is not the problem here) to do this. I'm really curious to see how this is going to go down and look forward to using the product!

The address is 224 6th Street San Francisco, CA 94103.

Google Docs Sprinkles a Bit of Wave to Make it Taste Even Better

2011-03-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

Google Docs adding discussions is very cool and sets a new standard for online document editing! But Google guys, if you want to be taken seriously by professional public, make up better examples! I know working on a contract is not as sexy as discussing an April 1st prank, but who's your target audience for this?

Wavemaker gets acquired

2011-03-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

I've had it on my To Do list to do a review of Wavemaker for a while. Well, VMWare beat me to it - they acquired this young (less than 2yr old) startup.

WaveMaker describe themselves as an Open & Easy-to-Use Web & Cloud Application Development Platform - essentially a Platform-as-a-Service solution, or Visual Basic for the Cloud (my words, not theirs)

I'm not entirely sure why VMWare is pursuing this space - I see little reason for them to attract developers or even business people writing business apps - they don't own or host the underlying data (this is a much more obvious fit for companies SalesForce.com), but they obviously have something in mind.

Here's a snippet from Wavemaker letter on their site:

According to Gartner, only 20% of IT staff have expert app development skills – WaveMaker is the tool to enable the other 80% of IT to build web apps quickly and deploy them to the cloud with a single mouse click.

As WaveMaker went from 3,000 downloads a month in January, 2010 to 135,000 downloads a month in December, 2010, we realized that we had created the perfect “on ramp” for cloud computing. WaveMaker can play a big role in bringing large numbers of developers to the cloud, but on ly if we team with the right cloud partner.

Whatever the reason it VMWare is going in this direction, this acquisition stands to add legitimacy to the Platform-as-a-Service in general and situational business apps in particular. Professionals can write apps on WaveMaker's platforms without worrying what's going to happen to their app if something was to happen to the startup..

Security Risk is the Price of Freedom

2011-03-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

Good article in itself that talks about precautions that smartphone users need to take in light of recent malicious applications for Android, but also helps to put the trade-off between convenience, freedom, and security into perspective. This triangle applies to more than just mobile platforms - it applies to fundamental cloud questions very well as well (not to mention the subject of airport security :) )

Android Malware Shows Why Security Risk is the Price of Freedom