The rise of open source, cloud computing and the newly created distribution channels has also dramatically changed how solutions and businesses are created – known as “lean methodology” – and has been embodied by The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

In a similar manner, the costs associated with startups that include a hardware component are also going through a rapid decline.

And at the same time as these cost reductions, Kickstarter has created a marketplace for the crowd funding of hardware projects. More importantly, it has created a framework for startups to essentially run “smoke tests” — as advocated by Ries — to ascertain whether there is demand for a product or service, as well as the price points that the market might accept.

So why does hardware or Internet of Things need an accelerator?

While many of the conditions are highly conducive to support the rise of Maker communities, it’s still a relatively immature ecosystem. Much of the activity and noise is focused on just hacking around rather than having a commercial focus. It’s a good thing and encourages innovation, but tapping into this high energy Maker culture with a guiding hand from experienced mentors has the potential of spawning new ideas – the black swans for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

More interestingly, this emerging market is also attracting some extremely smart entrepreneurs who avoid the trends and fashions of others and like to play on the edges. The technical complexities associated with hardware – the things that make it hard – immediately limits participation to only the brightest engineers.

But it’s not all a bed of roses. It has been previously highlighted that technology projects have one of the lowest success rates among all Kickstarter categories, with only 29% percent being successful. Only fashion projects do worse. In addition, not every project goes well. Delays occur, especially with more complex projects. Some teams over stretch themselves and fail to deal with many aspects of the delivery that are new to them. Even Kickstarter has been forced to admit that “it’s not uncommon for things to take longer than expected.”

And this is where accelerators can help to nurture and support the best and the brightest in this emerging Maker community. As entrepreneurs with domain experience and expertise, mentors can provide first hand knowledge in managing the complexities associated with designing, prototyping, building and the manufacturing of physical devices — which reduces the operational and investment risks of projects.

There are other ways that an accelerator can help, too.

Being a hardware entrepreneur is also a very lonely existence, unlike our more popular and mainstream web service cousins. The peer to peer learning and cohort effect of getting the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the same sector working alongside each other cannot be underestimated, both during the program and in the future.

Finally, there are real practical differences between hardware and software which make being part of a dedicated accelerator even more valuable.

Hardware development has specific resource requirements that include access to a workshop space that with, say, 2D laser cutters, 3D printers, CNC routers and so on as well as support from industrial designers and engineers. Any of these individual resources might be prohibitively expensive or difficult to source, but within the framework of an accelerator their shared cost and accessibility can be invaluable.

Hardware is hard. But that’s what makes it fun and highly investable – given the right resources, environment and support structures. Why shouldn’t the Internet of Things have a dedicated acceleration program?

Jon Bradford is the CEO and co-founder of Springboard, which launched its SpringboardIoT accelerator this week. Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is the founder of Good Night Lamp, a new Internet of Things startup.

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Last time I wrote about the Israeli startup, I said that Pops was producing the next generation of personalized ringtones, like Crazy Frog. But here’s another way of explaining what it does: Pops gives notifications an injection that makes them bigger and more brash than ever before.

Here’s the basic idea: Instead of simply getting a little alert box on your screen when a new message comes in, running Pops means you can get pretty much anything you like — a custom animation, a video, a piece of music, or some artwork. And that’s it. The alert comes in on your Android handset screen in place of the normal alert and you carry on as normal.

Since launching last year, Pops has seen more than 500,000 downloads. Now the company, which raised $1.5 million from Skype investor Mangrove Capital earlier this year, is stepping things up with a new web service, a tweaked service and a fresh Android app to boot.

“Until now, it was really an alpha,” co-founder and CEO Yaron Orenstein told me over the phone earlier. “We learned a lot in the last 10 months… and one of the biggest things we’ve learned is that notifications are really big. We see the adoption really growing fast.”

A fine line

There was another big lesson, though — and one that was probably more important in the long run: Pops have the potential to be really, really annoying. The average Pops user, Orenstein says, receives between 10 and 15 of their custom notifications each day, but heavy users get as many as 70. Without any sort of filter, it’s easy to imagine that becoming a nightmare rather than a bit of fun, and as a result the company has introduced some limitations on the way Pops work.

Now, instead of assigning Pops to a service like Twitter or Facebook, they are assigned to people. That means less danger that you’re going to get spammed when your phone starts heating up with activity, and emphasizes the personal connections between Pops users.

“We analyzed it and found that people really care about 15-20 people — their family, parents, kids, good friends and a few colleagues,” he says. “Now Pops is much more intimate… and it enables us to filter the noise.”

The numbers are looking pretty strong, although it’s hard to tell how many users are really driving usage. Around 1 million Pops are being sent each day, says Orenstein.

A little bit of rough-around-the-edges math suggests that version 1 of Pops has an active user base in the region of 50,000 people, but he remains coy on the actual numbers. He does, however, point out that its service is developing more and more into a kind of messaging system in its own right: especially now that users can send each other Pops in their own right, sort of like a souped-up version of MMS that plays instantly on the home screen rather than requiring a user to open it up.

This is all intriguing, but what’s most interesting — at least to me — is the longer-term vision for Pops as a really customizable, personalized alert service.

Orenstein’s small team have been working on building a marketplace that lets people create and distribute their own Pops (an app store within an app, really) as well as negotiating with record labels, movie studios and other content publishers to create branded alerts that can be given away or bought inside the service. There are a couple in the offing that could make a serious impact, both in terms of how the app is distributed and what Pops are on offer (watch this space, says Orenstein).

That’s interesting because it could position Pops as a media channel in its own, slightly strange, right. And while it’s Android only for now — and unlikely to ever hit the iPhone given the level of access to your phone’s services that it requires — that’s a big market that could really work. Sure, it might annoy older users, but I can see it really taking off with younger, phone-obsessed types… if it carries on growing.

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It’s an approach that has worked well for big names like Skype, Wikia, Opera and many others.

But guess what? That’s not necessarily the way it works anymore. Partly because of Europe’s financial crisis, some of the “old” countries are now becoming the jumping-off point for services in developing economies, and not the other way around.

Take Portugal. Once it paved the way for the modern age as a nation of explorers who built the first global empire in history. These days, however, it’s fast becoming a center for inexpensive startup workers, especially with those companies looking to expand into Brazil and elsewhere.

A fundamental shift

Here are a few examples. HouseTrip, a holiday rental service similar to Airbnb that is regarded by many as one of Europe’s hottest startups, is headquartered in London but has a large number of service staff in Lisbon. Or what about Webnographer, a UX startup that has had offices in the city for a couple of years?

But the prime candidate is probably Rocket Internet, the notorious German clone factory that has a significant development center in the northern Portuguese city of Porto. It houses at least 150 programmers and support staff, who are all building crucial elements of major international properties like Groupon and Zalando.

For Rocket and its masterminds, the Samwer Brothers, Portugal provides a great base for dramatically expanding its business in developing economies across South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Miguel Pinto, the managing director of the Porto center, confirmed recently that the team was focused on technical development and would carry on expanding at pace.

But Carlos Silva, a Lisbon resident and co-founder of crowdfunding startup Seedrs, says it’s a confluence of bigger circumstances that makes it sensible to hire staff in Portugal for companies focused on markets like Brazil.

“The Brazilian market is definitely a very big and interesting market for European companies, but — at least for a startup — setting up a base there is not an easy task,” says Silva. “Getting work permits is complex, and the country is still quite bureaucratic. Portugal, on the other hand, is part of the EU, making it very easy to attract talent from all over, has a very simple process to create companies and deal with legal and tax obligations, and is geographically much closer to European centers of entrepreneurship.”

The free movement of workers inside Europe certainly helps, but that’s not all that’s going on. There’s also the fact that the economy is under severe pressure. Portugal has the lowest GDP per capita in Western Europe, and the sovereign debt crisis has been kicking the nation in its soft parts for a long time now.

Joao Martins, the CEO of Porto-based news aggregator app Niiiws, thinks the lack of opportunities at home is a big part of this recent change.

“There are at least six great engineering universities in Portugal, graduating a lot of very well-prepared young people to work,” he says. “The problem is the general economic environment, the work culture and the lack of management skills. You can hire one of these guys for $1500, but you can’t find more than a dozen really big Portuguese IT companies.”

Meanwhile Brazil is getting more and more expensive as the startup economy explodes: According to Payscale.com, the median salary for an IT manager in Brazil is 136,000 BRL ($66,000) but the same job in Portugal is just €30,000 ($36,000).

Who’s next?

The connection between the two countries makes a lot of sense — not least because of the linguistic connection and the imbalance in populations (Portugal has around 10 million people; Brazil has 196 million). But in the past it would have been Portugal and its entrepreneurs taking command of those emerging markets rather than simply supplying them with low-cost talent.

The signaling has become even stronger recently. Even the prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, got in on the act, telling local people struggling to find jobs that they should emigrate to South America.

That may be excessive — and Coelho came in for plenty of criticism — but it’s clear there’s been a shift.

“Portugal has always been an excellent platform to enter not only the Brazilian market but also other developing markets like Angola and Mozambique or even India, through its connections with Goa, and China, through Macau,” says Carlos Silva. “Bigger companies are already taking advantage of it by having participations in some of Portuguese biggest companies like Portugal Telecom and EDP and, as you said, some startups are starting to do the same. I would not be surprised to see more startups follow that same route.”

The shoe is definitely now on the other foot. The question is whether this change will happen elsewhere in Europe too.

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These days our lives revolve around our computers — for better or worse. We keep our finances there, photos, purchased music, and much much more. It seems like a no brainer that we should all be backing up our data regularly, but it still surprises me how often I hear from a friend that they’ve lost everything. I’ve written about the importance of backups before — illustrated by my own dead drive experience – so don’t write this off as something that can’t happen to you.

All you need to backup your computer is software, external storage space, and the will to set the two up. From my experience, the last of the three represents the greatest barrier to entry. Whether it be a lack of understanding or possibly a fear of how to setup the actual backup, and which files to choose for inclusion, I’m not sure — maybe both?

Well friends, I present you with Backblaze. For $5 per month (that’s the price of Starbucks for one day after all!) you have an internet based exclusion (that means you only choose what NOT to save) backup solution with unlimited storage space. That’s correct — there is no limit to the amount of data you backup with Backblaze. Ever. Your data is stored securely (via AES, military grade encryption) in the 365 Main datacenter, and can be further protected with your own private password. Versions are kept for 4 weeks in the event you overwrite something accidentally. And then when it is time to retain your backed up files, you have three options for doing so: Download a zip file, have DVDs burned of your data, or order a USB drive to be sent to you.

As is to be expected, Backblaze comes with both pros and cons. I invite you to read on to determine how the features and limitations may fit into your specific set of needs. And if this sounds like something that’s up your alley, the first 50 readers from The Apple Blog to follow this link will get in on the Mac beta (the rest will be able to sign up for future beta offerings) and have a 15 day, fully functional trial period.

The Upsides:

• Easy!
  If you haven’t yet begun backing up your data, this is a fantastic way to begin. Now.
• Backup Anywhere
  You don’t need a hard drive or be near one to backup your data for a rainy day.
• Runs Automatically
  Backblaze runs in the background, so you don’t need to schedule it or remember to kick it off manually.
• Exclusion Based
  Especially for the novice user, it’s much simpler to exclude the data you don’t care about, than figure out all of the stuff that you do care to keep safe. Choose to exclude file types, specific files, folders, or even limit to file sizes.
• Web-based File Browser
  The web interface is simple and effective. Once your files have been backed up to Backblaze, there’s a web-based file viewer which displays all the files that have been saved. Come restore time, you can select any files or folders you wish to retrieve, and they will be prepared in a zip file for your download (or a DVD or USB drive which would be mailed to you).
• Off Site Data
  Having your data backed-up off site is piece of mind in case, heaven forbid, your home burns to the ground, taking your backup with it!
• Encryption
  AES keeps your data safe from even determined prying eyes.
• 5 Bucks!
  And really, can you beat the price at only $5 per month for unlimited data?!

The Potential Downsides:

• “Speed”
  A couple of factors weigh heavily on the speed of the Backblaze internet-centric backup solution: your connection speed, and amount of data needing to be backed-up. Media files (photos, movies, music) take up a great deal of storage space and at a 6Mbps cable connection like I have, it would’ve taken weeks to backup everything I really wanted to save. (For the purposes of this review, I limited to a single folder and then, only files under 2 megs.)
• Security Concerns
  The encryption in use with Backblaze is top notch, but if you’re the tinfoil hat type (or if you’re just rightly concerned about your sensitive files), you may not be feeling great about letting your data out of your posession.
• Restoration Costs
  While backups over the web are free, it’s not very convenient with a huge amount of data (I’m sporting 150 gigabytes…) to download in order to restore. The alternative is to pay for [a maximum of 4.2GB of data on] DVDs, or a USB hard drive of your data to be mailed out. The most convenient being the USB drive, which is easily the cost of buying your own drive for personal use and then some. (To restore my 1.3GB of test data, DVDs would have run me $99, or a USB drive $189.)

At the end of the day, Backblaze represents a backup solution that is within anyone’s grasp. The setup is almost nonexistent, it runs in the background (essentially saving you from yourself), and the service cost is almost nonexistent at only $5 a month. Despite some downsides, the functionality is solid and I truly forgot about it once I set it up and let it go. There’s piece of mind in knowing that, without any interaction, your data will be safe if and when you need it. I think if you’re not already backing your data up, you should definitely start today, and Backblaze could be the perfect place to start.

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