Almira Labs – Blog

Almira Labs has been granted with a funds form the Neotec II Programm from CDTI (Industrial&Technological Development Center) in Spain for its project “Grupo Informatico Almira Labs, S. L.” This initiative has been co-funded with E-Plan (Special Fund for Economic and Employment Plan), according to RDL 9/2008 from 28^th November.

The Industrial&Technological Development Center (CDTI) is a public institution from the Economy and Competitivity Spanish Ministry. It is aimed at promoting innovation and the development of Spanish companies.

The Neotec II program represents an initiative that contributes to the improvement of the technological level of Spanish companies like Almira Labs, who base strategic business in developing an innovative and own technology for the development of value added services for both fix and mobile technology.

The closing ceremony of the 7th edition of this Festival took place yesterday, Monday, 12th, in Malaga and was organized by the Federación Provincial de Asociaciones de Discapacitados Físicos y Orgánicos de Málaga   FAMF-COCEMFE Málaga.
The event gathered together the most relevant authorities in Andalucia with members of Málaga Town Council and Junta de Andalucia.
Almira Labs, as a collaborator at the Festival, received a small sculpture from the President of the  FAMF-COCEMFE Málaga, Mr. Joaquín Fernández Recio in remembrance of its participation in this 4-days event.
Additionally, the short film “Alma” was awarded with the Special Prize of this Festival. The film is an Andalusian production of Ketch and is directed by José Javier Pérez.
From Almira Labs we wish to give our support to the continuous efforts for inclusion that  FAMF-COCEMFE Málaga makes and hope to be a collaborator again in the upcoming year edition.

Under de claim “Technology within your reach” the 3rd TifloInnova Fair opened its doors from the 18th to the 20th November, 2011. Every 2 years this unique event is organized by the Centre for Research, Development and Application of Technologies for the Blind (CIDAT) of ONCE to offer a showcase of assistive technology for blind and visually impaired people that bring together concerned manufacturers, developers, distributors, users, researchers and professionals.

Apart from the fair pavilion where exhibitors of over 15 countries presented their latest innovation an accompanying course of lectures presented different related topics, such as new solutions for mobility technology. Within this range Vodafone Spain presented its latest mobile service Voice2Social, developed by Almira Labs – a voice based service which enables a publication in its Facebook or Twitter profile by a simple phone call. This service is accessible from every kind of phone device and doesn’t need any internet connection from your phone.

Vodafone Spain presented especially our service to demonstrate that there are still various existing access obstacles that keeps parts of the society away from new ways of communication and knowledge diffusion. Spain is already within the Top 5 most active countries in Facebook with an access rate of over 70% of the Spanish population. The most used applications in the mobile market nowadays are communication based and therefore disabled people in Spain have an existential need to also participate in social networks and to not suffer a fundamental disadvantage in new arising daily communication habits.

That’s why Almira Labs’ Voice2Social where implemented in Vodafone’s service portfolio as an ideal companion for blind people to offer them more mobility, autonomy and independence in their lives. Because with Voice2Social they also can access their social networks from wherever they are.

Last Friday, October, 14th was a very special day for BIC Euronova, as this European Center of Companies and Innovation celebrated 20 years being a reference with more than 3.500 jobs created within PTA (Andalucia’s Technological Park) in Malaga.

In the event, the main stakeholders of BIC Euronova could have a word to the audience; Idea Agency, Promalaga, Unicaja and IMPI. Additionally, former and current companies shared together their vision of the entrepreneurship in Malaga and Spain. Some of them like Novasoft and Aertec are now big and successful companies that were born in its facilities.
The issues discussed in the Conferences Sesssions had a common point: the need to support with all means the entrepreneurs that decide to innovate in Spain. Bic Euronova has experienced professionals that help those people with a good idea to check whether it can be successful or not and, being the former the case, they help them to put it into practice and turn it into a success.

In Almira Labs, as we have our office there, we are very satisfied and thankful with all the support, from a personal and professional point of view, that we receive form the people that work in Bic Euronova. So we wish them a very Happy Birthday and hope many more years of success to come!

Within the last years social networks turn to an essential communication medium not only for a personal use, but also on a professional and political level.

Facebook, founded in 2004, has already reached by today 700 millions of users by adapting their platform in more than 70 languages to this date. In the same way, Twitter celebrates these days its 5^th anniversary surpassing the threshold of its 200  millions member and of the same amount daily tweets. The principal use of social networks, like these, within the Spanish community is primarily obtaining information, before consulting any other information source (IAB Spain).

Unfortunately the majority of the social networks still don’t provide any intuitive access to every group in the society. Alone Spain counts more than 4 million of disabled people (nearly 10% of the population), according to the Spanish Census Bureau (INE), who see themselves confronted with serious obstacles in accessing these platforms.

A recent study by the Observatory on ICT Accessibility of the web portal Discapnet confirms the insufficient access for handicapped person. One of the mayor problems especially for visually impaired and motionally restrained persons especially is reflected in the buttons and icons, those illustration are perceived too small and hardly recognizable or lead to wrong interpretations of their functions. Further access barriers were detected in the missing separation between presentation and content, as well as the deficient access of Script and PDF Documents.

For instance, some forms, which are essential for executing any kind of interaction between user and web administration, are impossible to use for disabled people. So basic functions like signing up, search content or add contacts can result in an unmanageable task for them. It would be far more convenient to apply text instead of images in a web, which details the information that an image wants to transmit.

From the visual impaired point of view it would be also recommendable to work with more contrastive colors to make it easier to distinguish different areas on a page.

We from Almira Labs are aware of the obstacles that handicapped people might see in their ICT usage. Therefore we also bear in mind the particular requirements of this group in the development of our voice applications for telephone devices to literally offer accessible mobile services for everyone.

Read the entire study result here.

And for more and Almira Labs’ engagement in mobile services for Disabled people, click here.

From the 13th to the 17th June, 2011, Almira Labs´ got the great opportunity to join a “Technical Mission” to Silicon Valley, California. Organized by the Spanish Chamber of Foreign Trade ICEX, the Banesto Foundation and the consultancy Carlos Barrabés 15 innovative Spanish IT companies were invited to this business trip which catered to bring Spanish companies to Silicon Valley to get known the ecosystem and to try to settle down there.

The United States are a highly attractive market with more than 300 millions of potential consumers. So it was interesting for us to discover the infrastructural and financial circumstances of this Californian IT think tank.

Palo Alto, for example, a small town of only some 60.000 inhabitants in the valley already concentrates a settlement of more than more than 7,000 IT related businesses that employ more than 98,000 jobs. This is an enormous creative density, where Facebook, Amazon and Google for instance are literally neighbors – a perfect place for accelerating fruitful synergies.

For Almira Labs this trip was an excellent occasion to make budding contacts with interesting advisers, potential partners and investors. Although the companies there set high benchmarks in the industry, we noticed that Spain also offers some really high potential projects from which we are convinced to here pretty soon again!

Special thanks again to all involved parties for having such a great time together!

And for those of you who are interested in some more impressions of Almira Labs’ CEO Javier Martín, please see the following video below.

Meet Javier Martín of Almira Labs from StepOne Ventures on Vimeo.

Some further great news at this year’s MOVILFORUM LATAM came from the Spanish state secretary of telecommunications, Francisco Ros, who announced that Spain heads the European ranking of fixed and mobile broadband penetration with 47%, which exceeds the European average by 4% referring to the latest result of the OCED (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development).

But that number is even more impressive when you look at its composition. A detailed view only on the mobile branch reveals that the Spanish market shows a broadband coverage with 26% which is twice as high as their European neighbors.

But every true success story always has its slight “bellyshadow”. The OCED report also uncovers Spain’s disproportionately high ADSL prices compared to their other 30 European opponents. With over 20% in price difference, Spanish operators earn their money pretty well by allocating a widespread broadband access. As a matter of fact, the Spanish subscription fees are one of the highest of all member states.

Read this news more in detail >>

BRAZIL isn’t only famous for its awesome beaches, its superb Caipirinhas and its comfy Haivaianas – No! Even more impressive for us is the fact that there are currently over 210 millions cell phones. Consequently Brazil is member of the club of the 5 countries with the most cell phones in use after China, India, the US and Russia. Likewise to the other BRIC-state members Brazil showed a huge increase of new cell phone lines. Only in the first quarter of 2011 was the strongest one in the last 11 years in Brazilians mobile sector.

Therefore it is no surprise at all that this 2nd edition of Telefonica´s Movilforum Latin America Conference will be held again in Rio de Janeiro on the 24th and 25th of May, 2011 to gather the who-is-who of the telecommunication sector, providing them a platform to expose the latest competitive and cutting-edge solutions to redefine the state of art in mobile solutions.

And it´s not surprising neither, that Almira Labs takes part in this event in coordination with AMETIC and ICEX (Spanish Foreign Trade Institute). As a part of our expansion project, Almira Labs has set its eyes on the American continent where it is already dealing with commercial opportunities in the US and CALA region. Following its unique approach of developing telecom services for all devices, Almira will be participating this year in some of the most important telecom-industry related events such as Movilforum Conference Latinamerica in Brazil.

So, in unison with this year’s motto of the Movilforum LATAM: “The future of mobility will be here. How about you?” we happily await you in Brazil, as well.

Contact us and let´s meet up: info@almiralabs.com.

Almira Labs, as a Vodafone partner, will exhibit in this event that will take place in Madrid next Tuesday, 16th november. This MOVE 10 is one of the more relevant technological appointments in the year.

MOVE 10 is the best place to showcase our services profolio for wireline and wireless technology that is aimed at both consumer and corporate clients. We will present our services to visitors, Vodafone’s clients and its salesforce.

This event allow us to strengthen our collaboration with the carrier, whose immediate result will be the availability our some of our services within the applications platform Vodafone Business Place.

We will let you know about coming releases!

Galapagar Companies Association, in Madrid, has tried a new ways of communications with its associates with our MediaCast tool, which allows sending voice messages to multiple recipients. Such messages are sent simultaneously and received either in fixed or mobile phones.

AEGE’s President, Mr Jesus Fernandez, has sent a message recorded with his own voice to all associated companies as a reminder for an upcoming appointment. This action had a great reception among all recipients, and some of them have already requested its continuity as a means of internal communication.

From Almira Labs, we want to thank AEGE’s and its President for their trust in our MediaCast solution and we hope to work together again soon in actions like this.