1. Cha Cha Chicken in Santa Monica. Caribbean food, very casual atmosphere, awesome plantains and beans. It’s not fancy. But it’s delicious. And you can stroll up the boardwalk after you stuff yourself full of L.A.’s yummiest Jamaican jerk chicken.

2. Contemporary art at Bergamot Station. After lunch at Cha Cha Chicken, head over to the city’s best collection of contemporary art galleries and see great art by emerging artists in L.A. and beyond. (If you like more a more traditional art scene, you can’t go wrong with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty or my personal favorite, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena — a smaller collection, but nearly every piece is something you studied in Art History 101).

3. OK, this wasn’t there when I lived in L.A., but I wish it had been: The space shuttle Endeavour is now housed at the California Science Center, in Exposition Park near the University of Southern California campus. Exposition Park also is home to fabulous gardens, the Natural History Museum and the California African American Museum — all of which are cool and interesting. But I’d love to see the space shuttle up close and personal.

4. Crepes at Farmers Market. L.A.’s Farmers Market is an amazing sight to behold in its own right: It overflows with fresh produce and every kind of ethnic food you can imagine, 365 days a year. But my favorite way to launch a morning at Farmers Market was at the French Crepe Company, located in the center of the market. Get something sweet and something savory, and add a French press pot to your order. And after you over-stimulate your senses with a tour of the food stands, you can walk over to the adjacent outdoor mall, where you’ll probably see a movie star or two.

5. Downtown. I know — no one goes to downtown L.A. And that’s fine, because it’s nice to keep some treasures to yourself, especially in a city as crowded as Los Angeles. Some of my favorite downtown spots are the truly awesome Walt Disney Music Hall (if you like a good philharmonic performance, check out the L.A. Phil), the decidedly non-Gothic Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels, and touristy but fun Calle Olvera. The arts, some religion and a churro. So totally L.A.

The big announcement is regarding our new mobile app. Our customers spoke. We listened. The new app will feature sync capability, enhanced security using encryption APIs, ability to upload files and remote wipe. This just in… the app was submitted to the Apple App Store less than 24 hours ago.

The new ShareFile mobile app with allow users to get seamless access to all files and folders on-the-go. Earlier this year, we released file sharing applications for the Apple iPad and iPhone, Android phone and tablet, Windows phone and an app for Blackberry users. Apps are available free to download for ShareFile customers.

Citrix also announced ShareFile integrations into its Receiver, allowing Xen App to open and view/edit files from the Receiver.

Check out some screen shots from the iPhone and iPad below.

ShareFile fits perfectly into the Follow-Me-Data vision of anywhere, anytime access to data and collaboration. The ShareFile service will continue to make it easy for businesses of all sizes to securely store, sync and share business documents and files, both inside and outside the company. Our centralized cloud storage capability allows users to share files across multiple devices and access them from any location, hence “Follow-Me-Data.”

Citrix customers will be able to enjoy ShareFile as a standalone service in a browser, on a desktop as a separate app and within Microsoft Outlook. ShareFile capabilities will also be available as a ‘Workspaces’ feature within the GoToMeeting collaboration product. Customers can expect to see this feature arrive in early 2012 at no extra cost for GoToMeeting customers. Cool, right?

Tune in here to check out a Synergy demo video of ShareFile by Jesse Lipson. You can also enjoy a virtual Synergy experience by simply logging into your favorite social media account. Follow updates @sharefile.

Is your data following you?

Citrix will reveal more of its plans for ShareFile and the “follow-me-data” strategy next week, October 26th-28th at Citrix Synergy™ Barcelona. Jesse Lipson, and Ed Cheely, who leads worldwide sales for the ShareFile product, will lead an informative breakout session and educate attendees on ShareFile. Attendees will learn how ShareFile applies to their business and how ShareFile differentiates from competitors.

If you are attending the event, you can attend “Everything you need to know about ShareFile, a new Citrix offering” on Thursday, October 27th at 15:00 in room CCIB-Room 117. However, if you’re like me and will not be on-site, you’re still in luck. Sessions will be streamed live- no registration needed. Just simply log in using your preferred social networking credentials- LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter- I’ll be on Facebook!

If you haven’t gotten a chance to check out our Facebook page, go ahead and give us a like and stay up to date on the latest happenings. We’ll post the link to the live streaming and keep you in the loop.

From Personal Computers to Personal Clouds

In the PC Era, data was typically stored on a single personal computer, accessed from a physical office, and shared via flash drives or email. As the industry transitions to the Cloud Era, an increasingly mobile workforce is demanding easy access to data that is untethered from offices and devices, and easy to share and collaborate securely with others. These trends are giving rise to the concept of a “personal cloud” – the aggregation of apps, data, preferences and friends that are unique to each individual employee, and move seamlessly across any device or location.

Based on industry estimates, Citrix expects the personal cloud market to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity by 2015, fueled by trends such as cloud computing, faster bandwidth, email limitations and the consumerization of IT. Citrix is leading the charge to empower these users, delivering “follow-me-desktops” and “follow-me-apps” to more than 100 million people every day, across a wide variety of business and consumer devices. With the acquisition of ShareFile, Citrix is adding “follow-me-data” capabilities to its portfolio, allowing business users to access their documents and files from anywhere, share them across multiple devices and collaborate easily with colleagues.

Citrix Cloud Data Strategy

The acquisition of ShareFile brings Citrix a powerful new technology platform, and a talented team with deep experience in data services and cloud computing. ShareFile CEO, Jesse Lipson, will become Vice President and General Manager of the newly-formed Data Sharing product group at Citrix. This group will be responsible for the ShareFile product line, as well as enabling the Citrix “follow-me-data” strategy. Taking a platform approach to data will enable Citrix to:

-Make common data services like search, share, sync, secure, authenticate, open and preview available to a wide range of applications, services and use cases through a set of open APIs.

-Extend secure data sharing services to new and existing apps stored in public and private clouds and accessed from millions of different business and consumer devices.

-Connect data seamlessly into the way people collaborate today, ensuring that the right documents and files are always accessible when needed, and always up to date.

Citrix Synergy Barcelona

Citrix will reveal more of its plans for ShareFile and the follow-me-data platform strategy at Citrix Synergy™ Barcelona, October 26-28.

Quotes

Mark Templeton, President and CEO, Citrix Systems, Inc.

“This is a highly strategic acquisition that enables Citrix to deliver all three of the critical components for the personal cloud – collaboration, apps and data – with amazing accessibility and productivity on any device. Our follow-me-data strategy means data will be shared (1) across people, (2) across apps, and (3) across devices. As customers and partners build on this platform, they will be able to easily add follow-me-data services to their software, leverage the data that other apps store there, and instantly inherit all the management, mobility and scalability that’s in the ShareFile infrastructure.”

Jesse Lipson, CEO, ShareFile

“Joining the Citrix team will provide a great home to the thousands of ShareFile corporate customers, serving millions of users worldwide. The combination of Citrix and ShareFile will also help spur incredible new innovation around the role of data in the new Cloud Era workplace.”