Joining me this week on PowerTalk is Ben Chodor co-founder of Happtique, a company that certifies medical, health, and fitness apps through its App Certification program and helps healthcare professionals fill prescriptions with its App Prescribing prescription tool.

That’s right, we’re going behind the scenes and in the know this week on mHealth.

It’s no secret that our lives are becoming more and more connected. Mobile carriers like AT&T, Verizon and others are looking for new revenues streams as smartphone and tablet sales grow. We’re hearing more about The Connected Car and The Connected Home and wearables. In that last category we’ve seen smartwatches and other devices from Samsung, Nike (NKE), Fitbit, Jawbone and others. Smartwatches, Fuelbands, fitness trackers, activity trackers and the like.

With a rich ecosystem of supported devices and applications, mHealth enables you to manage your personal health and wellness from the palm of your hand, anytime, anywhere.

Given the explosive growth of what I call the Connected Society, revenue in the global mobile health market is expected to reach $26 billion in 2017, according to a report released by Research2Guidance. Driving that is the 1.7 billion people that are expected to download health apps by 2017. And there is no shortage to choose from Today - there are about 97,000 mobile health apps in 62 different app stores.

That’s where Happtique comes into play. As you’ll hear Ben talk about, there is a lot going on in the world of health, prescriptions and apps. Before too long, one day your insurance company may reimburse for your home healthcare equipment AND the apps that not only run them, but connect them with you physicians. If you think that’s exciting, just wait until you hear what Ben and I talk about in this edition of PowerTalk.

Joining me this week on PowerTalk is Brian Jaquet, senior marketing manager  of Slingbox. We discuss not only about the past, present and future of place shifting but also what it means for Sling Media and how the company looks to compete in this next battleground. This is what Ted Loeonsis, the acting CEO of Groupon, partner at Revolution Growth and owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics says about Slingbox:

“Slingbox, which turns my iPad into a television, has become an invaluable app for me. Everything that I have on my home TV's satellite setup I can now watch on my iPad, wherever I am in the world.

Over the last year or so we’ve talked with a number of people at a variety of companies. This week we’re venturing into some new territory as we hone in on what I think is one of the next battleground to be fought in what I call the connected device space. That’s a key part of my Always On, Always Connected PowerTrend.

We’re in the middle of what I call the smartphone bloodbath between Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry, LG, and a number of others. 

We’re starting to see the same dynamic take shape in the tablet space as well. 

The area that I’m talking about is the Connected Home and the living room in particular. Odds are you have a set top box, maybe a DVR already and perhaps even a gaming console sitting under your TV. 

You’ve probably noticed that given the rise of the DVR and on demand programming, you and people like you that lead busy lives are abandoning what’s been called appointment TV. 

Instead, we’re seeing a sharp rise in what’s called placeshifting.

In fact I bet some if not most of you are placeshifters

That’s a person who consumes content on one device even though its stored on another one.  Slingbox  invented placeshifting back in 2004 and during the ensuing years"Slingbox" has become to placeshifting what Kleenex has been for tissues.

Over the last decade, the ability to store, watch, send, has not just grown, its exploded as first mobile phones then smartphones, tablets and connected TVs have shipped not by the millions, but by the billions. I’d argue the concept placeshifting has expanded and  now include areas like document synchronization, file sharing and other cloud-centric features from companies like Boxee, Dropbox and cloud applications by Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and others as placeshifting ones. 

Brian and I discuss not only about the past, present and future of place shifting but also what it means for Sling Media and how the company looks to compete in this next battleground. Trust me, this isn’t a conversation you’ll want to save and listen to later.

Joining me on PowerTalk today is Ed Bilek, the head of U.S. shareholder services  for Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA). While you may find it hard to believe, BBVA is arguably the next big bank you’ve probably never heard of.

Before we get to why that is, let’s step back a bit and talk talk one of my   -- PowerTrends -- The Rise and Fall of the Middle Class. That PowerTrend -- of my Great 8 PowerTrends -- looks to capitalize on those companies positioned to benefit from rising disposable incomes in the emerging markets as well as gains in more mature markets, like here in the U.S. or the Eurozone.

What would make a company even more interesting and the opportunity to own its shares even sweeter is if the businesses is is benefitting from a regional to national strategy. A great example of this is Starbucks (SBUX), which is going from a regional presence to a more national one in China. Starbucks recently opened its 1000th store in China during the June quarter, and aims to have 1,500 locations throughout China by 2015. I recommended shares of Starbucks to subscribers of my investment newsletter PowerTrend Profits and including dividends received they are up more than 70%. 

Another company that is embarking on a regional to national strategy is BBVA. For those who have not heard of BBVA before, it is the 35th largest bank globally with assets north of $800 billion according to Accuity. Headquartered in Spain, BBVA has a presence in more than 30 countries. It’s not surprising that you may have not heard of BBVA here in the U.S., it was only a few years ago the company made a concerted effort to bulk up its US footing when it bought Compass Bancshares.

Flash forward to today and BBVA Compass is the 22nd largest bank in the U.S. based on deposit market share per data just released by the FDICBased on conversations I have had with management their long-term goal is to grow BBVA into a top 10 U.S. bank. That’s a similar strategy embarked upon by Toronto Dominion Bank (TD) and it’s served its shareholders well. 

After listening to my PowerTalk with Ed Bilek, I suspect BBVA is a bank that you’ll at the very least want to keep your eyes on.

Joining me today on PowerTalk is Leonard Moodispaw - Chairman and CEO of KEYW Holding Corp. (KEYW), a publicly traded company that provides cybersecurity, and geospatial intelligence solutions for U.S. Government,  intelligence and defense customers as well as  commercial enterprises. 

As we move more and more of our lives into the digital frontier, it exposes us to a different set of risks. Whether your a person, a business or a government, the way in which you need to secure yourself is far different than it was 2-3 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. 

What I just described is the downside of my Always On, Always Connected PowerTrend

Cyber attacks, including website and email hacking, malware infection and targeted denial of service, are being increasingly reported by private users and government departments

How big of a threat is it?

Companies such as Google (GOOG), Twitter, Facebook (FB), Evernote, and recently Adobe (ADBE) have all reported being hacked. In fact, Adobe said it suffered a massive security breach which compromised the IDs, passwords, and credit card information of nearly three million customers.

That’s pretty bad, but it gets worse.

As Verizon (VZ) noted in its 2013 Data Breach Investigation Report, it experienced more than 47,000 reported security incidents and 621 confirmed data breaches last year. Over the entire nine-year range of this study, that tally now exceeds 2,500 data breaches and 1.1 billion compromised records .

With that as a backdrop, does it come as a surprise that The Department of Homeland Security awarded a $6 billion contract to 17 companies to protect the government against cybersecurity threats?

That’s good new for KEYW. While it’s list of intelligence community customers may sound like a lot of alphabet soup, it’s important to realize that it includes NSA, NRO, NGA, AGC and other agencies within the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense (DoD). Winning business from those customers and others led KEYW to deliver revenues of $240 million last year -- that’s up substantially from the $39 million in revenue it achieved in 2009. 

During our time together, Leonard and I talk about what’s going on in the cybersecurity market, how KEYW has been able to deliver that great revenue growth, a new KEYW product offering -- HawkEye G, the industry’s first truly active defense solution to detect stealthy advanced threats, and more

While KEYW may not be a mainstream name today, once you listen to today’s PowerTalk I suspect you’ll be wanting to know more about the company.