Citrix seems to have hit the spot far more accurately than it had intended with its browser-based "Program Neighborhood" strategy, unveiled at the company's iForum show in Florida today. Citrix is planning to give user any time, anywhere access to multiuser applications via a browser, and ears on the Internet are starting to prick up. As far as deployment is concerned, all of Citrix's plans are supposed to be conceptual right now, but the recent demo seems to be turning into a deal. Citrix's Charlotte project is intended to allow users to access remote applications via a browser, and to have their own personal settings available to them from any machine. The product won't ship for a few months yet, but as part of the demo today Citrix showed a 'concept' screen of a MyYahoo page. The concept itself didn't have anything to do with Yahoo, but Yahoo was involved in approving it, and is apparently extremely interested. Charlotte could potentially allow Yahoo users to rent applications of their choice via a browser, and Citrix's idea of MyYahoo was therefore a mock-up of a typical Yahoo screen with the addition of application access. That didn't mean a deal with Yahoo, but when Citrix approached the company to get permission to use the screen, after a brief pause Yahoo said yes, go ahead, but come round to talk to us about it. That's not entirely surprising. Offering users applications as well as content resources is going to be a lifesaver for ISPs and portal sites, so an easy, maybe even off-the-peg, way to do this is going to be exceedingly attractive to them. So it wouldn't be entirely surprising if Yahoo struck an ASP deal with Citrix in the very near future. ®