Articles about Cloud

Over the last couple of decades the internet has revolutionized how we work, how we shop, how we communicate, and how we consume media. In most regards it has made life quicker and easier, but it has also brought challenges and side-effects. Technology may have made many tasks simpler, but it has also increased distractions and shepherded in more ways to procrastinate. You've probably noticed that while you can get many things done faster than ever, you spend a great deal of time doing nothing of worth.

In fact, rather than saving money, the widespread adoption of technology could be costing business dearly. Research shows that nearly two-thirds of employees spend work hours browsing sites unrelated to work -- a surprising 3 percent of them spending more than 10 hours a week actively avoiding work online. All of these wasted man hours add up, resulting in an average cost of almost $3,000 for employee each year.

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As we saw last week, parental control products are a bit of a mixed bag and are only part of a protection strategy that includes effective education.

If you have several different devices in the family you may also end up using multiple products to protect them. That is unless you use the latest version of Remo Software's MORE which offers cloud-based management across multiple platforms.

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Facebook has issued an apology to "drag queens, drag kings", and the LGBT community for forcing users of the social network to reveal their real names or face having their pages suspended. The social network also bowed to pressure, saying that users will not necessarily have to use their real names in the future. Chris Cox, Facebook's Chief Product Officer, made a statement in an online post that admits the negative response to the policy "took us off guard". Why the sudden interest in real names? It seems that one person may have been to blame.

Facebook caused something of a storm of controversy recently when it forced many users to reveal their real names. Large groups of people were affected by this, but it was a number of drag artists who were most vocal in their complaints -- numerous petitions and campaigns, including #MyNameIs, started up. While it was drag queens who hit the headlines, Facebook's sudden enforcement of its long-standing real names policy also affected performers such as musicians -- fans and friends were confused when seemingly new people appeared in their friend list. Despite the backlash Facebook faced, the social network stuck to its guns, remaining adamant that the policy was here to stay, and dismissing complaints out of hand.

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I preordered Apple's new smartphone on September 12, and it wasn't easy. Few months back, I went "Microsoft All-In" for the summer, purchasing the Nokia Lumia Icon on contract from Verizon. So I didn't qualify for the discounted, upgrade price. But when there's a will, there's a way -- and a generous family member helps make something special happen.

My iPhone 6 review begins with such disclaimer. Like iPad Air, I paid for the device. Apple didn't send me a review unit, but I did ask, and I am not on the preferred list of writers who get early access to "iDevices" and who presumably are more likely to rave. Such qualification is necessary, because iPhone 6 is an exceptionally satisfying handset, and I don't want to be mislabeled fanboy for stating such. That's a brash conclusion coming from someone abandoning a competing smartphone with better specs and satisfying user experience.

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A large proportion of websites are not standalone sites in their own right, but creations based on CMSs such as Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla. This is particularly true for personal blogs, but using a CMS as the basis for a site has been increasingly popular among larger companies. CMSs are used because they allow for articles to be posted easily, make it simple for multiple people to contribute to a site, and allow for different users to be assigned different access rights. They can also be extended through the use of plugins, but these self-same extensions are also a security disaster waiting to happen.

Security experts High-Tech Bridge frequently discover vulnerabilities in extensions and plugins for popular CMSs. It is standard procedure to notify the developer before going public three weeks after the discovery -- this provides an opportunity for the problems to be fixed without alerting others who might exploit it. High-Tech Bridge CEO, Ilia Kolochenko, says that CMS security issues are nothing new:

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How much do you hate ads? How much do ads piss you off? Well prepare to turn into an even bigger ball of hate-filled pissed-off-ness when you hear about Facebook's latest ventures in advertising. Few people would argue against the suggestion that Facebook has all but given up any pretence of being a social network and has become little more than a huge cog in a massive advertising machine. Claims have been made that ads are being made more relevant to users, but the truth of the matter is that users are being made more relevant to advertisers. And Facebook now has a whole new way to follow you around the web to make sure you are delivered even more better-targeted ads.

Facebook has been criticized for forcing users to reveal their real names -- information which is as valuable to advertisers as it is anything to do with security -- and there have long been concerns about privacy settings on the site. Users of Facebook may complain that their newsfeeds are cluttered with news and posts at the wrong time, but one of the biggest issues people have with the site is with ad delivery. Last week we learned that Facebook was on the verge of revealing something "more powerful than what Google can currently do" in terms of user tracking. Facebook has now launched Atlas, an ad platform that can track users as they move from desktop to mobile devices -- and it's sure to raise plenty of privacy hackles.

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Most of us have hopefully managed to get off the sinking ship that was Windows XP. As much of a recent memory as that has become, a new end of life is rearing its head, and it's approaching fervently for those who haven't started planning for it. Microsoft's Windows Server 2003, a solid server operating system that's now about eleven and a half years old, is heading for complete extinction in just under 300 days. Microsoft has a fashionable countdown timer already ticking.

Seeing as we just finished our second server migration in a single week (a personal record so far), sharing some of the finer aspects of how we are streamlining these transitions seems like a timely fit. This braindump of sorts is a collection of best practices that we are routinely following for our own customers, and they seem to be serving us well so far.

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According to an IDG survey commissioned by information management specialist CommVault, private cloud adoption can lead to better IT services, greater agility and reduced risk for businesses.

In order to help companies make the most of these advantages CommVault is introducing a Private Cloud Services Design product that means customers can build a service-centric approach for data management supporting the private cloud in approximately six weeks.

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It's important for any business to establish an online presence, and this is certainly true in emerging markets. It's something recognized by Google, and the company is teaming up with Endurance International Group to help SMBs in Africa and Southeast Asia to launch online ventures.

Google's reputation online precedes it, but Endurance might not be a name that's overly familiar. The company provides hosting, and the new partnership with Google is set to benefit businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Indonesia and Malaysia.

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People are slowly but surely coming round to the idea of SaaS (Software as a Service), and this is particularly true for businesses. Microsoft is making something of a success of pushing monthly or annual subscriptions for Office 365, but there's still a massive untapped market -- small businesses who are simply not in a position to make additional financial commitments each month. GoDaddy is helping to wipe out this obstacle by offering a package aimed at getting small businesses up and running online for just $1 per month; and the package includes Office 365.

As this is GoDaddy, it should come as no surprise that there is a web-focus to the package. For $1 a month, businesses can bag themselves a custom domain and take advantage of the Website Builder tool as well as site hosting. On top of this, there's round the clock support and $50 worth of Bing credit to help with online promotion. This is already a great value deal, but throwing Office 365 into the mix is going to be too much for many businesses to resist.

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Seven years after its inception, online image editing service Aviary has been acquired by Adobe. The Photoshop stalwart is no stranger to the cloud, but this latest purchase seems to indicate that the company is looking to expand further in this arena. Pay a visit to the Aviary website and the Adobe branding is already in place -- there's also a new entry on the Aviary company timeline that has been updated to reflect the acquisition. The Adobe-branded Aviary website makes clear the thinking behind the move: "accelerating delivery of mobile apps that integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud".

It seems that the main reason for Adobe's interest in Aviary is the fact that the ornithologically-named firm has developed a number of mobile SDKs. Aviary is already a popular tool, and Adobe is understandably keen to monetize the popularity of cloud apps and mobile services: Aviary is a ready-made package that encompasses both of these ideas perfectly. An announcement by Adobe explains that "the acquisition accelerates Adobe's strategy to make Creative Cloud a vibrant platform for third-party apps, through a new Creative SDK".

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There is plenty of competition in the cloud storage space, but, unfortunately, for the most part any massive changes are limited to paid plans. They get bigger, they get cheaper, but the free tier, which most users get first, remains largely as limiting as it has always been. Sure, we get a couple of extra gigs for free here and there, but it's all smoke after all, meant to lead us right to the money grabbers. (And who could blame providers for trying to make money?)

Now, Microsoft is doing something rather interesting, as it gives OneDrive users nearly twice as much storage in the free plan, bumping the limit from a so-so 15 GB to a respectable 30 GB. The reason? Well, it's a damn clever one -- the extra freebie is meant to help Apple users who are having trouble with iOS 8 upgrades due to low available storage. Because this is an oft-discussed issue, it is bound to generate some free advertising for Microsoft and OneDrive.

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Twitpic will no longer close on 25 September as the photo sharing service has found a buyer. There's not yet any word on who is behind the acquisition, but the takeaway news is that photos should be safe as Twitpic will live to fight another day.

Just a couple of weeks ago, founder Noah Everett posted the news that Twitpic was to close following something of a legal tussle with Twitter. But things have taken a turn for the better. After users scrabbled to download their images to ensure they were safe, it now transpires that the service is not going anywhere.

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Remember when floppy disks really were floppy? Or the joys of loading programs on a home computer from a C15 cassette? In just over 40 years storage technology has gone from these crude devices to cloud servers that put terrabytes of space in reach of anyone.

But where does the future lie? Hardware supplier Ebuyer has produced an infographic looking at the direction storage may take in the future.

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The PaaSLane tool for assessing the cloud-readiness of applications has been available for two years and has helped many organizations transition their software smoothly. It's able to detect outdated architecture, weak security, platform issues and more.

Now Cloud Technology Partners has brought out a new release to allow Java and .Net developers to assess and optimize their source code for the cloud more quickly and efficiently.

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