Articles about Cloud

Nearly six months ago, I voiced in on the Google Apps vs Office 365 debate and let it be known that (at the time) I fully believed Google Apps was the better platform in many respects. Fast forward to February 27, and Microsoft unveiled why waiting until the second (or third) try on a given product is usually a good bet. In all honesty, I think Microsoft has been on the right track with Office 365 for four to five months now, introducing quality features and fixing stability issues that plagued its reputation in the past.

I'll go so far as to say that the Office 365 ecosystem has been nothing short of respectable lately. My technology consulting company FireLogic steadily has recommended the suite as reliable alternative to Google Apps for some months now, and the results are extremely positive. Heavy Microsoft shops moving away from their legacy on-premise Exchange servers are itching for a new home, and the company seems to have a cloud of its own that is living up to even my stringent expectations.

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Twentieth in a series. Windows Store has seen another strong week in terms of new apps that found their way into the store. The app count of the U.S. store is currently 32,552 apps in total, an increase of 1,104 apps over last week; 25,062 of those apps are free to download and install, an increase of 927 apps in the last seven days. Paid apps saw an increase by 177 apps this week to a total of 7,490 apps.

The Yahoo Mail app received a much needed update this week introducing support for new languages, the ability to  add, edit and delete folders, and to search for words in emails in the account.

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Bitrix24 offers social intranet for enterprises and small to medium businesses, but with a twist -- the firm’s cloud-based service is entirely free for organizations with 12 or fewer users and includes 5GB of online storage space and essential tools, such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), project management, and instant messaging.

We’ve covered the firm’s service previously, but Bitrix24 has just rolled out a new version of its CRM platform that comes with project management fully integrated. Tasks, calendars and other similar tools are now available from within the CRM module and documents can be stored inside the CRM, attached to entries, and shared with employees (with different rights levels controlling access).

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Apparently there is some new Samsung phone being announced later today, but for the past 24 hours Google owned the news cycle for all of the wrong reasons. Yesterday the company tried to quietly announce its latest round of spring cleaning, but an app included in that list, Reader, got a bit more attention than the company likely wanted.

Now companies are stepping all over one another in a rush to fill a void that is apparently much larger than Google would have you believe. Feedly, perhaps the biggest competitor, already posted detailed instructions on how to get rid of Reader and move to its service. The company claims this move was "something we have been expecting for some time: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless".

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Microsoft has released Skype for Windows 6.3 and Skype for Mac 6.3. Despite identical version numbers, both builds are independent of each other, and are released separately.

While the Windows version is a straight maintenance release, Mac users gain a couple of new features: an in-call DTMF dial pad and the ability to view a slideshow of other participants in a group call when the user is the current speaker.

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I sometimes wonder if Larry Page is a neatness freak. After all, throwing out stuff defines his nearly two years back as chief executive. He has chucked more Google products than junk I discard from our apartment -- there's no hording around here. Nor at Google. But the last 24 hours is simply unprecedented for changes that broadly affect customers and partners. This Spring cleaning is something to behold.

Let's start with today. Jeff Huber is out as head of Google Mapping and Commerce. He explains: "Finishing up my first decade at Google, and excited to return to my startup roots and begin the next one at Google X! Let me know what you'd like to see Google X do next". The Wall Street Journal says there's more: Google Maps will split from Commerce and become part of Search and the other folds into Advertising.

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There are plenty of benefits of living in the cloud, but some major downsides too. Nearly five months ago an Amazon Cloud outage took down BetaNews' group chat service, alongside Heroku, Flipboard, Foursquare and Reddit among others. And, two days ago, Microsoft users went through a similar ordeal which mostly affected Hotmail, Outlook.com and SkyDrive -- three of Microsoft's more essential cloud services.

Microsoft's vice president, Arthur de Haan, has chimed in on the matter in a blog post which links the outage to the upgrade process from Hotmail to the new out-of-beta email service Outlook.com. Since 13:35 PM PDT on March 12 until 5:43 AM PDT on March 13, de Haan says that "a small part of the SkyDrive service, but primarily Hotmail.com and Outlook.com" suffered from a service interruption caused by a firmware update which failed "in an unexpected way".

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Expressing his disappointment towards Google killing Reader from July 1, my colleague Alan Buckingham said in our newsroom, "I swear I am switching to Firefox, Bing and Outlook.com in protest!". Other users, however, have resorted to less extreme measures and instead chosen to show their non-acceptance through petitions.

Less than 24 hours since Google gave us the sad news, there are at least three petitions on change.org with more than 37,000 signatures combined demanding the search giant "Keep Google Reader Running" and "Do not remove Google Reader on July 1, 2013". One petitioner tried to appeal to Google's good side with "Please do not shut down Google Reader". The number of signatures may not appear to be high enough at the moment to reach the goal, but that will undoubtedly change in a matter of days, if not hours.

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I can live with iGoogle going away -- I never use the service anymore. But this one really hurts, though perhaps more to those of us who write about technology than those who read about it. However, statistics show that many of you also use the RSS feed to easily track your favorite sites. That is why today's execution notice from Google hits below the belt.

Reader, along with several others, have been rounded up, tried and found guilty of not being productive enough to warrant continued life. Reader will die July 1. Other Google services have varying dates -- some sooner, while others get a stay.

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Netflix, the popular DVD-by-mail and internet streaming service, today announced that it is bringing social sharing to your video experience with new Facebook integration -- a feature previously available elsewhere, but prevented here by U.S. law. Now you can no longer pretend to your friends that you really didn't watch that sappy love story last night.

Netflix's Cameron Johnson, director of product innovation, states that "Netflix members in the U.S. can share their favorite shows and movies on Netflix with friends by connecting to Facebook and agreeing to share".

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Monitoring the latest BBC news from your Windows desktop used to be very easy: just install the official News Desktop Alert and Ticker and it would keep you up-to-date. The move to smartphones and tablets meant the service was closed a couple of years ago, though, which left your desktop options a little limited.

Unless, that is, you install the (strictly unofficial) Desktop BBC News.

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The storied NFL franchise, the New York Jets, once home to "Broadway" Joe Namath, hopefully has learned a Twitter lesson -- never ask something without fully thinking through the consequences, especially when your fans may be nearing the end of their proverbial ropes. Just ask Microsoft about this.

The organization chose last night, on the eve of free agency, to ask fans for their input on the direction the team should take. I seriously doubt the Jets had any real intention of allowing fans to overrule management, but meant more a fun gesture to make fans feel more a part of the process. The Jets proceeded to ask "Free agency begins tomorrow. The Jets priority should be _________".

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François Beaufort, the developer who recently made headlines by outing Chromebook Pixel, is stirring up things again. He uncovered code that all but assures Google Now will soon come to Chrome and Chrome OS. I can't overstate how enormously game-changing the service will be. Google Now is the purest evolution of sync and the killer app for the contextual cloud computing era.

We are on the cusp of Star Trek computing, where information is available at the command of your voice and the machine is a personal assistant that anticipates you. Google Now delivers a hint of this future on Android devices. Bringing it to PCs puts the search and information giant ahead of everyone because, with the exception of a possible future Microsoft-Facebook partnership, no other company has the resources to provide so much personalized information to so many people in so many places in so many ways.

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If you were anywhere on the Internet yesterday then you likely learned that Marvel comics, publishers of popular series like The Hulk, Captain America, Thor (sadly a personal favorite of my wife) and more, teamed up with Comixology for a giveaway. The Marvel #1 promotion wanted to distribute over 700 free comics via its platform.

Well, to say there was demand may be the biggest understatement I make today. Fans flocked to the website and the servers were periodically overloaded and taken down. Now the company has been forced to suspend the giveaway as it tries to recuperate from the overwhelming onslaught.

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I've been a user, and a fan, of Soluto since the Tel Aviv-based PC management service launched back in 2010. It helped me reduce my boot time by a few seconds, but more importantly it halved the boot time of my in-laws' PC. A move to the cloud means the service now lets me remotely solve issues on several PCs belonging to less tech-savvy friends and family, and I'd definitely recommend it.

Soluto offers various useful features -- it can cut boot times and de-clutter browsers; it will let you remotely manage system security, and even add a Start menu to Windows 8. By collecting anonymous user data, Soluto also offers a fascinating insight into PC use around the globe. Did you know, for example, that in Vietnam the average PC takes a minute less to boot up than PCs in the US and UK? I chatted to Tomer Dvir, Co-founder and CEO of Soluto, about the service, and he told me how it's evolved and how the Soluto community is actively working to find solutions to the system and software crashes that plague PC users everywhere.

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