Cloud

What Apple takes away, Google gives back. Early this morning, Google Maps arrived for iPhone, replacing the app removed by Apple with release of iOS 6. The company's homegrown product proved nothing short of disastrous, for the fruit-logo brand and customers using the app/service. Earlier this week, law enforcement in Australia warned against using Apple Maps, after motorists were misdirected and their lives put at risk.

Reviews rightly have been scathing, while iPhone users cried not to Apple but Google for direction. Now that it's here, irony comes along. Android's developer may do more for current iOS than its maker. A surprising number of people held back iOS 6 upgrades or iPhone 5 purchases, not wanting to give up Google Maps or take on Apple's replacement.

We have seen top-10 lists now from Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook. Sure, all of them provided the raw data pertaining to the most-searched for and most-talked about products, events, people and more from the past year. Google, with it's popular Zeitgeist release, did the same. But the search leader took it one step further and, in so doing, was the real winner in this 2012 popularity contest.

Google provides perspective and emotion to raw, boring statistics and creates something that is appealing to basic human instincts. The company put together a video that will jog your memory, make you smile and bring a tear to your eye.

Within the past few days Instagram has divorced Twitter and added a new filter, Twitter got into the Instagram game by adding photo filters and now Yahoo-owned photo sharing service Flickr has joined the fray with its new iPhone app update. You can probably guess where this announcement is going.

Yes, Flickr has added a set of filters that users can access upon snapping a photo. Like Instagram and now Twitter, there are a standard set of filters including black and white and 15 others that are now part of the built-in editor, which also allows you to crop your image right on the spot. You can then share it via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or email.

Centigrade to Fahrenheit, miles to kilometers, pounds to kilograms -- everyone needs a unit conversion tool occasionally. And if you’re working with simple units, and are online at the time, then a quick web search will probably find a service to help. Or you can often use Google directly: just type 55F in C into the search box for a quick temperature conversion, for instance.

If you’d like some offline assistance, though, or need to run more unusual conversions, then the free ESBUnitConv is a great place to start.

Sign up for an account with a website and you’ll usually see them promising not to share your details with others. “We hate spam as much as you do”, they might claim, although none of this seems to prevent the endless torrent of junk which pours into our inboxes on a daily basis.

It could be a better idea to simply never give out your main email address in the first place, then. And MaskMe is an excellent Chrome extension that can help.

Microsoft has announced the availability of a SkyDrive app for Xbox 360 consoles, giving users the ability to display content stored in the cloud service on any connected TV or monitor.

The Xbox 360 is designed as a content consuming device, and the SkyDrive experience on the console reflects this. According to the software giant, the app focuses on photo and video sharing, as well as playing slide shows, with no mention of productivity. It's fair to assume that Microsoft plans to keep the content editing features for newer devices running Windows Phone or Windows 8/RT.

Sixth in a series. Every seven days we look at some of the best new app releases for Windows 8. This week's releases include Amazon and Nascar official applications, as well as a selection of mostly media-orientated offerings.

Microsoft has added a top-paid category to select localized stores that displays top-rated paid applications. It is likely that this will be rolled out eventually to all stores.

Business plans and marketing plans present a unique challenge because they contain both qualitative and quantitative data that mingle in the same document. Unlike a spreadsheet, where different cells can be set up to affect each other, a business plan's text summaries of numerical data often have to be updated by hand whenever figures are changed. It can be quite a time-consuming process, and small business owners often do not have the time nor the financial resources to devote to this task. This is why Enloop exists.

Enloop offers, to use the silly "aaS" nomenclature, Business Plans-as-a-Service. It has different subscription tiers ranging from free to $39.99 per month which give its users access to its exclusive business plan creation technologies.

Google has announced that one of its cloud-based services, Apps for Business, will no longer offer a free tier. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search leader now asks customers to pay a yearly fee for the service, which includes Google's popular Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Calendar specially designed for private enterprise deployment.

Citing growing business needs, such as requests for "24/7 customer support and larger inboxes", Google considers the premium Apps for Business version is a better option, and as a result eliminated the free variant from its portfolio.

On Thursday, Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra announced the launch of Google+ Communities, a new feature which allows users to join and create interest groups on Google's social network.

Google+ Communities rolls out today and in typical social networking fashion, it will allow both private and public membership options. Users will be able to plan events, start hangouts and share Web content with fellow community members. Categories have been implemented to improve navigability and searchability.

At face value, Podio is a very tough product to describe. Parent company, Citrix, describes it as an "online work platform", which tends to be fairly accurate, but is a definite understatement. Podio has the social likeness of Google+ or Facebook, but don't think Yammer here (Podio politely offers sociability -- it doesn't force it down your throat.) Podio leverages a powerful cloud-based CRM platform that is highly customizable, a la Salesforce. Yet it also happens to integrate useful tabular functionality and spreadsheet importing/exporting to and from Excel. So what the heck exactly is Podio?

After one month of living personally and professionally on Podio, one thing I can say is I know what it isn't. It's not a platform for those looking for a simple cookie cutter solution to a single problem. The product is targeted towards companies small and large willing to invest a little time to get a lot in return. That return, more specifically, is functionality and flexibility. Podio tosses out the "800 pound gorilla" approach to software and instead offers a different perspective: you build it, and they will come.

Can Google get further into the business world by combining Apps and the popular Play store? We are about to find out because the company has announced just that approach. Google has been making inroads for sometime now with the information technology crowd thanks to its Apps offering and, with some high profile conquests in the corporate and government realm, has made real progress against Microsoft and the powerful Office 365 offering. Now Google is taking a mobile approach in hopes of getting even more attention from big business.

In this case the search giant is looking to its growing Android success and the attached Play store to get a better foothold. The company has announced a new "Private Channel"  for the Play store that will allow for the distribution of internal mobile apps.

Do you remember Napster? Not the paid streaming music service sold last year to Rhapsody, but the original peer-to-peer music sharing service that was hugely popular from 1999-2001 when it went down in a legal ball of flames over copyright infringement. Well something Napster-like is emerging from Amoeba Music, the huge pre-owned music and video stores in Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles and some musicians and vinyl junkies are up in arms about it, though I can’t understand why.

Napster was a peer-to-peer service that allowed people to share their music collections online. Amoeba's Vinyl Vaults service is similar in that the company rips tracks from old records as they come into the stores then throws them up on a webpage where they can be downloaded, but not for free. Amoeba charges money.

Bitdefender has released 60-Second Virus Scanner, a cloud-based malware hunter which aims to provide an extra layer of security protection for your PC.

And at first glance this seems to work well. Installation is speedy; there were no conflicts with existing security software in our first tests; and the program really did complete its scan in only 60 seconds.

Nexus devices are largely sold out this holiday season. Supply can't meet demand, particularly the new smartphone. But one Google gadget is missing altogether, pulled before official sales started. I've got Nexus Q, and you should be able to have one, too. The entertainment device is quirky, but I like it. Surely there is stock sitting around in some warehouse somewhere. Sell it out, Google. Give geeks something else to clamor for and recover some of the development and manufacturing costs.

The sphere-shaped device is a remarkable product, and changes fundamental concepts about digitally-delivered entertainment. Users stream music or movies from the cloud, using Android smartphone or tablet as remote control. The approach solves a fundamental end-user problem with digital content: Simple sharing.