It's a gargantuan war among industry titans and the winners will control everything for years to come
Damn, what an extraordinary month.
Let’s recap. First, we saw a spate of exciting new Ultrabook announcements, along with some x86- and ARM-based Windows 8 tablets at Computex. Then Apple introduced new spins of iOS and OS X for tablets and PCs, respectively, at its developer gathering. Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8 at the Windows Phone Summit -- and let's not forget the Surface tablet. And this week, Google rolled out new products and concepts buckshot-style at Google I/O, showcasing its first branded tablet, the Nexus 7, and Android 4.1, just to name a few.
Google+ celebrates 1st birthday with Events and History
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One year ago today, Google moved onto Facebook's turf and stunned techdom in the process. How much has changed? Google+ now has a total of 250 million users. Of that figure, Google says 150 million people use the service at least monthly, and 50 percent of those active users do so daily. That doesn’t actually mean 75 million people go to Google+ every day though -- it just means that they have some sort of interaction with Google’s social features, or more likely, click +1 buttons.
Google takes on Amazon with Compute Engine cloud service
Google has Amazon in its sights. The Mountain View, California company has announced Google Compute Engine, its answer to Amazon's Elastic Compute (EC2) service. While the company currently only offers its cloud platform in limited preview, it is likely wider availability will come in short order, likely later this year.
Google will provide customers with virtual machines in 1,2,4, and 8 core-configurations running Linux. Each virtual machine will come with 3.75GB of RAM per virtual core, and storage is provided through Google's new persistent block device, or its newly announced Google Cloud Storage product.
Google polishes iOS, adds Chrome trim
In its second day keynote at the I/O 2012 developer confab, Google announced it has brought the Chrome browser to Apple's iOS.
Macquarie analyst Ben Schacter recently released a report that stated that Apple may already be reviewing the app, estimating that it should be released second quarter of this year. However, due to the restrictions in Apple's developer terms of service, it's not going to be the full Chrome experience.
Google I/O Liveblog Day 2 -- how could it possibly be better than this?
I've covered lots of events over the years, but few as exciting as Google I/O 2012. Seriously, the cloud computing giant innovates in ways that, well, people attribute to Apple. There's a very aspirational quality about presentations so far, right down to the hard-knuckle coding sessions. You can feel a real sense of empowerment in the air -- that somehow these developers, and the customers they create products for, will have better lives for participating in this ecosystem.
Like yesterday, I will liveblog the keynote, which begins at 10 am PDT (1 pm Eastern Time) and post in reverse chronological order, meaning the newest stuff will be one top. But it's hard to imagine how Google could out-do yesterday's stunning presentation. Still, there is much ground to cover -- Chrome, Chrome OS, Google TV and the rumored Amazon Web Services-like platform, to name a few. There are still two days of sessions yet. Check back and refesh often.
Need a free, compact web server? Try Serva
Equipping your network with a web server can provide some useful extra ways to share files and information. Of course if you’ve tried to set one up before then you’ll know the process isn’t always straightforward, but Serva aims to change all that.
The program offers straightforward support for several protocols (http, ftp, tftp, dhcp, dns, sntp, syslog), yet somehow remains ultra-lightweight (under 2MB). And better still, it’s portable, which means you can run servers just when you need them, without affecting the host system for the rest of the time.
Google Nexus 7: yet another cheap Android tablet (YACAT)
The cat is finally out of the bag. After weeks of speculation surrounding Google’s vaporous "7-inch Kindle killer", the Nexus 7 is now real. And as I suspected, the search giant’s new reference platform is nothing more than another in a long line of cheap, uninspiring Android tablets.
I mean, what is there to differentiate the Nexus 7 from similarly-sized tablets by Samsung or Acer? They all have the same crappy build quality, the same limited output options (no HDMI?) and the same tinny, poorly-placed speakers that have come to define the 7-inch Android tablet category.
Autodesk cloud goes pretty much anywhere, even Chromebook [video]
Perhaps my biggest surprise walking around Google I/O 2012: Autodesk, and a Chromebook! Cough, cough, gag, gag. What the hell is this? Why would Autodesk demo its big-iron 3D design products on the Samsung Series 5 550. This is not MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
As Randy Young explains it's all about the cloud and extending Autodesk customers' capabilities in the cloud. Let's say you're a builder. You've got AutoCAD and your client doesn't. They can view the design in Chrome. Sure enough, there's an AutoCAD WS plug-in available in the Chrome Webstore. Yes, apps for Android and iOS are available, too. But the developer is here promoting Autodesk 360 cloud service. The concept: Store and share design files in the cloud. If your customer is crazy enough to buy Chromebook. No problem.
Liveblog from Google I/O -- it's insanity
I'm here in San Francisco, undeterred by cancelled and delayed flights, and it's madness. At 7 am PDT, when the doors were supposed to open, the line wrapped around and down the block and around the next one. Man, you should have come. I/O closes an exciting month of developer events -- Apple's WWDC, Microsoft's TechEd, Windows Phone and surprise Surface announcement. But the last word goes to Google, which is expected today to debut the Nexus tablet, expand cloud services and delight with lots more. I'm too rushed to go through them all.
The keynote commences at 9:30 am PDT -- that's 12:30 pm Eastern Time, and all updates here will be in chronological order reversed -- meaning newest first. You'll want to refresh often.
Chrome 20 released -- get it now!
Google has released Chrome 20 to the Stable Channel for Windows, Linux, the Mac and Chrome Frame. And while it’s a less-than-exciting maintenance build with no major visible changes, there are more than enough patches included to justify updating.
The official Chrome Releases blog details its usual top 20 security fixes, for instance. SVG and PDF-related code in particular sees some useful updates this time, although there are other important tweaks as well, including one to “prevent sandboxed processes interfering with each other” (the fact that this was possible before is a significant issue).
Google-backed CliQr may have the solution to end cloud vendor lock-in
Google-backed startup CliQr launched its cloud management platform on Tuesday. CliQr's offering is aimed at making it easier for enterprise IT to migrate legacy apps to the cloud, as well as between different cloud platforms with little additional work.
Lock-in has become an increasing concern among cloud computing industry watchers, as Amazon Web Services takes an ever more dominant role. Rackspace president Lew Moorman slammed AWS last week, saying its proprietary cloud tools make it difficult for Amazon customers to migrate elsewhere.
Google Apps vs Office 365: Which wins over users?
Unlike most tech industry analysts that pit Google versus Microsoft in a paper-specs war each time they opine about these cloud email platforms, I’ve got two cents to offer on the subject from a slightly different -- and perhaps more down-to-earth -- perspective. I’m an IT consultant by day who is responsible for implementing, supporting, and training on each company’s product.
It allows me to have better perspective about how end-users feel about these major cloud suites when “non techies” are at the wheel. And the things they tell me are often no-holds-barred as they rarely hold back. The bigger question most analysts fail to answer still stands: who’s winning the “hearts and minds” of those using these suites?
How long before Microsoft drops SharePoint 'On Premise' altogether?
So Microsoft went ahead and bought Yammer. Amongst the wider coverage were some interesting comments from Kurt Delbene, President of the Microsoft Office Division. In the official press conference he seemed to suggest that any future Yammer integration would be limited to cloud products:
"Yammer provides Microsoft best-in-class enterprise social networking service, as well as a phenomenal list of talented employees that know how to deliver rapid innovation in the cloud. Yammer will be an important addition to Microsoft's cloud services, and this acquisition underscores our commitment to helping customers move to the cloud."
Symform offers 200GB free cloud storage
Online backup services have traditionally been all about storing files from lots of users in a single, large data centre. Which is fine, but can be expensive, as there’s a lot of costly infrastructure to maintain.
Symform takes a more distributed approach, spreading its data around the hard drives of other Symform users. And with that meaning the service is more about managing this distribution than the data itself, the company can offer you up to 200GB of cloud storage space at no cost at all.
Box OneCloud third-party sync solution now available for Android
Cloud storage service Box extended its mobile app framework OneCloud to the Android platform on Monday, allowing apps to use Box as storage for data. The company released a similar offering for iOS developers back in March.
Both platforms offer Box compatibility with 50 productivity apps on either platform. An SDK and API have been made available so that other developers may use Box in their own apps. The apps supported here initially with OneCloud for Android include iAnnotate, Breezy, Docusign Ink and Fetchnotes.
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