Articles about Cloud

It's another dress-down Friday here at BetaNews, and how could I resist dressing down Apple's Siri when cofounder Steve Wozniak makes doing so easy? Besides, I've already asserted "Siri sucks", then there is that lawsuit about the voice assistant. Speaking of Apple legal wranglings, who needs enemies when you've got friends like Woz. Surely the lawyers behind that lawsuit are drooling all over the Times Union, where the comments appeared.

Apple's misfortune: Wozniak used Siri before the iPhone maker bought the company, and he really liked the technology. He called it "pretty incredible". But no longer. "A lot of people say Siri. I say poo-poo". He gives an example. Before Apple bought Siri: "I would ask 'What are the prime numbers greater than 87?' and they would come up all in a row". Afterwards: "I'd say 'What are the prime numbers greater than 87?' And I'd get prime rib".

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Amazon has expanded its support options for its Amazon Web Services cloud offering, giving better free support to all customers and reducing the pricing of paid support tiers. The company is also renaming the paid tiers to better represent its target customers.

These tiers had been named Bronze, Gold and Platinum -- they are now referred to as Developer, Business, and Enterprise. Amazon expanded its paid support options back in January, and added third-party support and Trusted Advisor services in beta to its Gold and Platinum support levels. Thursday's moves take these offerings out of beta, and makes the higher-level support options affordable to a wider range of AWS customers.

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Skype has just launched Skype 5.10 for Windows, and 5.8 for Mac, and both releases contain small but worthwhile tweaks that should make the upgrade worthwhile.

The Windows client sensibly merges the Facebook and Skype contacts into a single Contacts list, for instance. And if you’ve so many friends and colleagues that it becomes tricky to manage, no problem: it’s now possible to pin your most important contacts to the top, so they’re always immediately accessible.

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Norwegian browser developer Opera Software ASA has released Opera 12 32-bit and Opera 12 64-bit for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Version 12 of the cult web browser, which is a major player in Eastern European markets, but enjoys more cult status worldwide with around 4 percent market share, introduces several major new features, including theme support and the ability to directly access the user’s web camera from the browser.

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Cisco knows that the cloud is worthless without networking, so its Cloud Connected Solution announced on Wednesday shouldn't surprise anyone. The company debuted both new cloud-enabled software for its ASR and ISR routers as well as a virtualized router aimed at extending virtual private networks to the cloud.

This new router software will be found on the ISR G2 platform, and a new Aggregation Services Router (ASR) platform based router, the ASR 1002-X was introduced. Cisco announced new Unified Computing System (UCS) E-Series Server Modules on the ISR G2, which is also on the way.

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Most security companies don’t seem to place much value in parental controls, usually demoting them to an underpowered module in the darkest recesses of their security suite. But maybe that’s about to change. Bitdefender has just made available the first public beta of its standalone Parental Control package, and at first glance it looks really quite impressive.

You can of course use the program to prevent particular actions. In just a few clicks it’s possible to filter inappropriate web content, for instance. You’re able to restrict the use of particular applications, block instant messages from anyone other than a list of allowed contacts, and ensure the child can only use the internet at the times you define.

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Cloud computing is one of the most hyped (some would say overhyped) concepts in IT right now. But data from research firm Strategy Analytics suggests that real-world application of the cloud is now beginning to match that hype.

SaaS is experiencing significant growth, as it is perhaps the easiest cloud technology for enterprises to adopt and deploy. Some 64 percent of the 1,750 organizations surveyed across the US, UK, France, Germany, China, India and Brazil report increased spending year over year. Other cloud technologies are seeing growth, but nowhere near to the degree of SaaS.

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Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) has reached the one trillion mark in number of objects stored. For some perspective, that's 142 objects for every person on the planet, or counted one per second, it would take you 31,170 years to count them all.

The feat shows that Amazon's cloud business growth continues to accelerate. In a blog post announcing the event, web services evangelist Jeff Barr notes object growth reached an astronomical 3.5 billion per day, or about 40,000 every second. There doesn't appear to be any end to it either as more and more large scale customers hop onto S3.

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Amazon Cloud Player, a service that lets Amazon users stream their cloud-stored music collection to their mobile device over a regular data connection, has been available on Android for more than a year. Tuesday, Amazon finally released the iPhone and iPod touch version of the Cloud Player App.

Just like the Android version, users can stream their music, download songs, or manage their music in the cloud, with the included ability to share playlists created in iTunes with the user's cloud library.

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While the focus of WWDC's iOS 6 announcements surround Apple's decision to kick Google to the curb when it comes to maps, there are plenty of other features coming to the next version of Apple's mobile operating system that deserve mention.

"iOS 6 continues the rapid pace of innovation that is helping Apple reinvent the phone and create the iPad category, delivering the best mobile experience available on any device", iOS chief Scott Forstall says.

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It's a big number and one still well ahead of Android. Just in early 2012, Apple has shipped at least 50 million iOS devices, with iPad adding force to iPhone. Apple calls them "post-PC devices". For all 2011, Apple sold 172 million iOS devices. But wait, haven't we heard this 365 million number before? Indeed, it's same as revealed in late April for the period through end of March. I'm quite surprised Apple didn't update the number, considering the big iOS 6 reveal during today's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote.

New iOS 6 features include FaceTime video over cellular, Facebook integration, Passbook for buying movie tickets and other passes, shared photo streams and new maps app, among others. The new capabilities aren't just for iPhone users but developers, as Apple provides them more built-in utilities to tap into. They received iOS 6 beta today. The software ships in autumn, presumably with iPhone 5.

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Apple's yearly developer conclave is here, and we're expecting a good deal of news out of this year's event. We'll see the debut of iOS 6, and likely a significant refresh to the Mac lineup. Of course, Apple always likes to surprise, so it's fairly likely that some of the rumors we've heard -- from new native apps to some enhancements to iCloud -- will also be announced.

WWDC 2012 is also the first major company event to happen after the death of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs. It will be interesting to watch how CEO Tim Cook and the team handle the event without their iconic and charismatic leader running the show.

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Microsoft is doing what it can to promote cloud computing, focusing on the platform at the TechEd annual developer conference in Orlando, Fla. this week. In the event's opening keynote, Server and Tools chief Satya Nadella told a sold-out crowd of 10,000 that the future of Microsoft is in the cloud.

In the month or so leading up to TechEd, Microsoft has made a fair number of cloud-related announcements. Some of this is out of necessity, because of customer demand, but a lot of it has to do with competitive pressures.

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As we move through June, there are more and more software titles being released. The past week has been pretty busy, particularly on the web browser front, but there have also been a number of other programs worthy of note.

If you still use physical CDs and DVDs, ISO Workshop 3.0 is worth taking a look at as it enables you to work with virtual drives to save having to keep switching discs. Diskeeper 12 Home is a great tool for anyone looking to ensure that their hard drive is completely defragged, and Diskeeper 12 Pro includes support for drives exceeding 1TB. Another interesting tool for maintaining your system is GhostBuster 1.0.1.0, a free utility that remove references in the registry to hardware you no longer use. There’s also a portable version available – GhostBuster Portable 1.0.1.0.

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With the recent announcements of password breaches at LinkedIn, and warnings from Google about state-sponsored attacks on Gmail accounts, it seems like a good idea now to review some password security basics. Then there is report today that someone hacked presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Dropbox and Hotmail.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at a rather low-tech solution to a decidedly high-tech problem: How to guard against password reset attacks, and where to securely store the answers to your password reset questions.

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