Articles about Cloud

Today, Sony issued an official statement about the resumption of PlayStation Network services, starting soon. The company also revealed plans to compensate subscribers with some freebees as part of the "Welcome Back" program, which include 30 days free PlayStation Plus and Qriocity music streaming services. Sony will reveal further details about the freebees on a region-by-region basis.

I attempted to log into PSN early this afternoon Eastern Time, and the service was still down. However, instead of the immediate appearance of the "PlaySation is currently undergoing maintenance" screen, about 10 seconds passed first. That could be sign of nothing, but it's the most response I've seen from PSN in about 12 days.

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The game-console area on the Endpoint spectrum is a place I rarely visit, but Sony's huge PlayStation Network outage misstep has finally caught my attention. What is this company thinking?

Letting the PlayStation Network go down for five days with no resolution in sight, or even indication when there might be one, is sorely trying the nerves of the 70 million PSN users.

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Courtesy of our colleagues at Softwarecrew, on Wednesday we posted a story about Dropbox terms of services changes that came as a surprise, if for no other reason than the service's earlier assertions that employees couldn't access subscribers' files nor anyone not authorized by the user. Suddenly that's changed, with Dropbox stating it will open your stuff to law enforcement. I put a poll in the story, and we asked your reaction to the changes. The results are in, and you're not happy.

"This is why you can't trust cloud anything when it comes to data privacy," writes commenter LurkerLito. "If it goes to the cloud you need to encrypt it yourself with your own trusted encryption program. No matter how much people assure you that their stuff is only accessible by you because of their encryption, that is never really true unless you encrypt it with your own tools."

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Early on Monday, Microsoft announced the availability of the full public beta of Office 365, Redmond's cloud-based enterprise productivity suite that puts Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online into a single subscription package.

It's been just about six months since Microsoft rolled out the first limited beta of Office 365, and now the company is releasing the public beta just about six months before the product's anticipated final launch.

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In the "Back to the Future" movie series, cars can fly in 2015. Flying cars aren't likely in the immediate future, but they will go to the cloud. Today, Microsoft and Toyota announced a telematics deal connecting electric and hybrid vehicles to Azure services.

The first vehicles with the joint telematics solution will go on sale next year, with a global platform being available by 2015. During a joint presentation with Toyota, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described the solution as "telematics in the cloud" and a "backend platform for a wide range of applications" delivered to Toyota vehicles.

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I'm going to try. Would you like to join me?

Google has come under increased scrutiny for being a monopolist -- heck, I've lobbed accusations, too. In December, the European Commission opened an "antitrust investigation into allegations that Google Inc. has abused a dominant position in online search." Google sure seems to offer lots of necessary services that businesses or consumers seemingly can't do without. Or can they?

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As a music producer who went through the rapid changes from the "tangible content" era to the "digital content" era I am incredibly pleased with Amazon's cloud storage and personal music streaming services. Editor's Note: Amazon unveiled Cloud Drive and Cloud Player on March 29.

I had conceived of a unique service similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive around 2004. Lacking the funds and expertise to put something together I chose a career path for my music that was far from designing web and app code. After 10 years of composing, producing, engineering and performing I have amassed a very large publishing catalog of music that I own and operate.

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That didn't take long. On March 24th, Google launched in-app billing in test mode so that developers could test their mobile applications at the Android Market. This evening, Google announced that the service is live.

In-app billing is an important catch-up feature for Android Market. Developers can now collect additional revenue by offering customers option to purchase extras after the initial sale. "Several apps launching today are already using the service, including Tap Tap Revenge by Disney Mobile; Comics by ComiXology; Gun Bros, Deer Hunter Challenge HD, and WSOP3 by Glu Mobile; and Dungeon Defenders: FW Deluxe by Trendy Entertainment," Eric Chu writes at the Android Developers blog.

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Sign me up, baby. Today, Amazon started offering my music (yours, too) from the cloud -- in a web browser or through an Android app. Sorry iPhone users. There is no app for you. The service chokes in Mobile Safari on iPhone, so that's no option.

The concept is simple: Amazon stores your music on its servers -- and you can listen anytime, anywhere and on anything. There are two conjoined services -- Cloud Drive for storage, which also can be used for documents and other files, and Cloud Player for listening to music. Setup is seamless. Amazon customers click links while signed into their accounts, and that's it (Ease of use stops there; see next couple of paragraphs). Amazon offers 5GB storage for free. Additional storage ranges from 20GB to 1TB and from $20 to $1,000 a year, respectively. However, Amazon is running a promotion through the end of the year. Buy one album and get upgraded to 20GB of storage for free.

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In case you missed the announcement yesterday, Google has started testing in-app billing, which goes live next week. It's not exactly loads of notice for developers but still opportunity to test apps before Google turns on the feature.

"In preparation for the launch, we are opening up Android Market for upload and end-to-end testing of your apps that use in-app billing," Eric Chu writes at the Android Developers blog. "You can now upload your apps to the Developer Console, create a catalog of in-app products, and set prices for them. You can then set up accounts to test in-app purchases. During these test transactions, the in-app billing service interacts with your app exactly as it will for actual users and live transactions."

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When you're developing a website, it's important to check how your pages are displayed in all the main browsers. But that's not always straightforward, especially with Internet Explorer, as you can't easily install multiple versions on the same system.

Fortunately there's a simple alternative in Microsoft's Express Web SuperPreview, an Expression Web component that's also available as a stand-alone trial version. The latest version has just been released and it makes a very useful addition to every web developer's testing toolkit.

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I can't say that I like the old one. But the new? You simply have to share what you think about it. One of the things the social web is good for is telling vendors where to put their new logos. Many an online social mob has forced vendors to give up a new logo or other branding change. Remember last year's online revolt against the new Gap logo?

So what's your reaction to the new Chrome logo (OK, Google calls it an icon)? Does it appeal to you? Please answer in comments, or email joewilcox at gmail dot com.

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To accompany its various other iOS apps, Sky News has released a dedicated iPad news app that provides access to the 24 hour news station and a range of other content. The app is currently free of charge to everyone, but in the future access will be free to Sky subscribers, while a monthly fee with be payable by anyone who does not have a satellite package. The app is more varied that other news services, providing a number of different ways to access the latest and recent news.

As Sky News is a 24 hour rolling news channel, the option to view the channel live is to be expected. There is also the option of browsing through the news in Timeline mode which provides access to a collection of news video from the last 24 hours. Whether you are watching live or recorded video, a rewind option is always available so you can review sections you have missed.

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Google's iOS app has undergone a makeover and rebadging. Previously known as Google Mobile App, Google Search still provides easy access to all of Google's online tools, such as Google Docs and Gmail, but the search interface has been redesigned and gesture support has been added. The main focus of the app, as reflected in the name change, is web searching, but links to other online services are still available via a button.

Web searches can be performed in a number of ways -- typing in the usual way, by using voice commands or by taking photographs with your iPhone's camera. However a search is performed, once the results are displayed, a swipe to the right provides access to options that can be used to refine your search, limiting results to images, news, videos and a number of other categories.

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Microsoft on Wednesday announced that BlackBerry mobile e-mail for Exchange Online 2010 is now free for all new customers to the Business Productivity Online Suite, and when Office 365 launches later this year, it will include Hosted Blackberry Services for free.

Previously, Microsoft placed an additional $10 per month per user charge for syncing Exchange Online with BlackBerry devices. According to the company's announcement on Wednesday, current paying customers will soon be given options to take advantage of this change.

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