Articles about Storage

When Google first introduced the world to Gmail back in 2004, its 1GB of free storage space for messages seemed unbelievably generous. How times change. Since then of course, it’s upped the figure to 10GB, but for a lot of people that’s nowhere near enough. Businesses get a much more substantial 25GB through Google Apps, but even that can be restrictive -- especially if you have to send, receive and store a lot of large attachments.

Cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery firm Backupify can’t do anything about the lack of space for consumers, but it is offering a new free solution for firms. FreeSpace actively monitors the amount of space available in Google Apps Gmail accounts and makes it easy to free up as much space as you need, whenever you need it.

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HTC’s new flagship smartphone, the HTC One, comes with an "Ultrapixel" back facing camera (it’s technically a 4-megapixel camera, but HTC refers to it as an Ultrapixel sensor because the pixel sizes are larger and can capture more light and, apparently, produce better quality images). It also comes with an impressive new live capture mode called Zoe Camera.

Zoe Camera automatically captures content through the camera’s lens when the app is active. Pressing the button will take a picture, but the app will automatically record the action before and after that moment. Zoe Camera can then mash together videos, images, effects, themes and a soundtrack, to produce what HTC calls a "Zoe". And if you want to see what these look like, the online hub for sharing them has just gone live.

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IT departments are picky -- I know from spending time in one during a previous life. However, Box, which still seems to be less-well known than rivals like Dropbox, is surprisingly more popular among large corporations. In fact, the cloud service boasts customers like computer giant HP. The company has also innovated a lot lately, with such offers as 50 GB of storage free to Android customers. Now Box beefs up its enterprise offering with new security measures.

Today Whitney Bouck, the general manager of Box Enterprise announces that the cloud service is "rolling out a set of new enterprise-grade security features and product integrations to help our customers protect their vital content".

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Let us get a bit geeky. This was not my original intention, but it is how things turned out in the end. First, I believe I misspoke twice in part one of this series -- one time was unintentional, the other was apparently my wishful thinking. The first was when I called my recent used server purchase a Dell Optiplex. It is actually a Dell Poweredge. The second involved my new operating system and I'll get to that in a second.

To begin with, the server was running Windows Server 2003 and the small business I purchased it from had failed to wipe the data, but did leave it password protected -- something a tool like Ophcrack may have been able to breach, though I had no desire to try. The server also contained a CD-ROM drive which I needed to replace with a DVD drive in order to install Windows Server 2012 Essentials. Fortunately I had one laying around -- yes, I know that is not normal. You should see our storage room. There are boxes of computer parts and a stack of old towers filling a corner. At least this time the "it will be useful someday" statement worked out for me.

However, the 32-bit server architecture did not support 2012, meaning I moved on to Home Server -- that required 512 MB of RAM, and the server, woefully older than I had thought, only had 256 -- an easy upgrade, but expenses and wife-acceptance-factor for this project were mounting up.

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With cloud services like MediaFire and Mega offering generous free storage straight off the bat, the spotlight slowly fades away from other players and their abysmal free space offers. Box, however, has decided if you can't beat them, join them and is currently providing the same mind-boggling 50GB of free cloud storage, courtesy of Dell.

The offer has been available for a couple of days and comes with no expiration date on the storage limit. Even though it's associated with Dell there is no limitation requiring you to sign up using a Dell device, such as computer or tablet. Any user can take advantage of the 50GB of free cloud storage just by providing the first name, last name, email address, password and phone number.

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The competition in the Google Apps backup market is steadily ramping up, with more than a few contenders jumping in lately to have a piece of this newfound need. Just two months ago, I wrote about my (mostly) positive thoughts regarding Apps backup provider Backupify. But in order to do the competition justice, I decided to give the other popular alternative Spanning a run for the money.

Your choices don't stop at Spanning and Backupify, in case you're wondering. Google stepped into the backup arena with its first party Vault solution earlier last year, which takes the crown for being the  most integrated option (for apparent reasons.) Some of the junior vendors in this space also include CloudAlly and SysCloudSoft. These two latter providers try to edge out Spanning and Backupify with better pricing, but they are not yet as established so it is tough to judge them on cost comparison alone.

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With the ever-increasing popularity of mobile devices, Kim Dotcom's Mega storage locker appears out of place without an official smartphone or tablet app, especially when Box, Dropbox and Google Drive, to name but a few alternatives, embrace the on-the-go user. Thankfully Alexander Hansen, an Android developer, has come to the rescue with his unofficial Mega Manager Alpha.

As the use of "Alpha" in the name implies, Mega Manager Alpha is not a stable release at the moment but rather a "work in progress". The developer also warns that users might experience "some crashes". That said, the app only comes with a limited feature-set, which includes the ability to browse and download Mega content, and does not support uploading files to the cloud storage service.

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There are no shortage of services that can backup your data to the cloud, but now the likes of Carbonite and Crashplan have a bit more competition in the market.

Over the weekend, Bitcasa, which has generated a lot of buzz recently, sent out an email to its early testers to alert them that the service would be leaving beta on Tuesday February 5th.

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BT has said it will end traffic throttling, remove usage caps on all but its entry level broadband packages, and slash the price too.

Its new Totally Unlimited Broadband offering will be priced from £16 a month for 16Mbps copper broadband, £23 for 38Mbps Infinity, and £26 for 76Mbps Infinity. New customers will also get the first six months free.

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Mega has come in for some criticism since it launched, with the likes of Ars Technica, among others, questioning exactly how secure Kim Dotcom’s new file storage and sharing service actually is. Cryptography researcher Steve Thomas even created a tool designed to reveal passwords stored in confirmation emails.

But despite all this, Mega has so far proven to be a sturdy ship. Although it has had a few (quickly plugged) leaky holes, which is to be expected considering it’s still very new, nothing’s come along so far to sink it. And Kim Dotcom is so sure Mega’s security is uncrackable, he’s prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

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Microsoft is no stranger to controversy, even attracting negative attention when it comes to the advertised storage of its own Surface tablet lineup. The interwebs buzzed after the company admitted the shortcomings of Surface RT, which only comes with 16GB of user-accessible storage in 32GB trim, and now the same issue is raising its head all over again with Surface Pro, just days before the big launch.

As most knowledgeable Windows users will concede, Microsoft's latest consumer operating system does take up quite a bit of storage space due to its fully-fledged nature. For example, on my personal computer running Windows 8 Pro 64-bit, the "Windows" folder by itself uses just over 16GB. So it's not overly difficult to imagine Windows 8 Pro will take up a lot of Surface Pro's free space. Of course this is something that educated pundits surely know (or at least they should).

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Right after Kim Dotcom launched Mega on January 19 I succumbed to temptation and registered for a new account. My initial foray was, however, short lived as no confirmation email arrived in my Outlook.com inbox. Clearly, Microsoft's service and Mega did not play well together.

Dotcom shed some light on the matter when he posted the following on Twitter: "Don't use Hotmail to register on Mega. They have mysteriously black holed emails from our domain. Gmail works fine", He shortly followed this up with: "We are working on the 'confirmation email' issue. Some mail services react allergic to an unknown domain sending millions of confirmations". Intrigued by the issue I asked Microsoft for a statement concerning the confirmation email issue with Outlook.com accounts.

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Windows 8's new Start screen evokes many emotions from customers, with most falling on either the love or hate side with almost no middle ground. However, one thing that can be agreed on is that the screen has no shortage of information. Users are bombarded with messages from Facebook, email, weather and countless other endlessly updating tiles. Now Microsoft has added one more to the perhaps overloaded mix.

Today the company announced it is pushing an update to the SkyDrive app for Windows 8 that will bring the live tile features to the cloud storage and sharing platform.

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Nikon is to launch a new online photo-sharing service on January 28. The successor to the Japanese firm’s my Picturetown will be open to all, although Nikon camera users will be able to upgrade to a special account with increased storage and advanced features, for free.

The basic version of the service will give users 2GB of online storage. Nikon owners who upgrade through the dedicated verification app will get 20GB, and the option to password protect images and restrict downloads.

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On January 19, 2012 at 6:48 am local time Kim Dotcom's mansion was suddenly raided by authorities looking for evidence against his popular MegaUpload file sharing website. Since then the case has dragged on, but done little to dampen Dotcom's enthusiasm and spirit. The colorful internet tycoon chose the exact moment of that raid, 365 days later, to launch his brand new Mega site.

In many ways Kim Dotcom is a larger than life figure and Mega is a larger than life site. For one, the service is offering 50 GB of free storage, much more than cloud storage offerings from services like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Box and Dropbox. There are also paid plans for those who need more storage.

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