Articles about Storage

Like it or not, the New Zealand-based entrepreneur Kim Dotcom continues to make headlines thanks to his latest project, Mega. The cloud storage service launches on January 20, and merely days before the big opening Dotcom revealed that Mega will indeed be mega in the storage department.

In a Twitter post, Kim Dotcom said that Mega will offer "generous limits for free [plan] users". But just how much is "generous"?, you may ask. The soon-to-be-introduced service will give users a whopping 50GB of free cloud storage, matching MediaFire's offer, and top established market competitors such as Box, Dropbox, Google's Drive and Microsoft's SkyDrive. Basically if there's a "box" or "drive" in the title, then it's not as "roomy".

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The words "free" and "50GB of cloud storage" don't often come together in the same sentence, so when the company announced the mind-boggling offer there was only one question on my mind: "When's it coming to Android?" Well, good things come to those who wait! After an almost five-month hiatus, MediaFire arrived on green droid land.

So what's it like? Well, straight off the bat MediaFire for Android "features" a major flaw -- users cannot sign up for the cloud storage service using the app. That's an inconvenience seeing as, for instance, Box or Dropbox do sport the basic functionality. That said, the app does have some interesting features starting with the camera options.

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Usually when users wish to transfer apps with data between Android devices, a fairly cumbersome process is involved. There's an easier way though. Koushik Dutta, the developer behind popular modding tools such as ClockworkMod and ROM Manager, unveiled Carbon, an app that can get the job done by itself after touching a few buttons.

But who actually needs it? While Carbon may present a limited appeal to most Android users, it actually makes sense for those running apps grabbed from third-party sources such as Interweb forums, a common occurrence for modders, beta apps that are unavailable to download from the Play store (a good example is the Dropbox preview build) or for users that simply wish to have the same app data across several devices. Think of game saves and you get the picture.

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It may be Friday evening and, according to Jimmy Buffett it is always five o'clock somewhere, but Dropbox has not finished its work week, pushing out one final update. So put away the beer or wine and pick up your Android. Late today the company announced an update that "makes it super easy to share collections of photos with friends and family".

Dropbox has been busy lately, given the stiff competition the cloud service is suddenly receiving from all sides -- Box, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive and others. This update is all about photo sharing. From the Photos section, users can now tap a button and choose the pictures they wish to share with friends and family. You can add them to a shared album or even do it via an emailed link. In fact, you can even utilize Facebook or Twitter for the process.

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Consumer Electronics Show is a big crazy event. There is a lot of new technology that might or might not see the light of day a couple of years down the road, and a whole lot more stuff that is rather hum-drum. Walking through millions of square feed of convention seeing thousands of cheap speakers and iPhone cases and over sized TVs can be a numbing waste of time.

That is why I like the side event, Showstoppers, which puts together a pretty good lineup of interesting tech products. While nothing jumped out as much this year as last, these are a few that piqued my interest as having some potential, or were simply interesting.

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On Tuesday, even with all the CES 2013 madness, Microsoft introduced a host of new features addressed to the company's Windows Azure SDK for .NET. The latest version of the software development kit focuses on expanding support in roles, increasing productivity, making new tools available and delivering new and updated libraries.

The revised Windows Azure SDK for .NET allows users to run cloud service applications in Windows Server 2012, and provides access to more features in IIS 8 (Internet Information Services) and .NET 4.5 when the server operating system is selected. The updated software development kit also introduces support for Visual Studio tools, delivering improved tooling for Cache and Server Explorer for Storage and Service Bus, diminished context switching to portal as well as support for up to 25 management certificates per subscription.

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Just because Microsoft is not in Las Vegas -- other than a cameo appearance by CEO Steve Ballmer last night...oh, and all of its software, which is powering many of the gadgets you see at the Consumer Electronics Show -- the company is not standing still, today announcing updates to cloud storage service SkyDrive.

That is important because all of those Windows 8 computers and tablets, and even the Windows Phone 8 devices that are being displayed in Sin City can utilize SkyDrive for storage. In fact, the upcoming Office 2013 will do so as well. That means the company's cloud needs features to get customers interested.

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The popularity of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model has raised a lot of questions about security and the cloud, and firms embracing the trend also have to worry about what might happen to important data if a laptop, tablet, or smartphone gets stolen, lost, or broken while an employee is away from work.

It doesn’t matter how careful people are, accidents will always happen. According to a recent study by SquareTrade, over 30 percent of iPhones have been damaged in some way. Deaths by misadventure include being dropped in the toilet (9 percent), put in the washing machine (5 percent), and being left on the roof of a car prior to the driver making a quick getaway (6 percent). In the case of BYOD hardware, the loss of data is usually more worrying that the loss or destruction of the device itself.

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While the Consumer Electronics Show is mostly about gadgets for your home, there's more to it. Unfortunately, devices that are more functional, as opposed to flashy, tend to fly beneath the radar. That means that good, useful equipment, that we will actually see on the market before CES 2014, does not get the attention it deserves.

That is the case with a new LaCie network attached storage device designed for small businesses. The company today announced its 5big NAS Pro, a device that brings some new functionality to the product line. According to LaCie, the new NAS will have what it describes as "True Hybrid Cloud". This will use the company's own cloud storage, Wuala, and display both network and cloud storage in one view. This means one interface for both users and administrators, which is especially important on mobile.

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Little more than two months after Windows 8's release, popular cloud storage service Dropbox finally offers an app through the Windows Store. However, unlike Box and SkyDrive, which both deliver a fairly competent feature set, the Dropbox app for Windows 8/RT is a half-baked affair, leaving much to be desired.

Even at first glance, the Dropbox app touts a modest feature set with no advanced functionality to speak of. It allows users to browse and preview uploaded files, edit, open and save items from "other Windows 8 apps", and share and find files using the Search Charm. Users cannot edit uploaded Dropbox files using the app, only open items, making it a glorified file browser with a few extra features. Furthermore Dropbox for Windows 8 appears to be rather unstable.

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For early adopters that prefer to live on the bleeding edge of technology, popular cloud storage service Dropbox unveiled a new preview release. The most noteworthy feature for keen beta users is the ability to receive updates to future early and final releases.

The current preview build also introduces the option to share multiple pictures at once. The functionality is enabled by a long tap on a photo and selecting the remaining ones afterwards. In a similar manner users can also organize pictures into albums, the latter of which can also be shared, and delete multiple photos.

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On Friday, Microsoft unveiled a host of new features for the company's cloud platform, Windows Azure. The latest update beefs up the software corporation's offering by expanding the availability of Windows Azure Store into more regions as well as adding support for Mobile Services in Northern Europe.

Microsoft states that the company also plans to extend support for Mobile Services to "all Windows Azure regions world-wide", but did not provide any specific details as to when that will happen. The Redmond, Wash.-based corporation touts a number of other changes in the last Windows Azure update to Mobile Services, Web Sites, Media Services, SQL databases, Virtual Network improvements as well as Subscription Filtering support.

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While the cloud generally provides for better reliability than on-premise systems, having a solid backup plan is still a universal necessity. Cloud solutions like Google Apps and Office 365 have nearly eliminated the notion of data loss due to technological failure. The systems and processes in place that govern the storage of your important data with players like Google and Microsoft are rock solid. We can fault providers for service downtime any day of the week; but you'll be hard pressed to read about cases where they actually lost your data.

The biggest issue with data loss on cloud platforms lies within the acute problem of human error. We aren't perfect and will likely always be dealing with data loss stemming from incorrect clicks, mistaken deletion, and other similar circumstances. For this very reason, even with its inherent safety nets, the cloud needs a fallback of its own.

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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.

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If you live in the Dublin area, or are looking to move there, cloud storage service Dropbox may have a job for you. This morning the company announced it will be opening its first foreign office and has chosen Dublin, Ireland as the location. Until now, despite having customers in more than 200 different countries, the company's operations were all handled via its offices in San Francisco.

Aside from the obvious job creation benefits, Mitra Lohrasbpour writes that there will be numerous upsides for customers as well, including user support in more languages and extended hours of support for Dropbox for Teams.

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