In anticipation of the fall release of iCloud, Apple this week set icloud.com live for developers. iCloud represents a revamped version of Apple's existing Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, and integrates the document sharing features of iWork.com.
Amazon Web Services' efforts to restore service following a power outage at its Dublin data center were complicated further on Monday by an error in the EBS (Elastic Block Storage) software, the company said.
A lightening strike in Dublin on Sunday caused a power failure in data centers belonging to Amazon and Microsoft, causing the companies' cloud services to go offline.
Online storage service Dropbox made an embarrassing error Monday, turning off password authentication for millions of users.
Researchers in Germany have found abundant security problems within Amazon's cloud-computing services due to its customers either ignoring or forgetting published security tips.
Facebook, oh Facebook. Will you ever learn?
Your PC's hard drive may have half a terabyte of data on its platters, and you might not remember the last time you backed any of it up. In all likelihood, though, you use only a few gigabytes' worth of files on a regular basis. With a combination of cloud-storage services, you can keep that data backed up and synced among all of your computers automatically, and access your most essential files whenever you want.
Taking the stage a second time after going on medical leave five months ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is slated to announce the iCloud services offering at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) next week.
Recognizing the growing need for vendor-neutral standards in the cloud computing field, the Apache Software Foundation has prioritized development of its Libcloud unified cloud interface as a top-level project, the organization announced Wednesday.
Turning to Internet services instead of in-house servers appeals to companies seeking lean, mobile operations. The "cloud" is a hot buzzword, but moving the bulk of your infrastructure and data there isn't right for every business. Most small companies plug along with a mix of on-site and off-site hardware and software. For some organizations, maintaining in-house servers is crucial.
Google made an interesting hardware-as-a-service proposition to businesses Wednesday with the introduction of the Chromebook. The Web-centric and laptop-like device will launch next month with support from vendor partners Samsung and Acer.
When I started teaching viola and violin years ago, I brought all the books my students used along with me, just in case the kids forgot theirs. Then the kids became more advanced, and I had to carry more books. I also sent them each home with a practice chart for the week. The studio grew, and I printed out more and more weekly charts.
As you may recall, Amazon recently unveiled its new Cloud Drive service, which provides 5GB of free online storage. (Elsewhere I explained how you could bump your limit to 20GB for under a buck.) The only downside? To access it, you have to use Amazon's Web-based interface. It's not bad, but not nearly as convenient as, say, a local hard drive.
Lenovo on Tuesday announced a hosted applications service that can detect the hardware capabilities of an end user's laptop and tailor the service accordingly.
I'm not sure how to say this, but I'm starting to think I might be antisocial.