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Are you finding it easier to get work done today? Are you plagued by fewer distractions? Perhaps you should thank Amazon. It turns out Amazon had a little hiccup this morning with its cloud services that some pretty big customers use. Those customers include Foursquare, Reddit and Quora, among others. I have to thank Chanel Lee of FanStuff for alerting me to the story. I read up on it over at The Next Web. I’m sure some users have felt a moment of panic — I’m one of them. How can I hope to maintain my status as Foursquare mayor of HowStuffWorks.com if I can’t check in?
On TechStuff, Chris and I have talked about cloud storage at length. There are many factors to consider before you decide to use cloud storage. The advantages are many — you can access your data on Internet-capable devices as long as you have the right login information. Offloading storage to another company frees up space on local drives. And storage companies are supposed to be secure and offer redundancy. But there are drawbacks too. If you lose Internet access for whatever reason, you lose access to your data. If the storage company goes out of business, your data could disappear too. And sometimes companies aren’t as secure as you think they may be. According to a report in The Register, that’s the case with CyberLynk. And it all comes down to a disgruntled ex employee of an animation studio.
Over the past year or so, there’s been a lot of talk about Google and Apple’s efforts at establishing cloud computing services. Apple’s been working on a giant facility rumored to be a data center for streaming media in North Carolina, and Google Music is supposed to be coming soon, too. But while the two companies have been working on their efforts, Amazon beat them to the punch today by launching its own cloud music service, called Cloud Drive.
Google Shows Cloud-Based Computing Immune to Ice, Fire and Gnomes
by Jonathan Strickland | December 10, 2010
Recently, Google held an event revealing more information about the Chrome OS. Unlike traditional operating systems, the Chrome OS is designed to be a thin client. User data doesn’t live on the computer — it’s in the cloud. That fact might scare off some users. After all, if your data is in the cloud, is it safe from prying eyes? And how secure is that data? Google’s response is that the data may be safer in their hands than on your computer.
Just before the 2009 E3 conference, a product called OnLive was creating a buzz in the industry. Unlike traditional consoles or computers, OnLive was a cloud computing gaming platform. Players would connect to games over the Internet. You wouldn’t have to install a game to your computer. Instead, those games would live on servers. You [...]
The Internet is often depicted in drawings as a cloud. That’s not terribly inaccurate; machines join and leave the network all the time, making it impossible to create a true real-time map of what the Internet really looks like. The concept has given rise to a number of related terms for software, services and storage using machines located elsewhere on the worldwide network…
Come join us at 1:00 p.m. Eastern today to see if Chris and I have recovered from the psychological damage we endured while covering the Apple iPad announcement last week. Today we’ll be talking about some mysterious botnet activity, rumored products from Microsoft and an obligatory segment on the aforementioned iPad. Plus you don’t want to miss our special effects extravaganza known as the Tweet of the Week!
You can watch us right here or grab our handy-dandy Facebook application.
Progressive Scan and Being Productive – TechStuff Style
by Jonathan Strickland | January 22, 2010
Podcasting about technology is an interesting experience. Some weeks we concentrate on fun topics like tech movies or technology pranks. Other weeks we’ll tackle harder topics like electronic theory or quantum computing. This week fell somewhere in the middle.
On Monday, we published an episode about progressive scan technology. Progressive scan refers to a method of displaying pixels on a television screen or monitor. It’s the alternative to interlacing, which was the standard technology for analog televisions.
In this episode of TechStuff, Jonathan and Chris discuss online productivity, cloud computing and various types of online productivity software.
Just a little more than two years ago, writer Nicholas Carr blogged about an idea he had about Google and Apple teaming up to build a cloud-based computer. In his post, he said Apple could provide the hardware and operating system, while Google could provide the back-end infrastructure for the machine. For you see, this machine would be using cloud computing and cloud storage, rather than a typical hard-drive setup like other machines.
Carr felt that the Google-Apple cloud computer would be inexpensive and pleasant to use, energy-efficient and extensible. It’s a neat idea. And to a degree, he was right, because Google and Apple are indeed betting on cloud computing options. But there’s one problem: while the two companies do play well together in some arenas, gradually they’re turning into competitors. They seem to be getting quite serious about it.
An article in The Wall Street Journal by Jessica E. Vascellaro and Yukari Iwatani Kane last week described how things are changing.
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