Archive for the ‘Cloud Services’ Category
During our boring time in Vegas attending CES, we came across a bunch of guys that were surrounded by sheep. Now, if it wasn’t for the fact they were also surrounded by gorgeous Apple computers, Mike and I probably would of just walked on by. They asked us their questions on how we back up, if we use Time Machine and so on and so on. After hearing their talk for a few minutes, it clicked. Mixing a “set it and forget it” service like Time Machine with cloud based storage is ingenious. It makes sense.
I’ve been using Dolly Drive for the past couple weeks, and with their presence this week at MacWorld, I wanted to dive into what I think about the cloud guys with the cute little sheep logo.
Hop on in and find out more about Dolly Drive and online Time Machine back-ups…
Western Digital didn’t have a huge presence at this year’s CES, but they made a big impact on us here at Gadgetsteria. A blogger meet-up was scheduled last night and after a long trek through the Caesar’s Palace, we finally made it to the event. As we drank our beverages we were given a sneak peak at their new line of drives featuring Apple’s highly utilized Thunderbolt technology. A handful of companies had Thunderbolt hard drives announced and demoed over the week, and as we have seen all of them running we were really impressed by what WD had to offer. These were unannounced prior to CES, as was most of the stuff we saw that night.
We’ll touch on that a bit inside, but what we are really excited about is the update to Western Digital’s WD2go mobile app. We got a demo of the new UI in action across iOS, and after being told no about the pictures and only given permission to do a write up, we were finally granted access to a full suite of shots and an in-depth look into the 2.0 update.
Hop on in for a full gallery and the highlights of everything we saw at the event…
Today just a few hours before CES Unveiled kicks off the pre-CES festivities, Acer officially revealed plans for their own iCloud competitor, “AcerCloud”. Like iCloud, AcerCloud will connect all devices (desktop, tablet, smartphone) with a personal cloud and allow syncing of data between said devices. Most intriguing, however, is that AcerCloud will allow mobile devices and remote computers to pull content from the host device even if it’s in sleep/hibernation mode.
From here, the service breaks into three areas: PicStream, AcerCloud Docs, Clear.fi Media. Jump in for the goods…
Wish you could make voice calls right within Google Hangout sessions? Now you can! Announced by Google’s Jarkko Oikarinen, users in the U.S. and Canada can now hit the “Phone” button within Google+ Hangout windows and bring in anyone via phone. The feature will be free through 2012.
The Google+ machine keeps churning along…
- November 30, 2011 12:52 pm
Spotify’s special event just wrapped up, and with it come details on the company’s future amongst a heap of recent Spotify articles good and bad. The once little known service inside the U.S. has quickly become a music juggernaut. During today’s event, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek stated that Spotify has secured licensing deals with all the major labels and adds over 20,000 tracks to Spotify’s library each and every day. According to Ek, the full library would take over 100 years to listen to from start to finish, and all this reaches 10 million listeners. But enough fluff. Here’s what Spotify announced today…
- November 30, 2011 11:31 am
Just like they did back in the summer for TouchPad owners and again earlier this fall for iOS owners, Box.net will (soon be) offering up 50 GB accounts for FREE for owners of Sony Ericsson phones. Much like the previous instances, all that’s needed by the end user is to simply sign in to Box.net via their Sony Ericsson device to unlock the 50 GB of storage before the end of next year.
The promotion isn’t ready for prime time just yet as is evident by this response sent by Sony Ericsson to The Next Web:
“On Monday afternoon, we mistakenly posted a promo offering Xperia(tm) owners 50GB of free storage via the Box for Android mobile app. While we’re really excited about working with Box down the road, this offer is not active today. We are in the midst of finalising the details of this promotion and are working to provide this offer very soon to all Xperia(tm) customers so stay tuned!”
If Box.net keeps it up, everyone is going to have 50 GBs of free storage — not that we’re complaining or anything.
All that said, take the above claims regarding the Sony Ericsson/Box.net partnership with a few grains of salt seeing as how a few t’s and i’s still need attending to.
- November 16, 2011 6:24 pm
Well, it is official with the Google press event wrapping up we know Google Music is official. With the online search giant dropping the beta tag and expanding its tendrils into the music industry by netting deals with major labels like EMI and Sony, it is shaping up to into quite the iTunes competitor.
Google Music will allow users to upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them in 320 Kbps quality from pretty much any device that has a web browser. Best of all, all of this new found Google Music action will remain free!
In addition to music labels being added to Google Music, some integration with Google+ was announced as well. Google+ users can share songs and entire albums with other Goolge+ users whom in turn are given one full free play.
Not to veer too far from the topic — Google+ is shaping up to be a very robust social medium. We like what we have seen so far and are looking forward to the months ahead to see what additions Google+ and Google Music will receive.
The new service is officially live at music.google.com as is the official Google Music Android app.
Well be giving Google Music a thorough testing over the weekend. Look for our Google Music “review” early next week.
In the meantime…Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
- November 16, 2011 7:29 am
Apple’s iTunes has long been the go-to standard for digital music distribution. In recent years, however, Amazon has been chasing Apple’s tail hot and heavy. And now, Google is set to enter the fray beginning with the (rumored) launch of the new Google Music Store later today.
The Google Music Store will work similar to iTunes in that users can purchase and download music for $1. One nice addition that iTunes won’t feature: the ability to share 1-2 free plays on Google+.
The labels on board include majors Sony, EMI, and UMG (Universal Music Group) as well as a healthy assortment of smaller labels and independents.
Considering Google’s remained rather quite on Google Music’s online, self-created streaming locker, we’d imagine now would be a good time for them to announce an integration between the upcoming Store and locker, and potentially some other tasty treats that have neglected to make their way to us.
We’re finally getting to a period in which iTunes has some serious competition breathing down the back of their neck. If Microsoft can get something running for WP7, consider us tickled. Competition, competition, competition…
- November 16, 2011 7:15 am
Owners of BMW and MINI branded cars will soon have a much more enjoyable ride compliments of streaming audio from MOG. The German car company announced that iPhone owners who drive either a BMW or MINI vehicle will be able to get exclusive access to MOG’s 13-million strong library of high quality 320 Kbps songs. The integration is tied into both the “BMW Apps” option and “MINI Connected infotainment systems” specifically.
Higher quality cars, higher quality music.
