This is essentially part of an ongoing effort from the search giant to further streamline all of its services and integrate them with one another, creating a seamless ecosystem of Google services. Instead of 10GB in Gmail for attachments and email messages and 5GB for documents and other media in Google Drive, the two are coming together to share amongst each other, as well as Google+ Photos joining the party.

This is good news for users who need more storage for one service more than the other. For example, I store a lot of photos and documents on Google Drive, but my Gmail bin is barely full. With the unified storage, I’ll now have more room in Google Drive for more photos and documents without sacrificing space in Gmail.

However, this means that Google is getting rid of one of its storage plans. You’ll no longer be able to grab 25GB of extra space for $2.50 per month. If you currently have that plan, Google will allow you to keep it until you cancel or change to another plan. After that, you won’t be able to opt for the 25GB plan any more. The cheapest plan now is an additional 100GB for $4.99 per month, which is half the price that Dropbox charges currently.

If you’re a Google Apps user, these changes will also take affect for you, but instead of 15GB of shared storage, you’ll receive a 30GB pool of storage to share amongst the three Google services. To make sure that you know how much storage you’re using for each service, Google will include a handy pie chart that breaks down the amount of storage your using for either Gmail, Drive, or Google+ Photos. Frankly, we’re not too surprised by this move, and we’ve been wondering when Google would finally make a move like this. It’s always been a shame that we could never use our Gmail storage for Google Drive, but finally, that’s changed.

SOURCE: Google Drive Blog

The new app from Amazon can automatically upload photos that you take with your iPhone directly to your Amazon Cloud Drive, and within the app, all your photos will be organized and ready to browse or share. However, just like with Dropbox’s automatic photo upload feature, it only works when the app is open due to limitations within iOS.

The Android version of the app launched back in November, and unlike iOS users, the app is able to upload photos directly to Amazon’s Could Drive whether the app is open or not. However, unlike Apple’s Photo Stream, you can view the photos in a web browser from any computer, just like with Dropbox and even Google Drive, which begs the question: Is Amazon’s cloud offerings good enough to take on Google and Dropbox?

Amazon offers users 5GB for free to start out with, and paid options are available for those who need more storage space (plans start at 20GB for $10 per year). With Google Drive, you also get 5GB free, with paid options starting at just $2.49 per month for 25GB). As for Dropbox, you start off with a measly 2GB for free, but can upgrade for $10 per month, which will land you 100GB. So, all of these options clearly offer different paying schemes, but if you’re already invested in Amazon’s ecosystem, the addition of Cloud Drive Photos will be a welcomed.

VIA: PC Mag

SOURCE: iTunes App Store

The new feature basically allows gamers to create an Account and save game progress to the cloud, with the ability to resume gameplay on another device that has the same game installed. It’s a feature that most games should have in this day and age, but many mobile games sadly don’t come with cloud support, so those who do include it in their games are a step ahead of the crowd.

Currently, Rovio Account is only available in the company’s new The Croods game, as well as in the classic Angry Birds title on iOS in Finland and Poland. Of course, Rovio will gradually be rolling this new feature out in more regions around the world, as well as introduce more features, but the company hasn’t given a timeline on that yet.

As for what this move does for Rovio, it could be a good business move for the mobile game developer, as it makes it easier to converse with users when they have a dedicated Rovio account. Plus, it’ll make it easier to begin playing new games when the company releases new titles or sequels in the future.

[via Android Community]

The news of a Dropbox-centric developer conference hints to the possibility that the company will be looking to revamp its cloud offerings over time with more features, thanks to its network of developers and partners. As for what we’ll see at the conference, that’s still up in the air, but Dropbox says that “people create more than a billion memories, thoughts, and moments in Dropbox every day,” and the company is looking to bring “together our community of developers and partners to build on these experiences and design the future.”

The conference looks to be invitation only, and tickets are $350 per person, but if you want to get in, you can request an invitation on their website by filling out some basic information, like your name, email address, and your occupation. However, you’ll most likely have to be involved with Dropbox in some capacity in order to attend.

Dropbox has been looking to integrate with more and more services over the past year or so, and a developer conference is a great place to make that kind of business happen. In the world of cloud storage, having your service integrated into as many products as possible is a fairly good way to get more people to use your service.

Dell’s acquisition of Enstratius is said to be made to compliment the company’s purchase of Gale Technologies. That particular exchange was made back in November of 2012, Gale Technologies having been folded into Dell’s Active System Manager and added to Dell’s Enterprise Systems and Services group therein.

Enstratius will help provide multi-cloud management from the get-go, adding application configuration capabilities to Dell’s services as well as management tools for multi-component applications across multi-cloud setups. Tom Kendra, vice president and general manager, systems management, Dell Software, spoke up on the acquisition earlier today.

“Dell, together with Enstratius, is uniquely positioned to deliver differentiated, complete cloud-management solutions to enterprise customers, large and small, empowering them with the efficiency and flexibility in the allocation and use of resources.” – Tom Kendra for Dell

This acquisition is one of several in the works with Dell, the most recent being an axed situation in which Blackstone stepped away from a deal back on the 19th of April. In that case it was a possible purchase of Dell, not a Dell purchase. It was also tipped then that Michael Dell wanted his job guaranteed if a Blackstone buyout were to be considered.

[via Dell]

Apple doesn’t mention how many users are affected, but simply that “some” users may be affected. The outages appear to be affecting multiple iCloud services including Mail, Find my iPhone, and third-party apps attempting to access iCloud credentials. Other users are simply receiving an error message when attempting to access any iCloud service.

Apple outages have been occurring quite a bit recently, with iCloud getting the brunt of most of the outages, but iMessage and FaceTime have both gone out in the recent past. We’re obviously not sure why these outages are occurring more often than in the past, but it seems users are starting to get fed up with it.

On a slighty-related note, Engadget reports that Twitter is also experiencing a slight outage, and users are reporting that tweets being sent are timing out before they can be sent off. However, it seems Twitter is aware of the issue and have top men on the case. Is this the end of the internet as we know it? Most likely not, but it seems websites are getting hit hard today.

The company mentioned last week that they would be announcing the next generation in Moonshot hardware, and as expected, they’re starting out the week on a high note with the new line of servers. HP mentions that with the growing needs of internet users, cloud data storage will grow exponentially, to the point where larger and larger facilities will have to be built in order to meet the demand of storage needs.

However, HP says that Moonshot will dissolve the need for bigger and bigger data centers, saying that the new Moonshot servers can take up 80% less space, as well as use up to 89% less energy and be 77% less costly than traditional servers. HP even went as far as saying that the new Moonshot systems are comparable to the move from Unix to x86 servers, as well as the innovation of blade servers.

The new Moonshot systems are available today in the US and Canada, while availability in Europe, Asia, and Latin America will start next month. Pricing begins at a whopping $61,875 for the enclosure, 45 HP ProLiant Moonshot servers, and an integrated switch, but clients will be able to customize their setup to fit their own needs.

Google also promises that loading times and editing are much quicker on this release, although we didn’t seem to notice a huge difference in that respect — you’re mileage may vary as far as that’s concerned. It still took a couple of seconds for documents to load, and creating a new document took even longer.

The Mountain View-based company also included the usual consortium of bug fixes in this release, which will hopefully fix any quirks that you might have been having with the app recently. Other than that, you can expect the same experience on the app. It’s certainly not a huge update, but the added bonus of landscape mode is a Godsend if you ask us.

Google has been keeping a good eye on its line of iOS apps and is even updating them in a timely fashion. While the app didn’t support editing when it first launched on Apple’s platform, the company eventually added editing support later on, with spreadsheet editing being tacked on back in November. Google has yet to add more capabilities like this, but could be a matter of time before they do.

The Dropbox integration only supports English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, but you’ll be able to access your Dropbox folder from right inside your Yahoo Mail inbox. You can save attachments in email messages directly to your Dropbox, or include attachments into outgoing email using files from your Dropbox.

Current Dropbox and Yahoo Mail users can take advantage of the integration right this second, and if you don’t have a Dropbox account, you’ll be able to create one right from Yahoo Mail. What’s perhaps one of the more notable features to come from this integration is that you don’t have to worry about the 25MB attachment limit in Yahoo Mail, since all the files are stored in the cloud in your Dropbox.

This is very similar to how Google’s Gmail integrates with Google Drive. Users can quickly and easily attach files that are located in Google Drive and send them along in an email without having to worry about searching around for the files you need in the regular file explorer on your desktop.

Essentially, the Nebula One is a turnkey computer, that takes an ordinary rack of servers and turns them into a full-fledged cloud storage system running OpenStack, which is an open source cloud computing platform. CEO and former NASA CTO Christopher Kemp says that these systems combine computing powers, storage, and networking all into one machine.

Nebula One runs Cosmos, which is Nebula’s distributed enterprise cloud operating system, and it configures any servers that plug into the Nebula hardware. What perhaps so impressive about it is that it’s built for self-service and supports APIs for OpenStack and Amazon Web Services. It also works with IBM, Dell, or HP servers.

Kemp says that the Nebula One is plug-n-play, meaning that you can just plug it in, and after it automatically configures, it’ll be booted up to the cloud. He notes that you don’t need extra services to purchases, and you don’t need to hire professionals to set it up. Kemp notes it’s as easy as turning on the power switch. According to their website, you can get the Nebula One with as much as 2,400TB of storage and 9,600GB of memory, with 1,600 processing cores. Or if you’re more of a cheapskate, the lowest they offer is 96TB of storage, 384GB of RAM, and 64 processing cores.

The Windows and Mac apps for Cloud Drive have been updated with file syncing, allowing you to share files between multiple computers, which may not seem too enthralling at this point, and it’s certainly nothing groundbreaking, but it moves Cloud Drive one step closer to being a decent cloud storage service that could take on the likes of Dropbox and SkyDrive.

The new feature allows you to upload files from one computer and have them show up on other computers that you have connected to your Amazon Cloud Drive account, as well as the web interface, which you can access on any computer that doesn’t have the Cloud Drive app installed, allowing you to access your files from anywhere that has a computer.

Amazon Cloud Drive also comes with 5GB free, which is more than Dropbox’s 2GB free, which seems rather low compared to today’s standards. However, while Cloud Drive does have an Android version for mobile users, there’s no iOS version to be found yet, so Dropbox still has a slight lead right now, but it’s only a matter of time before they get some real competition creeping up on them.

The new Sky cards are built on AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture and use RapidFire technology in order to deliver the best cloud gaming experience possible. The series includes three enterprise-level graphics cards, with the top-tier model being the Sky 900, which packs in 3,584 stream processors, 6GB of GDDR5 memory, and a memory bandwidth of 480GB per second.

The plan with these cards is to deliver cloud gaming to a number of devices, including PCs (obviously), smartphones, tablets, and even Smart TVs. The company said that they’re “working closely” with a handful of cloud gaming companies to build the best cloud-focused graphics cards out there. AMD announced partnerships with Otoy, Ubitus, G-Cluster, and CiiNow.

AMD’s new cloud gaming initiative comes a couple of months after NVIDIA announced its GRID cloud gaming system at CES 2013, which will allow gamers to stream games over the interwebs to their computer and other mobile devices, including the new Project SHIELD from NVIDIA, which can play graphic-intensive games on a small handheld. AMD’s plans for Sky are a bit scarce at this point, but we should be hearing more about it soon.

The process works similarly to other services with the feature. Users first need to enable two-step verification on the Apple ID website. After that, you can use your mobile device to receive verification codes either through a text message or using the Find my iPhone app in order to sign into Apple services.

This new feature for iCloud comes months after technology journalist Mat Honan was hacked and all of his iOS and Mac devices were erased, thanks to some clever social engineering by the hacker. Apple promised to beef up its security, and has introduced two-step verification today to prevent such things from happening again.

Currently, several companies support two-step verification, including Google, Dropbox, Facebook, Amazon, and Yahoo. Essentially the feature requires two types of verification in order to log into services, one of which is a virtual verification (like a password), and the other is a physical verification (a mobile phone in this case). This prevents anyone from accessing your account, even if they know the password.

[via 9to5Mac]

According to FCW, Amazon won a cloud-computing contract with the CIA that’s worth up to $600 million over a 10-year period. According to the report, the new cloud service will help the CIA “keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA’s previous cloud efforts.”

However, it’s not exactly clear what the CIA has planned for the new cloud system, but it seems that the CIA is mostly focused on becoming more efficient with newer technologies, and it seems like the new service will work just like most other cloud service, except it’ll be on heavy lockdown by the CIA, allowing only authorized users to access confidential files from any device.

While there’s no concrete confirmations on the deal between the two organizations, it wouldn’t be too surprising if the CIA ended up moving into the 21st century with a better cloud storage implementation, especially with Amazon behind the wheel. Neither Amazon or the CIA were willing to comment on the situation.

[via Gizmodo]

Dropbox says that they fell in love with Mailbox right away, describing the app as “simple, delightful, and beautifully engineered.” Dropbox discovered that Mailbox’s calling was the same as theirs: “to solve life’s hidden problems and reimagine the things we do every day.” That’s when the Dropbox folks realized they would make a team.

Mailbox said that rather than grow the app and the company on its own, they’ve decided to join forces with Dropbox to possibly achieve more than what they could do on their own. The Mailbox app itself will still be sticking around and won’t be changing, save for a few new features coming in the future, including Dropbox integration, according to a hint from Mailbox CEO Gentry Underwood.

Exact plans for the acquisition haven’t been disclosed, but we should definitely be seeing more features coming to Mailbox. We reviewed the app shortly after its release, and its certainly worth a try. The developer says that 60 million emails are going in and out per day, and the company’s service capacity has grown 2,000x since launching last month.

The desktop client for Dropbox lives in the system tray or the menu bar (depending on whether you have Windows or Mac), so all the updates and new features are happening there. Specifically, Dropbox made it easier to access shared files, and you can also accept or decline invitations to shared folders right from the dropdown menu.

You’ll also get notifications in real-time as people share files with you. Dropbox also made it much easier and quicker to see what files have recently changed in your Dropbox, and they also added a new way to share files with a link. You can easily click “Share” on any recently-changed file and paste the link to the person you want to share it with.

However, the desktop client wasn’t the only thing to get the new features today. The mobile app for both iOS and Android both received an update that will provide notifications for shared folders. It’s not a huge update for the mobile version, but some users will enjoy getting the improved notifications on their smartphones.

Office 365 University allows access on up to two computers per account, and it costs $79.99 for a four-year subscription. The bundle comes with all the necessary tools to get those assignments done, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. To take advantage of the free trial and get your free SkyDrive storage, all you have to do is enter in your .edu email address.

Plus, if you share the offer on Facebook, you’ll get an additional three months of free access, totaling six months of Office 365 without paying a dime. Of course, that’s only $10 you’re saving, but a penny saved is a penny earned. Of course, if you’re not a student, you can still try out Office 365 Home Premium free for one month as well.

Microsoft released a comical advertisement to promote the offer, which features Parks and Recreation star Aubrey Plaza who plays deadpan character April Ludgate-Dwyer in the show. In the commercial, Plaza informs students about how easy it is to get your collaboration projects done using Office 365 University and SkyDrive in separate locations, officially negating the point of meeting up in the library.

Houston mostly spoke in general terms, but he specifically called out Apple’s iCloud service and said that iCloud users can only share files across iOS devices and not over Android devices. In other words, a lot of cloud storage services that companies and manufacturers roll out are not cross-platform compatible.

Houston says that “you shouldn’t have to care about the logo on the back of your phone or computer, it should just work with everything you have.” He certainly has a point there, and it’s that kind of limitation that Dropbox wants “to help remove for people.” Dropbox is compatible on almost all platforms, and you can share files across different mobile operating systems without any trouble.

Of course, Dropbox has scored partnerships with Samsung and HTC in the past, noting that these companies are the smart ones by not rolling out their own proprietary cloud service, but rather using Dropbox, which is more widely used anyway, with other 100 million users and over one billion files being uploaded every day across 500 million mobile devices.

[via Macworld]

Many users took to Dropbox’s support forums and stated that many of their Dropbox-exclusive e-mail accounts were compromised. They are receiving phishing e-mails from fake LinkedIn and PayPal e-mail addresses, as well as “offers” from casinos and gambling sites. The PayPal phishing e-mails are more frightening because they appear very similar to real PayPal transaction e-mails, and to the unaware user, could result in their computers being infected by malware.

Dropbox states that this attack may have been a long, postponed effect from its previous security compromise last July. The attacks doesn’t seem as widespread as they were last year, but then again, more affected users can come forward and post their own reports soon.

If you believe you’re one of the affected users, Dropbox encourages you to forward the spam emails to their support e-mail address. A spokesperson for Dropbox stated, “If you’ve received spam to an email account you only use for Dropbox, please send the message (including full headers) to support-security@dropbox.com to help our ongoing investigation.” It is also suggested that you change your e-mail password as well as your Dropbox password.

[via Dropbox]

Overall, Evernote has more than 50m users worldwide, growing by 80,000 or so a day. The UK contributes around 3,000 to that daily figure, the company says.

Launched back in 2008 as a way to synchronize digital notes across multiple devices, Evernote has since expanded with native apps for iOS, Android, and other phone/tablet OSes, plus the ability to search text even when it’s included in a photo. The company has also inked deals with others to expand its footprint, including integrating Evernote into Samsung’s Galaxy Note series, and into Livescribe’s Sky WiFi smartpen.

In both devices, Evernote is used as a sync hub, with Livescribe going one step further and building an HTML5 sharing system that allows handwritten notes stored in Evernote to be reviewed by others complete with real-time audio. There’s more on that in our Sky smartpen review.

Meanwhile, Evernote hasn’t let up on Apple integration, even though the iPad lacks a proper stylus. Having acquired Penultimate, an app for handwritten notes on the iPad, it made it a free download and baked in search for cursive text.

The Cloud Player app was released on iOS over the summer last year as an app optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch only, but Amazon has updated to app to version 2.0 today with native support for the iPad as well. The app now features an interface that is consistent with Amazon’s other major iOS apps: Kindle and Amazon Instant Video.

As for the Kindle iOS app, Amazon updated it to version 3.6.1, but after hearing reports of randomly-deleted ebooks from users libraries upon updating, Amazon is warning users not to update, although the update is still available and hasn’t yet been pulled. However, Amazon says they’re currently working on a fix and should be releasing it soon.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that this has happened with app updates. While it’s not common for updates to cause major problems, it’s a factor that developers think about each time they push out an update to its thousands and millions of users, so there’s always bound to be some users who identify problems with an update, but a major issue like this seems to be a first for Amazon.

Dropbox first launched in 2007, just when smartphones were beginning to take off, and the service was only able to sync files between different computers, but eventually the company added support for a smartphones and tablets. As for the future, Dropbox is constantly looking to expand and offer more features to its users. Just earlier this month, Dropbox introduced a new admin panel for businesses.

Houston also was trying to passive-aggressively get mobile carriers and manufacturers in on the Dropbox fun. He says that there’s “untapped opportunity” for carriers that could partner up with Dropbox, using a possible family plan as an example. Houston says that Dropbox could “tie a family together in a way that’s broader than just a billing relationship.”

Houston also mentioned the great partnership opportunities with handset manufacturers, and used Samsung and HTC as an example, where users who log in or sign up with a Samsung or HTC phone get a certain amount of extra storage for free. Of course, manufacturers who have their own cloud service are a little nervous to jump ship — as Samsung was — but Houston mentions that by using Dropbox, manufacturers can build the cloud storage service “onto all these core features on the phone.”

[via CNET]

The Samsung HomeSync will offer a 1TB hard drive that can be accessed by up to 8 people. It’s geared for the entire family. If you’d like, you can create 8 separate private user accounts protected by passwords. No one can access anyone else’s videos, photos, or other files unless the user shares it with them.

The HomeSync features the following specs. It has a 1.7GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of DDR3 RAM, 8GB flash memory, 1TB HDD, 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi bands, Bluetooth v4.0, an ethernet port, a Micro USB port, HDMI out, Audio Amp. Connection, support for a variety of video and audio files, and Android Jelly Bean (version not specified).

Samsung will officially launch the HomeSync in April, and will only be available in the United States initially. The set-top box will be available in other countries shortly afterwards. Samsung has yet to release a price on the HomeSync. The set-top box brings entertainment for your entire family. You can watch your favorite movies in full HD, take turns trying to get the highest score in Temple Run 2, navigate through the constellations using Star Chart, and much more.

[via Samsung]

Someone accidentally forgot to renew the SSL Certificate for the service, which expires one year after it’s renewal date, and thus caused outages throughout the entire Azure cloud-system. Over 52 different Azure services were offline or suffering from poor performance due to the SSL certificate expiring, which also shed some light on a similar outage that Azure faced back in August of 2012. The outage back then was caused by a similar system configuration mistake and left many users in Western Europe without access to the service.

Alongside the outages of Windows Azure, many users have also reported that they had issues with their Xbox’s Music and Videos services. Users were unable to stream, download, or purchase products from the Zune Marketplace. While the Zune Marketplace is also based on a cloud-platform, Microsoft stated that the issues with Zune have no relation to the Azure outages.

Microsoft has restored the Azure cloud-platform today, but are still currently undergoing some tests. While users may have access to their information, Microsoft issues a warning saying that within the next 24 hours, they might see some disruptions to their service. Hopefully these outage issues don’t become an annual thing with Microsoft Azure.

[via Microsoft]

Today’s announcement has NVIDIA backing Agawi True Cloud with no less than their own NVIDIA GRID processor system. Also joining in on the fun are PEER 1, Blue Box, and XO Communications, all joining together to bring developers an opportunity to “build games ONCE and offer any game, anywhere, instantly.” Quite the miraculous feat they’re attempting here as NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD nears reality as well.

When we first heard of NVIDIA GRID, it was a mind-bending experience to think about the possibilities inside. As Phil Eisler, general manager of NVIDIA GRID cloud gaming at NVIDIA speaks about this week, GRID K340 servers are one of the jumping-off points for the public’s understanding of what it means to work with 12 GPUs (in each server) as they usher in “the smooth, seamless interactive experience of a high-performing gaming PC on mobile devices”.

One of the most important points of this announcement is the fact that True Cloud architecture will, as Agawi promises, “eliminate heavy data storage and costs” for cloud gaming. With True Cloud, game publishers will be able to stream their games “from social to mid-core to AAA” in a much more affordable environment than any solution available before.

Previously, it was speculated that PlayStation 3 games would not be backwards compatible with the PlayStation 4 because the PlayStation 4 would be utilizing a new AMD x86 chip. The chip would be incompatible with the architecture in the previous consoles. Gaikai’s cloud-gaming service would be the solution to that. Also, it’s speculated that with the Gaikai cloud-gaming streaming service, PlayStation 3 titles may not just be limited to the PlayStation 4. It could be streamed to the PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3 itself, and even tablets and smartphones. Of course, it’s up to Sony to utilize it that way.

Gaikai will not be streaming PlayStation 4 titles because the max resolution it can output is 720p. Streaming the games would also require Gaikai servers to be relatively close to Playstation 4 users, and for the users to have a great internet connection. Gaikai only has experience streaming PC games, so even streaming PlayStation 3 will be a new challenge for the company.

The PlayStation 4 is speculated to cost about 40,000 yen, or $400, and it will be announced at Sony’s press conference in just two days. There, we will hear the details of the console and all it’s glory. It was just recently brought to our attention that Gaikai would be attending the conference as well, leading us to believe that the two have a huge, joint announcement for all of us.

Users will be able to not only play songs and skip through them using voice controls, but they’ll also be able to navigate their entire library and even playlists. All of it is hands-free, meaning that once you pair your smartphone either through Bluetooth or USB, users won’t have to bother playing with their phones to get music to play, and Ford actually blocks you out of the app anyway so that you don’t get distracted while driving.

Currently, there’s only a handful of Ford vehicles that are SYNC Applink-equipped. These include the 2013 Ford Fiesta, Mustang, Focus, E-Series, C-MAX Hybrid, Expedition, Fusion, and the F-150 and Super Duty models. However, Ford will be making the feature more widely available in the future as an add-on option.

During CES 2013, Ford announced that over 1,000 app developers have signed up for the AppLink developer program, and even more have most likely signed up by now, so it looks like Ford is going all-in with its SYNC technology, and with more apps that come with SYNC enabled, the more that car buyers may be intrigued by Fords’ entertainment options.

The new admin console is ultimately centered around two ideas: visibility and control. The new features offer improvements in both of these categories. For visibility, you can view recent activity, web sessions, linked devices, and third party apps for each member on the team. You can also get an overall activity chart for everyone on the team, and even download and print out handy reports of usage.

As for control, Dropbox now lets admins set sharing controls at the account level, meaning that you can determine which files are to be kept within the company, or let users decided what gets shared. You can also require that everyone enable two-step verification, just in case you want added security to your work, and there are options to remove users from the group in case they leave the company, and even send out password reset emails to users.

Essentially, Dropbox is making it easier for IT admins to manage the team and the company’s files in an easy-to-use control panel. Plus, Dropbox never has any confusing settings, and always strives for user-friendliness, so while it’s always good to have a knowledgable IT admin on staff, pretty anyone could run the admin console if need be.

It could be that Dell is simply sponsoring the promotion, but given that it’s an “Exclusive Offer,” we can’t see where the exclusivity lies. Either way, if you’re not already signed up for a Box account, this is your chance to get 50GB of cloud storage space for free. They’ve given away 50GB free before, but that’s the highest that the company has gone with its promotions.

Box is about the only cloud storage provider that gives you a ton of space for free right away. Dropbox gives you 2GB after signing up, and you can earn more with referrals, but that can take some work. Box is really the only simple cloud solution that can be considered a viable backup resource.

Here’s the catch, though. Box only allows, at the most, 250MB files, so you might as well forget about backing up home videos. However, Box offers paid accounts that get rid a lot of the limitations that you’ll come across. Plus, 50GB for free may not seem useful now, but who knows when you’ll need it. Either way, it’s handy to have just in case.

To celebrate the milestone, Microsoft introduced the ability for users to share and edit Office documents with users without a Microsoft account. Previously, only Microsoft account holders could share documents with one another, but the company has made it possible for outside users to edit documents and apply the changes anonymously.

Microsoft says the new feature is actually from requests from many users who were begging the company to include more lax sharing options. Students were actually the largest from the group who requested the feature, saying that they were wanting to share documents with other users that didn’t have Microsoft accounts.

Microsoft says that people who you share a document with can now just go from clicking the link sent to them from a collaborator to editing the document in a snap without any hassle. Of course, Google Drive has had this kind of feature for a while now, but it’s nice that other cloud office suites are taking advantage of it as well.

The new features aren’t available just yet, though. The company says that users should be seeing the new features in the next few months. However, it’s important to note that Documents Preview won’t support all file types, but the more popular ones will be supported, including .doc, .docx, and .pdf. For files that are not supported, users will still have the option to download or share the file like usual.

Dropbox also updated photo views on the web interface, laying out photos in a grid of thumbnails and organizing them chronology by when they were taken, rather than by name. A similar feature has already launched in Dropbox’s Android app in a bit of a beta preview of this functionality, but it will hit the web interface within a few months. Furthermore, the company is making it easier to share photos, allowing users to select photos from the web viewer and create new albums to share to social media or send through email.

These updates and new features are just another stepping stone for Dropbox to become more than just a simple file-sharing service. The company is looking to make it easier to manage all those files that you store in your Dropbox, and of course, many of them are photos and documents that can take a while to sift through if not organized properly.

[via Forbes]

Home Premium users get 20GB of SkyDrive space, as well as 60 free world calling minutes in Skype each month; they can also access Office on Demand via the PC browser. Students, meanwhile, can have Office 365 University, which comes at $79.99 for a four year individual subscription.

You’ll need to be a college or university student, or a member of faculty or staff, in order to qualify, however; it’ll be available in 52 markets. On February 27, meanwhile, Microsoft will release Office 365 for businesses. It’s not clear how much subscriptions for that will cost yet.

Whichever version is used, the Office.com hub will serve as a central access points for all cloud-based documents, as well as the point of entry for Office on Demand. Earlier today, Microsoft added the full Office 2013 downloads to its online store.

Each type of output is set up as a specific transcoding “job” and pointed at a specific video; Amazon gets things started with an array of presets for the more popular formats. The benefit, Amazon claims, is that content producers no longer need to worry about encoding multiple versions of their media to suit the growing number of devices viewers might be using. Instead, each transcoding session is performed in the cloud.

As you might expect, Amazon charges based on the duration of transcoding. Users of AWS get twenty minutes of standard-definition conversion time free each month, or half that length for HD content, and after that it’s around $0.015 per minute of sub-720p footage, and $0.030 per minute of 720p or above footage, depending on which regional servers you’re on.

Right now, Amazon Elastic Transcoder outputs into H.264 video and stereo AAC audio in an MP4 container, with H.264, AAC, MP4, MPEG-2, FLV, 3GP, and AVI source material supported. Only one transcoding job can be performed at any one time, and currently there’s no support for live, on-the-fly transcoding.

There’s more on AET here and in the diagram below.

[via Tom Royal]

This has a number of benefits, as it means you won’t be subject to size restrictions like you are with other services. One of the major headaches with services like Dropbox and SkyDrive is that you’re limited in how much you can have in your synced folders – for Dropbox, for instance, you get 2GB of free space, and that runs out quick when you’re trying to sync multiple video files at once. Once you’ve hit that cap, you’ll need to shell out some cash if you want more space.

That’s not a major complaint, as these are companies that exist to make money after all. BitTorrent’s Sync, on the other hand, is free to use. You won’t have to worry about limits on the amount you can transfer from one device to another, which probably sounds like a Godsend to those who constantly have to rely on cloud services to move files between devices.

As cool as it sounds, there’s one slight problem: BitTorrent Sync isn’t available to use just yet (unless you love pre-alpha testing). It’s currently in the testing stages, but it shouldn’t be more than a few months before Sync is available to BitTorrent users. What do you think of this new cloud service from the people behind BitTorrent?

[via NBC News]

While some users were able to successfully create an account and start uploading files, they quickly discovered that uploads would freeze. Gizmodo‘s own Joe Brown mentioned that after 23 hours of an upload in progress, “not one byte transferred.” However, other users can’t get into the new service at all, thanks to confirmation emails gone missing.

Some users can’t even get the site to load in order to log in. It’s definitely not surprising when a new service underestimates the crowd that will show up at launch, and it’s not the first time this has happened with any new service. With that said, it seems like companies should be smart enough now that they should just always expect a larger crowd than anticipated, just in case. It’s a precaution that will save a ton of headaches right off the bat.

However, Kim Dotcom is obviously aware of the issue and is getting top men to resolve the problems as quickly as possible, although his timeline for a “smooth experience” was simply just “soon.” Dotcom says that the new service is “slowly stabilizing” and the team is “still fixing small bugs and issues with some servers.”

“The new Mega encrypts your data transparently in your browser, on the fly” the company says of its file security system. “You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us.”

As for those who find 50GB isn’t enough for their needs, Mega expects to offer three “Pro” tiers initially. €9.99 ($13) gets you 500GB, €19.99 ($27) gets you 2TB, and €29.99 ($40) gets you 4TB. Bandwidth for each package comes in at 1TB, 4TB, and 8TB per month, respectively.

You’ll also need to be running Chrome for the best experience since, as Mega explains, currently none of the other common browsers support all elements of the feature-set the cloud system requires. “ If you are planning on using MEGA frequently, there is currently no alternative to using the most advanced browser currently in existence” Mega concludes, “Google Chrome.”

Mega’s roadmap for the future is certainly ambitious. The company plans to release an API, as well as local apps for desktop and mobile use, plus an instant-messaging service for Mega users to communicate with each other.

The landing page at Mega.co.nz now redirects to Kim.com/mega, and it’s important to note that the service isn’t finished just yet. Once the site launches tomorrow for everyone, users will be aware of a roadmap that will include future features to be added, such as an SDK with fully documented API and different collaboration features.

One of the biggest features of the new service is that new users will receive 50GB of free storage when they sign up, but those that require larger storage needs can opt for different paid tiers. The “Pro” options offer 500GB, 2TB, and 4TB of cloud storage for €9.99, €19.99 and €29.99, respectively. The 500GB package comes with 1TB of bandwidth, and the 2TB and 4TB plans are given 4TB and 8TB of bandwidth, respectively.

Obviously, it’s still too early to tell if the service will take off. So far, though, there doesn’t seem to be any major setbacks to Mega, but we’ll see once the service officially launches tomorrow. The service eventually plans to add filesystem integration for Windows, with Mac and Linux versions coming as well. There will also be mobile apps for multiple mobile OSes that will allow users to sync files across different platforms.

[via TechCrunch]

Project Ophelia is the handiwork of Dell’s Cloud Client Computing Team – formerly the Dell Wyse team – and given the initial enterprise focus, as you’d expect there’s a good dollop of security in play. There’s support for Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware remote-computing platforms, and onboard Bluetooth and WiFi for connectivity; Bluetooth is used to hook up a wireless keyboard, mouse, gamepad, or other peripheral.

No external power supply is needed, with Project Ophelia getting all its juice from the USB port. Inside there’s Android 4.0, with preloaded web, social networking, and media playback support, as well as Android app support; it’s unclear if that includes Play market access.

Project Ophelia will be available in the first half of 2013, Dell says, though it hasn’t yet suggested pricing. One possibility is a deal with cloud access providers or companies with OnLive ambitions, who might rebadge the stick to suit their own service.

The company, according to one of the representatives here at Pepcom, would like to miniaturize the computing space. Indeed, with a 6-10 year lifespan and x86-based OSes and apps, the Xi3 7 series could mean a lot for computing in general, with both quad and dual-core processors on offer. We’ve also got “graphics integrated within AMD’s Trinity Series 32nm APU chipset.”

One interesting thing to point out is that the codename for this computer is “Piston,” and we’ve learned that Xi3 and Valve have been working together with the 7 series. Even though Xi3 wouldn’t explain to us the level of Valve’s involvement in the project, it’s easy to see why valve would be interested in this, given that this new modular computer is meant to make computing more accessible to a wider range of people. Another thing worth drawing attention to: this new modular computer is codenamed Piston, and a company named Valve (which runs a gaming platform named Steam) is interested in it in some capacity.

Xi3 also wouldn’t give away what Valve was planning to do with the 7 series computers, but it doesn’t seem too far of a stretch to think that Valve would want to use it for stackable cloud computing. Perhaps the company is looking to enter the cloud gaming space? Keep in mind that this is purely speculation, especially considering that Valve hasn’t said anything. We’ll try to find out more in the coming days here at CES. We’ll also hope to have more information on the 7 series in general soon, but for now, just know that the 5A will cost $499 and the 7A will cost $999. Check out our CES portal for all the news you can use from the show!

Chief among these new features is perhaps the Remote Files app, which will allow users to access their Windows-based PCs from any of their devices. With Acer Cloud Docs, users will be able to push their Microsoft Office documents to their other devices, making them downloadable and readable on iOS or Android. Acer will make these documents available for 30 days after they were last modified, and unlike AcerCloud as a whole, there isn’t any storage limit when you’re working with AcerCloud Docs.

Of course, your AcerCloud storage limit is determined by how much free space you have on your PC’s hard drive, which potentially means that you can far exceed the storage capacity offered by many other cloud services. Considering that AcerCloud is a free service for Acer PC owners, that sounds like a pretty great deal, though you are essentially still paying for the service in terms of additional hard drive space.

Other features announced today include PicStream, which is a lot like AcerCloud Docs in that it will push pictures taken with one device to all of your machines (which then remain available for 30 days), and AcerCloud clear.fi, a feature that will let you sync your media libraries – music included – between all of your devices. This AcerCloud update will be available for download sometime this month, and Acer says that the new version of AcerCloud will be bundled with all of the company’s PCs starting in Q2 2013.