Microsoft is giving OneDrive early adopters a 100GB bonus for checking out the newly-renamed cloud storage service, after having rebranded globally earlier today. The promotion, which is offered to the first 100,000 people to sign into OneDrive today, is on top of the regular 7GB of storage Microsoft offers to all new sign-ups.
Trademarks are tricky business, often involving legal battles over whether a common word -- such as "sky" -- that is well-known for a specific brand -- such as British Sky Broadcasting -- can be snapped up from usage among other brands, such as Microsoft's SkyDrive. Such became the source of an infringement claim against Microsoft by BSkyB, and all of it has been followed by an announcement today that Microsoft will be rebranding SkyDrive to OneDrive.
Microsoft last night sent out an email to some of its Windows Phone users informing them of some good news. They will get 20GB of additional SkyDrive storage for one year, in addition to the 7 free GB that SkyDrive users already get. The holiday gift only applies to "Windows Phone Enthusiast Users".
The update from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 hasn’t been smooth for some users. A number of repots have surfaced online from users complaining they are having issues using Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage system after upgrading to Windows 8.1. There are reportedly 120 individual threads on the SkyDrive forum about issues after updated to the latest version of Windows.
Microsoft has added automatic photo upload to its SkyDrive app for iOS, with the new Camera Backup feature pushing shots directly to the cloud once they're snapped. The updated SkyDrive iOS app makes Camera Backup an option, naturally, and the uploads can be set to take place over WiFi and cellular data, or only when you've got a WiFi connection. It's not the only tweak to the software, either.
Today Microsoft gets serious about SkyDrive for cross-platform access to media of all types. Not that they didn't plan on the service being taken seriously before, but here in integrating SkyDrive with the Xbox One, Microsoft makes a big play for the gamers and living room media players of the world. Here gamers galore will find using the cloud storage abilities of SkyDrive to be far more enticing than they've ever been before.
If you've been rather hesitant to use the likes of cloud storage - that is, using something like SkyDrive to hold your files online - the folks at Microsoft may have a solution that'll turn your head. While working with cloud storage often means you'll have to either have a copy of each of your files on your local computer OR that you'll be unable to work with a single search source, SkyDrive "smart files" attempts to solve all that nonsense. Here you'll be able to have a single search bar on your desktop that'll allow you to search and see both local files and all of your files in the cloud all at once.
Microsoft unveiled the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 at an event earlier this morning. Included in that announcement was also details of the docking station and a variety of covers, but it seems there was also a bit of good news for those who were hoping to have a 200GB SkyDrive account. In short, Microsoft announced just that and have begun teasing about how that will be "enough storage for a photo every hour from birth to graduation."
Microsoft has announced some changes to SkyDrive Pro today. The changes touch on storage and sharing and in both cases these are going in the direction that one would expect and hope to see. Simply put, storage is being increased and moving forward it should be a bit easier to find those shared items you have stored in SkyDrive.
Microsoft has decided to skip a battle they'd have had to fight if they'd continued down the road with their cloud storage service SkyDrive amid a call to action by British Sky Broadcasting. That company, also known as BSkyB, planned legal means of ending Microsoft's use of the "SkyDrive" brand name due to conflicts with their own similar naming structure. Initial judgement on the matter saw BSkyB winning out in the England and Whales High Court.
This week the team at Kibits have launched "Collaborate.com", a full mobile and web browser-based environment for teamwork, aiming to bring together groups of associates that aren't always working in the same zip code. This platform works at launch on iPhone, iPod touch, Android, and inside web browsers and integrates the content of services such as Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and Apple's iCloud in a single workroom environment, and they're launching this week.
Microsoft has given SkyDrive another update, this one tailored towards the type of content it says it is primarily used for - photographs. With this update, which is rolling out now and will reach users within the next 48 hours, there's a new photo timeline, as well as faster uploads, a switched up thumbnail layout, and thumbnails for Word and PowerPoint files.
