Why cloud storage is the future of music. Amazon Cloud Drive lets users store music on remote servers and access songs from the internet or Android phones. Amazon's cloud storage service for music is part of a trend toward online music storage Music files are stored on Amazon's computer servers instead of users' hard drives Other big tech companies are rumored to be working on similar offerings (CNN) -- Amazon this week became the first big internet company to offer something called "cloud music.
" To the unfamiliar, that term may seem off-putting, like a new soft-rock genre that leans heavily on harp solos. But it's possible many of us will be using cloud music systems in the not-far-off future. So what does that look like? In marketing-speak, the cloud is just a fancy term for all the computers -- other than your own -- that are connected to the internet. Companies like Amazon and Google maintain huge networks of computers that are stored, row after row, in secret warehouses all over the world.
What's better about cloud music? One Database To Rule The Cloud: Salesforce Debuts Database.com For The Enterprise. Oracle has dominated the database market, especially following its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. But today, its “frenemy” Salesforce.com will become more of a competitor with the launch of Database.com, the company’s enterprise database built for the cloud. Database.com is essentially and plug-and-play storage infrastructure for any developers, using any language, platform or device. Salesforce is leveraging on the same technology that it uses to power its own applications, and is now making this a stand-alone service for developers to create their independent applications.
As Salesforce’s primary database in the cloud, the company touts Database.com as one of the largest enterprise databases, containing more than 20 billion records and delivering more than 25 billion transactions per quarter at an average response time of less than 300 milliseconds. Apps can also run natively on any device, like an iPad, an iPhone, Android or Blackberry. Amazon, WikiLeaks and the Need for an Open Cloud: Tech News « As the WikiLeaks saga continues, with founder Julian Assange facing potential extradition to Sweden (although not for leaking secret documents) and the U.S. considering espionage charges against him, it’s easy to overlook some of the key issues that have arisen out of the affair — particularly those raised by Amazon’s removal of WikiLeaks from its servers, out of concern about the legality of the content being hosted there. At least one senior technologist thinks this could raise red flags about cloud computing, while programmer and open-web advocate Dave Winer believes the incident reinforces the need for an open cloud-hosting service.
In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Dr. Joseph Reger — CTO for Fujitsu Technology Solutions — said Amazon’s decision to withdraw hosting for WikiLeaks from its EC2 servers is “bad news for the new IT paradigm of cloud computing,” and ultimately calls “the security and availability of cloud services into question.” WikiLeaks' leader Julian Assange. Personal data is the future, but does anybody care? Like most people, I tend to surround myself with like-minded folks. Most of my dinner party conversations turn into rousing debates on the future of web standards, or which company will unlock the true power of personal data on the web, or how can we mark our bits with emotional cues to make our web experiences more human. That sort of thing. But every now and then, I reconnect with old friends and even meet new people who don’t find a conversation on data rousing at all.
They have other things on their minds and they haven’t thought about cookies or the amount of data Facebook is collecting on us. The mere utterance of the phrase “silos of data” kills a perfectly lovely conversation. The problem is that understanding our personal data is important for everyone — not just geeks. As I’ve been building my own personal data collection startup, I’ve thought a great deal about how I could communicate the value of knowing and owning your own data to non-geeks. 1. 2. 3. Related: Evernote Makes Web a Priority With New Redesign: Tech News and Analysis « Evernote has recently rolled out significant changes to its various mobile and desktop applications (Kevin covered the iPhone update earlier this month).
Tuesday, another update brings a new, more robust and versatile experience to Evernote’s web-based app, including new social features which point the way forward for the service. The versatile Evernote application that acts as a general note-taking tool for just about anything in your digital life (text notes, photos, websites, media and more) has achieved considerable success as a mobile app on iOS and Android devices, and as a native desktop application, available for both Mac and Windows machines.
The Mac app recently gained a lot of traction thanks to its introduction in the Mac App Store, Apple’s software sales marketplace. According to Evernote VP Andrew Sinkov, the goal of the new Evernote Web design is to make the web version a priority, whereas before it mostly operated as a fall-back option when native apps weren’t available. Search Notes: The future of advertising could get really personal. This week, we imagine the future of advertising as we think about how much can really be tracked about us, including what we watch, our chats with our friends, and if we buy a lot of bacon.
Google expands its predictions Search engines such as Google have an amazing amount of data, both in general (they do store the entire web, after all) and about what we search for (in aggregate, regionally, and categorized in all kinds of segments). In 2009, Google published a fascinating paper about predictions based on search data. The company has made use of this data in kinds of ways, such forecasting flu trends and predicting the impact of the Gulf oil spill on Florida tourism. You can see the forecasted interest for all kinds of things using Google Insights for Search.
Own a gardening web site? Click to enlarge Those predictions are all based on search data, but search engines can do similar things with data from websites. Click to enlarge Yahoo and Bing evolve the search experience Click to enlarge. The Personal Cloud Will Be A $12 Billion Industry in 2016. Personal computing has become complicated. Consumers and IT managers face dozens of services for a single functionality and users are increasingly using smartphones, tablets, and different PCs for home and work.
It is hard to juggle it all. "The personal computing experience is a victim of its own success" research company Forrester says in a report outlining a strategy for consumers and corporations in approaching the "personal cloud. " Forrester predicts that the personal cloud will be a $12 billion dollar market by 2016. What is the personal cloud going to look like and who are the leaders going to be? What Will the Personal Cloud Be Built On? Forrester predicts that the personal cloud will be built around the large personal email systems that have extra layers of compatibility - iCloud, Gmail with Google Apps and Hotmail with Windows Live Essentials.
Where is Amazon? In the cloud landscape of 2011, that might seem like a bit of a surprise. "P Cloud" As The Third Major Client Software. Why clouds and web services will continue to take over computing. What Makes a Hit (Consumer) Internet Service: Tech News and Analysis « Over the past few days, there has been a heated debate about Quora, a year-old startup, that offers a more sophisticated version of Yahoo Answers’ question-and-answer platform. Quora has found success with early adopters because of its high-fidelity content, but it has also grappling with the arrival of the masses, which are going to drown out those signals with noise.
This dichotomy is one of the toughest challenges for not only Quora, but for any other Internet service with dreams of mega-success. Let’s face it: Today, success on the consumer Internet essentially equates with scale. Unless you have scale — which is nothing more than a nerdy euphemism for massive mainstream adoption — you don’t have much of a chance of becoming a major Internet company. Our systems of monetization on the Internet all hark back to old media — television and print. So, What Works on the Internet? Those things are: Pop the Popcorn and Turn on Netflix Yelp Needs No Help Minus One, Hoping for a Home Run Oops!